the Peloponnesus, Attica was celebrated for its unchanged population, and unravaged country.' It is therefore to the Spartans and to the Athenians that we must chiefly look for chronological information; and if we fail of obtaining it from them, it can hardly be expected from any other source. Let us now hear Mr. Crosthwaite on this subject. The ancient historians give us the legendary traditions current in their own times, and handed down through many centuries of previous ignorance and barbarity. It is no disparagement to the credit of the historian, to say that we receive these as they are given, merely as traditions of an age when very few indeed could write, and not many I could read what was written. When demigods and heroes were the chief personages, and their supernatural exploits furnished the materials for the mythological poet, and when the priests required the people to believe every fable, however monstrous and absurd. Moreover the priests were deeply interested in a system of chronological deception well suited to such an age. To give fictitious antiquity to their deities and religious institutions, they falsified the length of reigns, interpolated some and transposed others; just as it suited their purpose without fear of detection. 'We need not therefore be surprised, in finding that the Greeks were utterly ignorant as to their own more ancient chronology. About the year B. c. 500, things began to be more regularly recorded, and not many years after that date history became a regular province of literature, in the hands of Herodotus. But whatever refers to occurrences before that date, must be received as very uncertain, having seldom any support of cotemporary respectable evidence. Moderns may indeed talk of the concurrent testimony of ancient history, but the ancient Greeks themselves knew of no such thing. They on the contrary were exceedingly divided (as might naturally be expected) with regard to the more ancient dates. Although the memory of Lycurgus was so much, and so deservedly venerated and connected with their civil institutions, yet the best informed among the Greeks could not agree within one or two hundred years as to the age he lived in. Plato assigned him 300 years before Socrates, or about the year B. c. 700, which is I believe the truth, but the tables place him B. c. 907, two centuries different. Any question concerning the date of Lycurgus affects the dates of all the earlier Spartan kings, and their cotemporaries in other states; consequently affecting the date of the return of the Heraclidæ and the Trojan war, both of which events were calculated by the reigns of the Spartan kings,'-pp. 41, 42. He proceeds to speak thus concerning Athens: 'There are tables of the Archons of Athens. But they are manifestly the corrupt fabrication of a time not very ancient. In the time of Thucydides they could not tell when Pisistratus, the grandson of Pisistratus the tyrant, was Archon, although during his Archonship he set up two altars at his own expense, one in the forum of the twelve gods, the other in the temple of the Pythian Apollo. What is still more extraordinary, they had no memorial when Pisistratus the tyrant, or Solon their great legislator, filled the office of Archon, which they must have done repeatedly. It was about the year 500 B.c. they first became a regular record. Besides other corruptions, the extension by means of blank spaces alone, prior to the year 496 B. C., amounts to 159 years. pp. 42, 43. The era and history of Lycurgus are notoriously very doubtful. Does not this fact speak volumes as to the uncertainty of all the early Greek chronology? If the hereditary kingdom of Sparta could not preserve a tolerable record of its kings' reigns, it appears that we have no materials now for supplying the defect. The following remark of Mr. Thirlwall, in his Greek history, seems to deserve much attention-vol. i., p. 293: 'It was not 'from their remote ancestors,' Eurysthenes and Procles, the legendary first kings of Sparta, that the two royal families derived their distinguishing appellations. The elder house was 'called the Agids, after Agis, the son of Eurysthenes; the minor the Eurypontids,* from Eurypon, the successor of Sous, son of Procles: a remarkable fact, not very satisfactorily explained 'from the martial renown of these princes; and perhaps indi'cating a concealed break in each series. As for the Athenian monarchy, the whole is in a mythological mist, few even of the facts being thoroughly ascertained; while events comparatively recent, as the legislation of Draco, have no sufficiently defined date. The first great sceptic in modern times, who rejected the current chronology, was Sir Isaac