[4] Africanus traveled to Greece and Rome and went to Alexandria to study, attracted by the fame of its catechetical school, possibly about the year 215.
He calculated the period between Creation and Jesus as 5,500 years, placing the Incarnation on the spring equinox in AM 5501 (25 March, 1 BC).
[10] The history, which had an apologetic aim, is no longer extant, but copious extracts from it are to be found in the Chronicon of Eusebius, who used it extensively in compiling the early episcopal lists.
Eusebius gives some extracts from his letter to one Aristides,[11] reconciling the apparent discrepancy between Matthew and Luke in the genealogy of Christ by a reference to the Jewish law of Levirate marriage, which compelled a man to marry the widow of his deceased brother, if the latter died without issue.
[12] The ascription to Africanus of an encyclopaedic work entitled Kestoi (Κέστοι "Embroidered"), treating of agriculture, natural history, military science, and other subects, has been disputed on account of its secular and often credulous character.
[13] According to the New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, the Kestoi "appears to have been intended as a sort of encyclopedia of the material sciences with the cognate mathematical and technical branches, but to have contained a large proportion of merely curious, trifling, or miraculous matters, on which account the authorship of Julius has been questioned.