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A POSTHUMOUS B.C.: It seems difficult for someone accustomed to referring to pre-Christian dates in terms of B.C. to realize that such dates are only applicable to those who, like ourselves, look back from a Christian or post-Christian society, not to those who actually lived in pre-Christian times. The ancient Greeks, for example, would not have thought in terms of 350 or 300 B.C., for the simple reason that they had no idea that a man named Jesus Christ would appear in the world approximately a few centuries later (in their future) and, unbeknown to himself, subsequently become the source of the Christian calendar. Thus Socrates would not have been aware of the fact that he lived from 430-399 B.C., since it was the Greek calendar which prevailed in his time, rendering his concept of epoch considerably different from ours.

Therefore it should be apparent that reference to any date preceding the Christian era in terms of B.C. is strictly a Western invention, a scale of historical reference only relevant to those living in the A.D. centuries. However, the fact that we are constantly deceiving ourselves in this matter of affixing specified Western dates to peoples and individuals who would not have recognized them should, I feel, be in some way more generally acknowledged, especially by those who have a genuine interest in the study of earlier civilizations, so that, as offspring of a later age, they may come to a better understanding of the amount of fiction they habitually impose upon their historical 'facts'.

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