The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Volume 2Browne, Thomas, Sir
Religion
The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Volume 2
Browne, Thomas, Sir
Christianity; Ethics; Religion and medicine
Thirdly, The compute may be unjust not only in a strict acception, of
few daies or hours, but in the latitude also of some years; and this may
happen from the different compute of years in divers Nations, and even
such as did maintain the most probable way of account: their year being
not only different from one another, but the civil and common account
disagreeing much from the natural year, whereon the consideration is
founded. Thus from the testimony of _Herodotus_, _Censorinus_ and
others, the _Greeks_ observed the Lunary year [SN: _The Lunary year
what._], that is, twelve revolutions of the Moon, 354 daies; but the
_Egyptians_, and many others adhered unto the Solary account [SN: _The
Solary year what._], that is, 365 daies, that is, eleven daies longer.
Now hereby the account of the one would very much exceed the other: A
man in the one would account himself 63, when one in the other would
think himself but 61; and so although their nativities were under the
same hour, yet did they at different years believe the verity of that
which both esteemed affixed and certain unto one. The like mistake there
is in a tradition of our daies; men conceiving a peculiar danger in the
beginning daies of _May_, set out as a fatal period unto consumptions
and Chronical diseases; wherein notwithstanding we compute by Calenders,
not only different from our ancestors, but one another; the compute of
the one anticipating that of the other; so that while we are in _April_,
others begin _May_, and the danger is past unto one, while it beginneth
with another.
Fourthly, Men were not only out in the number of some daies, the
latitude of a few years, but might be wide by whole Olympiades and
divers Decades of years. [SN: _The different account or measure of a
year._] For as _Censorinus_ relateth, the ancient _Arcadians_ observed a
year of three months, the _Carians_ of six, the _Iberians_ of four; and
as _Diodorus_ and _Xenophon de Æquivocis_ alleadgeth, the ancient
_Egyptians_ have used a year of three, two, and one moneth: so that the
Climacterical was not only different unto those Nations, but
unreasonably distant from ours; for Sixty three will pass in their
account, before they arrive so high as ten in ours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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