5

0 H R O N O L O G Y.

<£ fucceftion of the kings of the Lacedaemoniam, as Eratofthenes Introduc-££ and Apollodorus affirm, that he was not a few years older than 1I0N '

<£ the firft olympiad.” Firft Ariftotle, and forne others, made himas old as the firft olympiad : then Eratofthenes, Apollodorus, andfome others, made him above an hundred years older: and inanother place Plutarch 1 telis us : " The congrefs of Solon with^ntheiifeof“ Crcefus, fome think tliey can eonfute by chronology. But an“ hiftory fo illuftrious, and veriiied by fo many witneffes, and" (which is more) fo agreeable to the manners of Solon, and fo“ worthy of the greatnels of his mind and of his wifdom, I can-££ not perfuade myfelf to rejetft becaufe of fome chronological ca-‘ £ nons, as they call them, which hundreds of authors correft-££ ing, have not yet been able to conftitute any thing certain, in“ which they could agree among themfelves, about repugnancies.”

It feems the chronologers had made the legiflature of Solon tooancient, to confift witli that congrefs.

For reconciling fuch repugnancies, chronologers have fome-times doubled the perfons of men. So when the poets hadchanged Io, the daughter of Inachus, into the Egyptian Ilis,chronologers made lier hufband Ofiris or Bacchus, and his mif-trefs Ariadne, as old as Io; and,fo feigned that there were twoAriadnes, one the miftrefs of Bacchus,- and the otlier the miftrefs of Thefeus; and two Minos’s their fathers, and a youngerIo the daughter of Jafus, writing Jafus - corruptly for Inachus-.

And fo they have made two Pandiofts, and two Erechtheus’s,givingthe name of Erechthonkrs to the firft; (Homer calls thefirft, Erechtheus) and by fuch corruptions they have exccedinglyperplexed ancient hiftory.

And as for the chronology of the Latins* that is ftill moreuncertain. Plutarch reprefents great uncertainties in the origi-nals of Rome r and fo- doth Servius. The old records-of theLitins were burnt by the Gauls, fixty and four years b e fore thedeath of Alexander the Great; and Quintus Fabius Picftor, thecldeft hiftorian of the Latins, lived an hundred years later thanthat king.

In facred hiftory, the Affyrian em pire began with Pul andTiglathpilafer, and lafted about 170 years. And accordingly

Herodotus