33 At the theatres. [N.B.-Let the easy Christians of our age be reminded of this warning; frequenting, as they do, plays and operas equally defiling, impure in purport often, even when not gross in language.]
34 i.e., tracing back its history through an infinate duration.
35 The following quotation is not from the Republic, but from the third book of the Laws, p. 676.
36 Plato goes on to say, that if he had this pledge of divine assistance, he would go further in his speculation; and therefore Theophilus argues that what he said without this assistance he felt to be unsafe.
38 [See supra, book i. cap. 14, p. 93, the author's account of his own conversion.]
40 Literally, in Greek, a0na/pausij.
41 Deucalion, from Deu=te, come, and kale0w, I call.
42 Or, reading o0 ga=r Se/qwj, "Sethos is also called Egyptus."
43 The Benedictine editor shows that this should be 393 years.
44 The correct date woul be about 400 years.
47 In this register it seems that the number of years during which each person lived does not include the years of his reign.
48 But the meaning here is obscure in the original. Malachi was much later than Zechariah.
49 [Usher, in his Annals, honours our author as the father of Christian chronology, p. 3. Paris, 1673.]
50 i.e., till he begat Seth. [A fragment of the Chronicon of Julius Africanus, a.d.. 232, is gievn in Routh's Reliquiae, tom. ii. p. 238, with very rich annotations. pp. 357-509]
51 [Usher notes this as affirmed in general terms only, and qualified afterwards, in cap. xxix, infra, note i, p. 121.]
52 [As Verus died a.d.. 169, the computation of our author makes the creation, b.c.. 5529. Hales, who says b.c.. 5411, inspires us with great respect for Theophilus, by the degree of accuracy he attained, using (the LXX.) the same authority as his base. Slight variations in the copies used in his day might have led, one would think, to greater discrepancies.]