Newton. This eminent philosopher understood, what his contemporaries could not, that in every hereditary monarchy the average reigns of kings must in a long series approximate to a fixed limit, depending on the equable longevity of mankind. The simplest case is when each king is the eldest son of the preceding. It will at once be evident, that although three or four reigns in succession may be of very variable length, the average of any ten in succession will probably differ but little from that of any other ten; and by increasing the number indefinitely, yet greater uniformity is to be expected. When the heir apparent dies before his father, and leaves the throne to his own son, or to a younger brother, the average is lengthened: when two or more brothers succeed, the average is depressed. Now, in a like state of society, such irregularities will recur about as often in one set of fifty reigns, as in another set; wherefore there is still a certain constant limit to which the average approximates. Extensive induction shows, that twenty-two or Mr. Crosthwaite, however, chooses to call them Proclide. twenty-three years is the extreme length to be expected in any long series. Elective monarchies have of course a shorter average, which moreover depends greatly on the turbulence of the times, and sometimes on other circumstances. Thus the average of the papal reigns is exceedingly short, because the popes are generally elected in extreme old age. On applying this doctrine to the received Greek and Roman dates, Sir Isaac found that after the commencement of ascertained history the times corresponded with the natural law; but that for all the earlier reigns the average duration was decidedly too long. Assuming, then, that the error lay in the computation of time, and not in the number of names assigned in the tables, he undertook to correct the chronology by an approximate calculation; and believed that in this way he could determine the date of the fall of Troy and of the Argonautic expedition within twenty years. The conception, viewed mathematically, was doubtless worthy of his genius; but at that period the historical trustworthiness of the genealogies and mythical tales themselves had not adequately been sifted; and it is not to be wondered at, if Newton quietly followed the opinion of nearly all the ancient writers, who supposed the wild stories of the Greek and Egyptian gods to be historical facts with a poetical color. This great man having by such methods lowered the most ancient Greek dates by nearly three hundred years, believed that he had found a signal astronomical confirmation of his view in a story told about a celestial sphere, and the position of its equinoctial points, on board the ship Argo. But his few modern followers have long since abandoned this as invalid. His system has been approved and extolled by Joseph Milner (who wrote a treatise to recommend it), by the historian Mitford, and now by Mr. Crosthwaite. It has always appeared to us astonishing that it is viewed with so much apathy or disdain by chronologers who believe in the accuracy of the principal lists of kings: and our present author has certainly added somewhat to our inclination to believe that Newton is substantially right. Especially, it is here shown that various received genealogies, estimated at the rate of three generations* to a century, concur in the result deduced by Newton from the series of reigns. If this were true of all the genealogies which have been transmitted to us, it would doubtless be an important ground for believing the catalogues of names to be generally correct. But many of the lists of kings point decidedly to another conclusion; and are in con A generation, when only male names are under question, means the average age by which fathers exceed their sons. Reigns are shorter than generations, even when direct descent is preserved; because it is generally the eldest son who succeeds. According to Dr. Hales and Mr. Crosthwaite, three reigns make two generations, in an ordinary hereditary monarchy, sequence pronounced by our author to be interpolated. His readiness of belief as to the substance of the mythological stories, is a phenomenon to us so curious, that we hardly know how to express our disapprobation and surprise in terms such as may seem due to the erudition and labor spent on the book. Our readers might hardly suppose, from the extract which we have produced, that we have here to do with a writer disposed to yield himself up to an undiscriminating belief in ancient fables. He belongs, however, to a school which we had imagined to be extinct, who persuade themselves that they have only to take 'from mythology her extravagance, and