286 LAW AND FREEDOM IN HISTORY

than the Hellenic (i.e. circa A.D. 675 as against circa 1125 B.C.) and that
the Sink episode resulted in the establishment of a universal state 190
years earlier than the date of the corresponding denouement in the
Hellenic episode (i.e. in 221 B.C. as against 31 B.C.). On the same reckon-
ing, a Western date is transposed into an Hellenic by the subtraction of
i,800, and into a Sinic by the subtraction of 1,990 years; a Sinic date
into an Hellenic by the addition of 190 years, and into a Western by the
addition of 1,990 years.

Transposed dates, calculated in accordance with these scales, which
fall more than ten years wide of the corresponding historical date in the
series with which they are being brought into comparison, are marked
with an asterisk; and it will be seen that, out of 84 transposed dates
within the round brackets in our table, 22 fall outside, and 62 inside,
this range of chronological proximity to the historical dates of which
they are the equivalents. It will also be seen that, while the conspicuous
'misses' thus amount to something more than 25 per cent, of the total
number of 'shots', ^and the approximate 'hits' to something less than
75 per cent., the comparison between the three series which reveals this
surprising degree of coincidence1 is simply a comparison of turning-
points marking alternations between bouts of war and spells of peace.
As soon as we introduce the distinctions that we have drawn between
'general wars' and 'supplementary wars' and between 'breathing spaces'
and spells of 'general peace', we shall see that, as often as not, the corre-
spondences apparent in the present table do not extend to these qualita-
tive differences between bouts and spells of different characters. For
example, the chronological correspondence between the Western bout
of war running from A.D. 1536 to A.D. 1559 and the Hellenic bout of war
running from 266 B.C. to 241 B.C. is very close; but, whereas the Kellenic
bout in question ranks as 'a general war' in our analysis, the correspond-
ing Western bout ranks as a set of supplementary wars. Moreover, in
several cases, a major turning-point in one series has for its counterpart
in one of the two other series a turning-point that is merely a minor one.
Our table does, on the other hand, enable us to calculate the average
Time-span of the intervals between turning-points marking major
transitions from spells of peace to bouts of war and vice versa. In our
confrontation of the Western and the Hellenic series, apart from the
Sinic, there are thirteen of these intervals within a total Time-span
amounting to 286 years (A.D. 1477-1763) in the Western series, and
fifteen of them within a total Time-span amounting to 290 years (321B .c.-
31 B.C.) in the Hellenic series. A division of the average length of these
two Time-spans, which works out at 288 years, by the average of the
two numbers of intervals, which works out at fourteen, gives us an

i The writer must confess that he was surprised to find this degree of chronological
correspondence between the three series of dates—the more so because his conscience
did not convict him of having procured 'a pre-established harmony* by any designing
manipulation of the figures when he -was compiling the three tables out of which the
present table has been composed. The tables of war-and-peace cycles in Modern and
post-Modem Western history and in post-Alexandrine Hellenic history were compiled
by him in A.D. 1929; the table of war-and-peace cycles in post-Confucian Sinic history
in AJX 1950; and it was not till after he had compiled this third table that he thought of
bringing the three tables together into a synoptic view.