The Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms Amended | Page 3

as are inseparable from
Posthumous Pieces; and, in so great a number of proper names, to
excuse some errors of the Press that have escaped._
* * * * *
A SHORT
CHRONICLE

FROM THE First Memory of Things in Europe, TO THE Conquest of
Persia by Alexander the Great.
* * * * *
The INTRODUCTION.
The Greek Antiquities are full of Poetical Fictions, because the Greeks
wrote nothing in Prose, before the Conquest of Asia by Cyrus the
Persian. Then Pherecydes Scyrius and Cadmus Milesius introduced the
writing in Prose. Pherecydes Atheniensis, about the end of the Reign of
Darius Hystaspis, wrote of Antiquities, and digested his work by
Genealogies, and was reckoned one of the best Genealogers.
Epimenides the Historian proceeded also by Genealogies; and
Hellanicus, who was twelve years older than Herodotus, digested his
History by the Ages or Successions of the Priestesses of Juno Argiva.
Others digested theirs by the Kings of the _Lacedæmonians_, or
Archons of Athens. Hippias the Elean, about thirty years before the fall
of the Persian Empire, published a breviary or list of the Olympic
Victors; and about ten years before the fall thereof, Ephorus the
disciple of Isocrates formed a Chronological History of Greece,
beginning with the return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus, and
ending with the siege of Perinthus, in the twentieth year of Philip the
father of Alexander the great: But he digested things by Generations,
and the reckoning by Olympiads was not yet in use, nor doth it appear
that the Reigns of Kings were yet set down by numbers of years. The
Arundelian marbles were composed sixty years after the death of
Alexander the great (_An._ 4. _Olymp._ 128.) and yet mention not the
Olympiads: But in the next Olympiad, _Timæus Siculus_ published an
history in several books down to his own times, according to the
Olympiads, comparing the Ephori, the Kings of Sparta, the Archons of
Athens, and the Priestesses of Argos, with the Olympic Victors, so as to
make the Olympiads, and the Genealogies and Successions of Kings,
Archons, and Priestesses, and poetical histories suit with one another,
according to the best of his judgment. And where he left off, Polybius
began and carried on the history.
So then a little after the death of Alexander the great, they began to set

down the Generations, Reigns and Successions, in numbers of years,
and by putting Reigns and Successions equipollent to Generations, and
three Generations to an hundred or an hundred and twenty years (as
appears by their Chronology) they have made the Antiquities of Greece
three or four hundred years older than the truth. And this was the
original of the Technical Chronology of the Greeks. Eratosthenes wrote
about an hundred years after the death of Alexander the great: He was
followed by Apollodorus, and these two have been followed ever since
by Chronologers.
But how uncertain their Chronology is, and how doubtful it was
reputed by the Greeks of those times, may be understood by these
passages of Plutarch. Some reckon, saith he, [1] Lycurgus
_contemporary to Iphitus, and to have been his companion in ordering
the Olympic festivals: amongst whom was Aristotle the Philosopher,
arguing from the Olympic Disc, which had the name of Lycurgus upon
it. Others supputing the times by the succession of the Kings of the
_Lacedæmonians_, as Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, affirm that he
was not a few years older than the first Olympiad._ First Aristotle and
some others made him as old as the first Olympiad; then Eratosthenes,
Apollodorus, and some others made him above an hundred years older:
and in another place Plutarch [2] tells us: _The congress of Solon with
Croesus, some think they can confute by Chronology. But an history so
illustrious, and verified by so many witnesses, and (which is more) so
agreeable to the manners of Solon, and so worthy of the greatness of his
mind and of his wisdom, I cannot persuade my self to reject because of
some Chronological Canons, as they call them: which hundreds of
authors correcting, have not yet been able to constitute any thing
certain, in which they could agree among themselves, about
repugnancies_. It seems the Chronologers had made the Legislature of
Solon too ancient to consist with that Congress.
For reconciling such repugnancies, Chronologers have sometimes
doubled the persons of men. So when the Poets had changed Io the
daughter of Inachus into the Egyptian Isis, Chronologers made her
husband Osiris or Bacchus and his mistress Ariadne as old as Io, and so
feigned that there were two Ariadnes, one the mistress of Bacchus, and

the other the mistress of Theseus, and two _Minos's_ their fathers, and
a younger Io the daughter of Jasus, writing Jasus corruptly for Inachus.
And so they have made two Pandions, and two