from the day of his accession, his last year is a broken one; and his successor’s reign has to be counted as beginning from a different date. Thus a literal reckoning by the exact years of each king’s reign becomes chronologically so complicated as to be extremely unwieldy and practically impossible.
Some modification was therefore commonly in- troduced for chronological purposes in this method of reckoning. The years of each king’s reign were counted according to the current and recognized system of years, and not according to the day when the reign began: either the first year of the monarch was reckoned as ending with the last day of the current year (so that this nominal first year of his reign might last in reality only a few days or months), or the last year of the former monarch was counted as running up to the end of the year in which he died, and the first year of the new monarch was counted as beginning only with the first day of the local year next after he ascended the throne, or some other device of that kind was adopted in order to facilitate chronological reckoning.
Thus either the first year of Queen Victoria would have to be reckoned as ending on 31 Dee. 1837, and her sixty-fifth year would be running at the time of her death in the beginning of 1901: but in that case the rest of the year 1901 would be reckoned by subsequent chronologists as the first year of Edward vul., and in historical chronology 1837 would be called as a whole the first of Victoria and 1901 the first of Edward vil. : or else the whole of 1837 would have to be reckoned to William Iv., 1838 would be the first year of Victoria, and 1901 would be her sixty-fourth, and would, as a whole, be reckoned as the last year of her reign. When- ever possible, it is desirable to investigate each writer’s practice from his own writings. But, of the two alternative methods which have just been stated, the former was, on the whole, the more frequent and ordinary rule, and the one which must, in cases of doubt, be supposed to have been followed, as most likely to have been the practice of the writer in question.
On the other hand, in dating by years of the emperors, it is obvious that in Egypt the latter method was often practised, and many persons continued to date documents by the emperor who had been in office at the beginning of the year, even though his successor had already been in power for many months ; see above, p. 379° (where many of the cases alluded to are probably due, not entirely to ignorance, but to the idea that the whole current local year should be reckoned to the emperor in whose name it had begun).
Practical convenience dictated the rule, and it may be regarded as universally observed that when ordinary persons spoke of a series of years they meant, and were understood by every one to mean, the current years of the country or State to which they belonged, and not years reckoned from some arbitrary epoch, such as the birth of an individual or the accession of a sovereign. Thus, in Egypt, the universal way of counting the years of the Roman emperors is known to have been according to the Egyptian year beginning on 1 Thoth (30 August). Similarly, we may be sure that in Syria people counted in ordinary usage according to the current local year (on which see Site 7):
: There was no fixed and universal rule among chronologists regulating their practice in this respect; and the custom of each ancient writer should as far as possible be determined separ- ately from a special study of his method. Many errors have been made by modern writers owing to misinterpretation of chronological statements according to Imperial years. For example, in the
iii. YEARS AND DATES.—A convenient and practically useful system of chronology was de- veloped only very slowly in the ancient world.
1. Dating by the years of kings and enyperors.— In countries governed by monarchs, the custom of dating by the years of the current reign was natural and widespread. Such a system was of course confined almost absolutely to the limits of the monarchy. Beyond those limits it could hardly be used, or understood, or verified. Even within those limits it had many practical disadvantages for historical purposes. For instance, a consider- able amount of trouble was often needed to dis- cover the meaning and value of dates in past time ; as amongst ourselves it would not be obvious, without some trouble, what interval elapsed be- tween the fifteenth year of George Ill. and the third year of Victoria. The difficulties of this ae are of course not so serious in contem- porary dating : while a sovereign is reigning, the years of his reign, from whatever day it began, Would be familiar to all the people, but after his death hardly any one remembers the exact limits of his reign. :
The difficulty is increased by the fact that a king reigns not for an exact number of years, but for a period that must be reckoned by years, months, and days. If his first year is counted as running
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