C II R O N O L O G T. 41

times by their brothers, and fometimes tliey are llaiu or cIc-Creeh».pofed ; and fucceeded by othersof an equal or greater age, efpe-cially in elective or turbulent kingdoms. In the later ages, lineechronology hath been exa< 5 l, there is fcarce an inilance to befound of ten kings reigning any where in continual fucceflionabove 260 years: but Timaeus and his foliowers, and I thinkalio lome of his predeceffors, after the example of the Egypti-ans, have taken the reigns of kings for generations, and reck-oned three generations to an hundred, and fometimes to an hun- >dred and twenty years; and founded the technical chronology ofthe Greeks upon this way of reckoning. Let the reckoning bereduced to the courfe of nature, by putting the reigns of kings,one with another, at about eighteen or twenty years a-piece :and the ten kings of Sparta by one race, the nine by anotherrace, the ten kings of Meflene, and the nine of Arcadia above-mentioned, between the retura of the Heraclidae into Pelopon-nefus and the end of the firll Meflenian war, will fcarce takeup above 180 or 190 years: whereas according to chronologersthey took up 379 years.

IX. For confirming this reckoning, I may add another ar~gument. Euryleon the fon of Aegeus, a commanded the main a Paufan.i. 4.body of the Melfenians (') in the fifth year of the firll Meffe-&c! 7 ’. P . 295.nian war; and was in the fifth generation from Oiolycus the fon^

princes, or fix with Tigranes, muli be added to Appians 17, to make up the whole fucceffion,from the beginning of this kingdom, under Seleucus Nicanor, to the extindion of it, in the per-fon of Antiochus Afiaticus, by Pompey.

( 3 ) From the beginning of Lagus to the end of Dionyfius, the laft of the Lagids exceptCleopatra, the interval was 275 years according to Eufebius, or 277 according to Petavius.

(Dod. Temp. lib. 10. c. 48.) And in this interval Eufebius mentions only 11 kings, but Pe»ravius reckons up 13.

( 4 ) The interval intended muft be from the beginning of Caflander to the conqueit of Perfeusby the Romans; which was about 150 years according to Eufebius, or according to Petavius 149(Vid. Paralipomena Librorum de DoUlrlna Temporum,') Perhaps Sir Ifaac Newton reckoned only tothe beginning of Perfeus; which being ten years earlier, the whole interval, from the beginningof Caflander to that epoch, will be vvithin a year or tvvo what Newton makes it. But the fuc-ceflions from Caflander were not fewer than 16 with Perfeus, or fifteen without him. For Caflan-der was the twenty-fifth king of Macedonia, and Perfeus the fortietli. It is true Eufebius callsCaflander the twenty-fixth, and Perfeus the thirty-ninth. But the reafon of this is, that amongthe princes before Caflander, he has counted one tvviceover; and after Caflander, he ornits tworeigns; namely, the fhort one of Philip, Caflander’s fon, and that of Arfinoe, the widovv ofLylimachus.

§ IX.

( ) - Mcflenians] read Lacedjemonians.

VOL. V. G

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