325
Accompliss. des Proplu p. 357. Nor are these influenced so much by the truth of the reasons, as by the probable appearance of the fact alone. Aretius on this passage proceeds more speciously, mutu- ally comparing the 1335 days of Daniel and the number 666. A space of six months is not only a part of a time, but it is also a time: and as the Indians, according to Curtius, had their month divided into 15 days (whence the Malabars at the present time account the 14 semicircles of the 7 planets for fourteen worlds) ; and the Chinese fix 24 semi-solar months in the year : so some of the ancients not un- skilfully marked out one year hy summer, and another by winter, as Pliny remarks, 1. vii. c. 48. And Plutarch, Censorinus, and others, remark that the year was also terminated in six months among the Egyptians, and from them among the Greeks, and undoubtedly so among the Carians and Acarnanians, between whom Patmos was situated, and indeed it was very near to Caria. See Jo. Hiskise Car- dilucii T. I. Evang. Naturwissenschaft in Prsef., and Fabricii lib. de Mensibus, pp. 7, 8, and 153. The history of Thucydides is arranged by winters and summers. The ancient Saxons divided the year into two Malinas , autumnal and vernal, as Martinius remarks from Scaliger in his Lexicon Etym. col. 1438. And in all the inter- course of civil life a space of time consisting of six mo?iths was of very frequent occurrence. There were many magistracies of six months’ duration, as, for instance, the tribuneship mentioned by Pliny, Ep. 4, 1. 4. The fasces of the consuls were formerly given for six months : and at the present day, Academic officers and others. The Romans had rings for summer and winter : whence the six months ’ gold, in Juven. Sat. vii. Those skilled in civil law cite six-monthly counsels of princes. See P. Fabri Prsef. to his Semestria ; for by this title he and other civil lawyers, and Dorscheus of divines, inscribed some of their writings : and at the present day Semestria are in ex- istence among the French in forensic practice. James Cappellus suspects that the patriarchal years before Abraham were held by the Alexandrians to be of six months, when he is comparing the Alex- andrian era of the creation of the world with the Jewish. Disp. Sedan. T. I. p. 1048. Comp, the things related by Calvis. upon a.m. 3185, taken from John George Herbart of Hohenburg. With astrologers sometimes, when they conjecture future things from celestial phenomena, a day by a mystic calculation denotes six months. See Zimmermann’s Tr. on the Comet of the year 1680, p. 101. With this especially agrees that solemnly observed division of the year into two equal parts among the Israelites, that is, into