To make such a mode of dating the year at all satisfactory, it would seem to us necessary that the number of the cycle itself, as well as of the year in the cycle, should be given; for instance, that A.D. 313 should be called the first year of the first Indiction, and A.D. 351 the ninth year of the third Indiction. This practice, however, was not adopted till far on into the Middle Ages[188]. At the time we are speaking of, the word Indiction seems generally to have been given not to the cycle itself, but to the year in the cycle. Thus, 313 was the first Indiction, 314 the second Indiction, 315 the third Indiction, and so on. And thus we find a year, which from other sources we know to be 313, called the first Indiction, 351 the ninth Indiction, 537 the fifteenth Indiction, without any clue being given to guide us to the important point in what cycles these years held respectively the first, the ninth, and the fifteenth places. [Footnote 188: The Twelfth Century, according to Marquardt.] As the Indiction began on the 1st of September a question arises whether the calendar year is to be named after the number of the Indiction which belongs to its beginning or its end; whether, to go back to the beginning, A.D. 312 or A.D. 313 is to be accounted the first Indiction. The practice of the chroniclers and of most writers on chronology appears to be in favour of the latter method, which is natural, inasmuch as nine months of the Indiction belong to the later date and only three to the earlier. Thus, for instance, Marcellinus Comes calls the year of the Consulship of Belisarius, which was undoubtedly 535, 'Indictio XIII:' the thirteenth Indiction of that cycle having begun Sept. 1, 534, and ended August 31, 535. But it is well that the student should be warned that our greatest English authority, Mr. Fynes Clinton, adopts the other method. In the very useful table of comparative chronology which he gives in his Fasti Romani[189] he assigns the Indiction to that year of the Christian era in which it had its beginning, and accordingly 534, not 535, is identified with the thirteenth Indiction. [Footnote 189: Vol. ii. pp. 214-216. See his remarks, p. 210: 'The Indictions in Marcellinus and in the Tables of Du Fresnoy are compared with the Consulship and the Julian year in which they end. In the following Table they are compared with the year in which they begin, because the years of the Christian era are here made the measure of the rest, and contain the beginnings of all the other epochs.']