T.P. Wiseman writes:

Caesar’s Calendar consists of three pairs of chapters: ‘Synchronising Times’, ‘Transitions from Myth into History’ and ‘Years, Months, and Days’. The first is a superb exploration of what it was like to live in a world that had no agreed way of numbering years, and how, by the development of synchronisms between events – or supposed events – in different parts of their world, Greek and Roman scholars evolved a composite overall chronology which culminated in Eusebius’ Chronici Canones, with their base list of years dated from the birth of Abraham. Feeney rightly insists on the key contribution of Sicilian Greek writers in the Hellenistic period – particularly Timaeus of Tauromenium, the first author to show any serious interest in Rome – and on the effect of Roman imperial expansion, which made it necessary to ‘graft the Romans into the deep past of the Mediterranean’s time webs’. (It is hard to think about this subject without resorting to metaphor; but Feeney is a subtle writer, and doesn’t often test his readers’ patience.)

(LRB 18 October 2007)

California | hardback 372 pp. |ISBN: 9780520251199