chiefely to God, & therefore not contained within the mooueable
Spheares or heauens: I mind to speake here onely of that time
which is a number measuring the moouing of the first mooueable,
and of all other mutable thinges, which time had his beginning
with the world, and shall ende with the same, and this time consi∣steth
of two parts, that is first, and last, or rather before or after,
successiuely following one another, and these two partes are knit
together with a common bound called of the Latines Nunc, that
is to say now, or at this present, which is the end of that which
went before, and the beginning of that which followeth after, and
therefore some doe deuide time into thrée parts, that is, time past,
time present, and time to come, but the time present is a moment
indiuisible, and is the beginning of time, euen as a point or pricke
is the beginning of all Magnitudes, & yet least part therof it selfe:
Againe time is deuided of some into greater and lesser parts, the
greater are such as these: Kalendes, Nones, Ides, a wéeke, a
month, a yeare, the space of fiue yeares, called of the Romaines
Lustrum, and of the Gréeks Olympias, the Romaines did call it
Lustrum a lustrando, that is to say, of going about, because that
they vsed in the end of euery fiue yeares, with lights and torches
of waxe to goe in precession round about the Citie, and did purge
the same by sacrifising a Dogge, a Sowe, and an Oxe, and at that
time also they did chuse their Dictator in a place called the fielde
of Mars, but the space of fiue yeares called Olimpias, tooke his
name of the high mount Olympus in Greece, whereas in the end
of euery fiue yeares were celebrated all kind of martiall playes,
as Fencing, Wrestling, Running, and such like in the honour of
Iupiter Olympicus, also the space of 15. yeares called indictio,
in which space those forraine Nations that dwelt farre off, and
were tributary to the Romaine Empire, payd their tributes, that
is to say, in the first fiue yeares they payde onely gold, in token of
their obedience to the Empire: In the second fiue yéeres they paid
siluer for Souldiers wages, and in the last fiue yeares they paide
brasse towardes the reparation of armour and munition. Item
the space of an hundred yeares, called in Latine seculum, and in
English an age, wherof the playes that were celebrated in Rome
euery hundred yeare, were called Ludi seculares, and last of all
the space of a thousand yeares, called aeuum, contayning tenne