Jogular Morotario Sectory 24

The campaign of B.C. 215 was not marked by any decisive events. The Consuls were Q. Fabius Maximus (whose plan of conducting the war had been fully vindicated by the terrible defeat of Cannae) and Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus. With the advance of spring Hannibal took up his camp on Mount Tifata, where, while awaiting the arrival of re-enforcements from Carthage, he was at hand to support his partisans in Campania and oppose the Roman generals in that province. But his attempts on Cumae and Neapolis were foiled, and even after he had been joined by a force from Carthage (very inferior, however, to what he had expected), he sustained a repulse before Nola, which was magnified by the Romans into a defeat. As the winter approached he withdrew into Apulia, and took up his quarters in the plains around Arpi. But other prospects were already opening before him. In his camp on Tifata he had received embassies from Philip, king of Macedon, and Hieronymus of Syracuse, both of which he had eagerly welcomed, and thus sowed the seeds of two fresh wars, and raised up two formidable enemies against the Roman power.

There is good ground for maintaining that Easter and its accessory celebrations mark with tolerable accuracy the anniversaries of the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord, because we know that the events themselves took place at the period of the Jewish Passover; but no such precision of date can be adduced as regards Christmas. Dr. Geikie[1] says: "The _season_ at which Christ was born is inferred from the fact that He was six months younger than John, respecting the date of whose birth we have the help of knowing the time of the annunciation during his father's ministrations in Jerusalem. Still, the whole subject is very uncertain. Ewald appears to fix the date of the birth as five years earlier than our era. Petavius and Usher fix it as on the 25th of December, five years before our era; Bengel, on the 25th of December, four years before our era; Anger and Winer, four years before our era, in the spring; Scaliger, three years before our era, in October; St. Jerome, three years before our era, on December 25th; Eusebius, two years before our era, on January 6th; and Ideler, seven years before our era, in December." Milton, following the immemorial tradition of the Church, says that-- "It was the winter wild."

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