29

CHRONOLOGY.

nerations of men, and as many priefts of Vuican, and as many Greeks.kings of Egypt: and that three hundred generations make tenthoufand vears ; for, faith he, three generations of men makean hundred years: and the remaining forty and one generationsmake 1340 years: and fo the whole time from the reign ofMenes to that of Sethon was 11340 years. And by this wayof reckoning, and allotting longer reigns to the gods of Egyptthan to the kings vvhich followed them, Herodotus telis us fromthe priefts of Egypt, that from Pan to Amofis were T5000years ( x ) ; and from Hercules to Amofis 17000 years ( 2 ). Soalfo the Chaldaeans boafted of their antiquity ; for Callirthenes,the difciple of Ariftotle, fent aftronomical obfervations from Ba-bylon to Greece, faid to be of 1903 ( 3 ) years ftanding before thetimes of Alexander the Ore at. And the Chaldeans boafted fur-ther, that they had obferved the ftars 473000 ( 4 ) years; andthere were others who made the kingdoms of Affyria, Media,and Damafcus, much older than the truth.

II. Sorae of the Greeks called the times before the reign ofOgyges, Unknown ( x ), becaufe they had no hiftory of them :thofe between his fiood and the beginning of the olympiads, Fa-bulous ; becaufe their hiftory was much mixed with poetical fa-bles : and thofe after the beginning of the olympiads, Hiftorf-cal; becaufe their hiftory was free from fuch fables. The fa-bulous ages wanted a good chronology ; and fo alfo did the hifto-cal, for the firft 60 or 70 olympiads.

III. The Europeans had no chronology before the times of thePerfian empire: and whatfoever chronology they now have ofancienter times, hath been framed fince by reafoning and con-jetfture. In the beginning of that monarchy, Acufilaus madePhoroneus as old as Ogyges and his fiood; and that fiood io2o( ; )

years

§ n.

(’) This divifion of times into the /xOW*, and ; { o«xo»; (the firft 'compriztng ali that

preceded the Ogygian fiood ; the fecond, the interval between that fiood and the firft olympiad •,the third beginning-with the firft olympiad] was Varro’s. F~id. Ccnfirinum de Die Natali , c. 21.

§ IU. .

(') This Sir John Marfham affirms, upon the authority, as he imagines, of a frngment ofAfricanus prderved by Euebius, Fr-rp. Evang. p. 287. 13 ut in this fragment, Acufilius is ir.deedthe authority, for making the Ogygian fiood happen in Attica, while 1 ’horoneas was reigning

at