HARMONY OF THE GOSPELS. DISSERTATIONS. APPENDIX. DISSERTATION XV. On the Census Orbis at the Nativity. Vide Dissertation xiv. vol. i. page 544. line 11. THERE is a well-known passage in Suidas, relating to some census in the time of Augustus, which, as it stands in Kuster's edition of his Lexicon, is to the following effect: Ὅτι Αὔγουστος Καίσαρ, δόξαν αὐτῷ, πάντας τοὺς οἰκήτορας Ῥωμαίων κατὰ πρόσωπον ἀριθμεῖ, βουλόμενος γνῶναι πόσον ἐστὶ πλῆθος. καὶ εὑρίσκονται οἱ τὴν Ῥωμαίων οἰκοῦντες υι'. μυριάδες καὶ χίλιοι ιζ'. ἄνδρες: upon which the editor observes, that Suidas has confounded censum urbis with a census of the empire; as it would be ridiculous to suppose that the population of the empire amounted to no more than 4,101,017 men. Here, not to stop to point out the impropriety of not distinguishing the census urbis, from the census civium or census populi-the justness of the criticism, it may be said, is founded on the supposed integrity of the text of Suidas; in which case, it is an obvious remark, that what would appear an absurd and ridiculous statement at the present day, must have appeared equally so in the time of Suidas. No one could be so ignorant in the time of Suidas, any more than now, as not to perceive that the sum of four millions could not express the population of the Roman empire, either in the reign of Augustus, or at any period subsequent to it. The criticism supposes too that the statement comes from Suidas himself; whereas it is much more reasonable to conjecture that he took it from another quarter, and has given us either the words or the substance of some authority more ancient than himself. It is ushered in by the mark of a quotation, ő. Hence, though we may not be able to trace the fragment to its origin, yet that it was taken from some historical work, or other document, which Suidas had seen, and might quote, there can be little question*. In this case, and if his text exhibits the words of that more ancient document, such as he first extracted them; others besides Suidas must be included in the same charge of mistaking a census urbis for a census orbis: and this mistake in a professed historian, or in any document of an historical character, would be much more extraordinary than in a mere grammarian, and in the work of a lexicographer. It appears to me, however, that whatever fact the assertion may relate to, the last thing with which it can reasonably be confounded, is a census urbis, or a census civium. For first; it attributes the census to the beneplacitum of the emperor. Αὔγουστος Καίσαρ, δόξαν αὐτῷ, or, as we might contend it should be expressed, dóğav *Syncellus, i. 602.17: ó autòs τοὺς οἰκήτορας Ρώμης κατὰ πρόσο ωπον ἀριθμήσας εὗρεν οἰκοῦντας αὐτ τὴν ἀνδρῶν μυριάδας ιγ. καὶ αλϚ ́. The Latin version has the same numbers. This passage looks like an abridgment of that in Suidas; but as Suidas is a later author than Syncellus, it is probable that both took their statement from the same original. Syncellus is speaking of a census by Augustus; so that his numbers, as they stand, are undoubtedly corrupt. ar: Augustus Cæsar, because it had seemed good to himself, did so and so. The measure, whatever it was, was the result of the imperial will and pleasure: Augustus consulted by it nothing but his own humour and inclination. Now this is not the way in which the regular census civium would be said to take its origin; but it is very like the way in which St. Luke describes the census at the Nativity to have been originated. The census civium, from the time of its first institution, was or should have been of regular occurrence every five years: and the number of times, for which it was actually celebrated, between the first census in the reign of Servius Tullius, and the last in the reign of Vespasian, is on record*b. But the census at the Nativity is ascribed, like this of Suidas, to a doyua—an edict, decree, or beneplacitum of the emperor : ἐξῆλθε δόγμα παρὰ Καίσαρος Αὐγούστου. Secondly; it was in its own nature merely a kaтà πρόσωπον αρίθμησις, and it had for its object merely τὸ γνῶναι πόσον ἐστὶ πλῆθος : there is nothing either in the description of it, or in the purposes assigned to it, which can identify it with a proper Roman census, àπоγραφαὶ οι τιμήσεις, like the census civium ; the most essential criterion of which, as we stated elsewhere, was its connexion with the valuation of property. The same distinction was shewn to characterise the census at the Nativity. That also was certainly an enrolment per capita; a Kатà прóσжжоν àpieμnois; but very probably was nothing more. Thirdly; the whole Roman empire was affected by this census; and so was it by that in St. Luke. * For the care with which the Tabula Censoria were pre I en served, see Dionysius Hal. Ant. Rom. i. 74, 75. b Censorinus, De Die Natali, 18. deavoured to prove this from the sense of τὴν οἰκουμévŋv, in the one; and it is proved by the phrases Tous οἰκήτορας Ρωμαίων, and οἱ τὴν Ῥωμαίων οἰκοῦντες, in the other. The last of these shews us that the former is corrupt; (which indeed is sufficiently clear without proof;) and at the same time how it ought to be corrected. If the text, as it stands, is sound in the latter instance, that of οἱ τὴν Ῥωμαίων οἰκοῦντες, the former, which is plainly tantamount to it, must have stood, Tous οἰκήτορας τῆς Ῥωμαίων. In this case there is the same ellipsis in either instance; which the abettors of the criticism of Kuster would perhaps say was Tóλews or Tów, but those who dissented from it, with much greater reason, might contend was ȧpxis or ȧpxiv, or some equivalent term. These circumstances of distinction, I think, are sufficient to prove that, whatever the assertion in the text of Suidas may relate to, it is not to a proper Roman census, much less to a census urbis; but to something much more akin to what we ourselves, at the present day, would understand by the mention of a census. It follows therefore that the author of the statement, if he asserts a matter of fact, cannot be justly charged with confounding the two kinds of census together. The same criteria, too, which discriminate this census of Suidas from a proper Roman census, identify it with that in St. Luke. Unless then the former could be shewn to be ultimately derived from the latter; that is, unless the authority which is followed by Suidas, was not altogether different from that of St. Luke, the two assertions corroborate one another, and each of them must have been founded in fact. We may observe that the allusion to this fact in Suidas is altogether independent of that which relates |