Arguments about when the second millennium ends are futile and generally
based on false premises. When Dionysius Exiguus, a Roman Abbott, proposed
in 1277AUC (Ab urbe condita- that is 'from the founding of Rome') to name
the passing years AD - that is Anno Domini - 'in the year of our Lord's
incarnation' the Romans were still using Roman numerals, and, unlike the
Babylonians, they did not recognize zero as a number. Therefore when
Dionysis decided that 1277AUC should be called 525AD he was working on the
basis that Christ was born in 1AD, and this is the reason for the argument.
But best evidence suggests that Christ was born in about 5
BC, so that the 'beginning' to which Mr Like refers was meaningless. The
beginning of AD was in 525AD when the idea was first used, but now that we
use the Babylonian (or Arabic) numbering system the beginning of the
sequence which ends in 2000 was 0 - even if Dionysis would have referred to
that year as 752AUC, and we might call it 2BC (because 1AD and 1BC appear
to be the same year). As neither that year nor the year after have any
particular significance in history, and neither was the year of Christ's
birth, we are only celebrating a number, and 2000 seems a far better number
to celebrate than 2001. Anyone who got that wrong and failed to celebrate
the start of the third millennium on Friday at midnight will have a long
time to wait for a similar opportunity.
Frank Mycroft
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