skip to content skip to search skip to navigation Listen Live skip to logon

What was BC called before Christ was born?

Question

We live in 2010 AD, and before that, it was BC. So what did they call BC years during those years?
Dominic, Shirley

Answer

Name: Alan, Kensington
Qualification: Mystery Hour classic
Answer: Different civilisations had different systems. The Greeks did it from the first Olympiad, which was 776BC and as it was a period of four years, they would say “it was the third year of the 15th Olympiad”. The Romans did it from the notional date of the founding of the city - 753BC was the founding of Rome. There’s a movement to re-name the system as the Common Era, so BC becomes BCE and AD becomes CE.

In this Section