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; the Hellanicus, who was twelve years
older than Herodotus, digested his History by the Ages of Successions
of the Priestesses of Juno Argiva. Others digested theirs by the Kings
of the Lacedaemonians, 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 Peloponnesius,
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, Timaeus Sicilus published an history in several
books down to his own times, according to the Olympiads, comparing the
Ephori, the Kings of Sparta, the Archons, and Priestessesof 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
Generation so 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. Eratosphenes 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.
[…]
For reconciling
such repugnancies, Chronologers have sometimes doubled the persons of
men. So when the Poets had changed lo the daughter of Inachus into
the Egyptian Isis, Chronologers made her husband Osiris or Bacchus and
his mistress Ariadne as old as lo, and so feigned that there were two
Ariadnes, one the mistress of Bacchus, and the other the mistress of
Theseus, and two Minors their fathers, and a younger lo the daughter
of Jass, writing Jasus corruptly for Inachus. And so they have made
two Pandions, and two Erechtheus's, giving the name of Erechthonius
to the first; Homer calls the first, Erechtheus: and by such corruptions
they have exceedingly perplexed Ancient History.
And as
for the Chronology of the Latines, that is still more uncertain. Plutarch
represents great uncertainties in the Originals of Rome: and so doth
Servius. The old records of the Latines were burnt by the Gauls, sixty
and four years before the death of Alexander the great; and Quintus
Eabius Pictor, the oldest historian of the Latines, lived an hundred
years later than that King.
In Sacred
History, the Adrian Empire began with Pul and Tiglathpilaser, and lasted
about 170 years. And accordingly Herodotus hath made Semiramis only
five generations, or about 166 years older than Nitocris, the mother
of the last King of Babylon, But Ctestas hath made Semiramis 1500 years
older than Nitocris, and feigned a long series of Kings of Assyria,
whose names are not Assyrian, nor have any affinity with the Assyrian
names in Scripture. [Note here Newton's bias: the Bible was the standard
for which he was tossing out all the other histories.]
The Priests
of Egypt told Herodotus, that Menes built Memphis and the sumptuous
temple of Vulcan, in that City: and that Rhampstnitus, Maeris, Asychis
and Psammiticus added magnificent porticos to that temple. And it is
not likely that Memphis could be famous, before Homer's days who doth
not mention it, or that a temple could be above two or three hundred
years in building. The Reign of Psammiticus began about 655 years
before
Christ, and I place the founding of this temple by Menes about 257 years
earlier: but the Priests of Egypt had so magnified their Antiquities
before the days of Herodotus, as to tell him that from Menes to Maeris
(who reigned 200 years before Psammiticus) there were 330 Kings, whose
Reigns took up as many Ages, that is eleven thousand years, and had
filled up the interval with feigned Kings, who had done nothing. And
before the days of Diodorus Siculus they had raised their Antiquities
to much higher, as to place six, eight, or ten new Reigns of Kings between
those Kings, whom they had represented to Herodotus to succeed one another
immediately.
In the
Kingdom of Sicyon, Chronologers have Split Apis Epaphus or Epopees into
two Kings, whom they call Apis and Epopeus, and between them have inserted
eleven or twelve feigned names of Kings who did nothing, and thereby
they have made its Founder Aegialeus, three hundred years older than
his brother Phoroneus. Some have made the Kings of Germany as old as
the Flood: and yet before the use of letters, the names and actions
of men could scarce be remembered above eighty or an hundred years after
their deaths: and therefore I admit no Chronology of things done in
Europe, above eighty years before Cadmus brought letters into Europe,
none, of things done in Germany, before the rise of the Roman Empire.
Now since
Eratosthenes and Apollodorus computed the times by the Reigns of the
Kings of Sparta, and (as appears by their Chronology still followed)
have made the seventeen Reigns of these Kings in both Races, between
the Return of the Heraclides into Peloponnesus and the Battle of Thermopylae,
take up 622 years, which is after the rate of 36 1/2 years to a Reign,
and yet a Race of seventeen Kings of that length is no where to be met
with in all true History, and Kings at a moderate reckoning Reign but
18 or 20 years a-piece one with another: I have stated the time of the
return of the Heraclides by the last way of reckoning, placing it about
340 years before the Battle of Thermopylae. And making the Taking of
Troy eighty years older than that Return, according to Thucydides, and
the Argonautic Expedition a Generation older than the Trojan War, and
the Wars of Sesostris in Thrace and death of Ino the daughter of Cadmus
a Generation older than that Expedition: I have drawn up [a] Chronological
Table, so as to make Chronology suit with the Course of Nature, with
Astronomy, with Sacred History, with Herodotus the Father of History,
and with it self; without the many repugnancies complained of by Plutarch.
I do not pretend to be exact to a year: there may be Errors of five
or ten years, and sometimes twenty, and not much above. [Isaac
Newton: First Memory of things in Europe to the Conquest of Persia
by Alexander the great]