she will assume the form of history.' The form, perhaps; but hardly the reality. After asserting that the legends concerning the Greek deities are all most unquestionably human affairs poetically embellished' (p. 155), he appends the following note, to silence our scruples: Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus, Pausanias, and especially Cicero, 'who devoted much time and attention to the subject, have all 'left this as their decided opinion.' We seem to be carried back two centuries, on reading such arguments. Does Mr. Crosthwaite imagine that any of these four authors had greater means of knowing than we, whether Jupiter was an Egyptian, who had nine young female musicians with him, called Muses, and a 'troop of female warriors, called Amazons, commanded by a woman named Minerva? Had these writers access to authentic records, which testified that Jupiter ill-treated his nephew Prometheus, and imprisoned him thirty years in Mount Caucasus?' Or is he willing to receive as a substantial thing the general mass of mythology transmitted by the first three authors? We do not at all admit that Cicero really took this view, but we will not involve ourselves in a needless question; for it is manifest that Cicero's opinion is not testimony; nor yet is Herodotus's, nor even Homer's. Until Mr. Crosthwaite brings far more cogent reasons than such opinions, for believing these poetical inventions and genealogies, we shall consider it worse than waste of labor to settle the date of Jupiter's invasion of Greece.' We learn from schylus (who knew as much about it as Herodotus), that Prometheus (the foreadvised) was son of Themis (justice), and brother to Atlas (the much enduring). Prometheus was contemporary with the grandfather of Jupiter, and had seen three hereditary reigns. Both brothers were persecuted by Jupiter. The former was impaled on farthest Caucasus,' the latter was doomed in western climes extreme' to support heaven with his head and to this day, the mariner who passes the rock of Gibraltar, may see his tall form somewhere southward; Nix humeros infusa tegit; tum flumina mento A third brother is Epimetheus (the 'afteradvised'); and Mr. Crosthwaite has no more right to reject the one than the other. If he proceeds to believe Pandora to be a real person we have no remedy. But in his eyes, the Egyptian mythology is equally historical. Jupiter he maintains, is no other than the god Osiris; who, again, is the Egyptian king called Sesostris by Herodotus; finally, this Sesostris is the Shishak named in the books of Kings and Chronicles. Ergo, the Grecian Jupiter is only a certain Egyptian king, who patronized Jeroboam, invaded the country of Rehoboam, and carried away the golden shields which Solomon had made! Mr. Crosthwaite coolly speaks of the invasion of Greece by Osiris or Sesostris (also called the great Bacchus), 'after his expedition to India;' as the FIRST of the three re'markable events of the heroic age,' p. 31. He afterwards tells us, that the Theban Hercules' was son of this Osiris and of Alcmena; that before Osiris invaded Greece, he spent a year 'or two in Asia Minor, during which time he married Ariadne, 'the daughter of Minos, king of Crete, and was engaged in 'many other transactions with Tros, Tantalus, Minos,' &c. p. 47. It is wonderful to see how much at home our author is in this history. Nay (in a note on p. 47), he adds, that there is little doubt that Buddha or Fo is this same Egyptian king. Let us consider the grounds for asserting that Sesostris married Ariadne, daughter of the Cretan king Minos. Because, forsooth, the Greek poets sung, how Theseus slew the Minotaur, and saved the Athenian youths and virgins, whom that monster, half bull, half man, was to have devoured; and carried off Ariadne, the king's daughter; but wickedly abandoned her in the island of Naxos: then Bacchus, the god of Naxos, pitied her, and took her into heaven, and made her his wife, and presented her with a diadem of seven stars, called the Gnossian garland, from the Cretan city Gnossus. This, Pausanias has turned into history, and Mr. Crosthwaite has adapted to Sesostris. Nor is this all; but Mr. Crosthwaite chivalrously comes forward to defend the hero Theseus from the heavy charge of deserting his mistress. Page 99: I feel a degree of pleasure in correcting an imputa'tion cast on the early life of Theseus, that he ungratefully 'deserted Ariadne at the isle of Nexos, after she had delivered him from captivity or death. Both Pausanias and Diodorus inform us, that she was taken by superior force from Theseus,' &c. Most decisive testimony! Indeed generally, as here, the author seems to fancy that he is arguing with great cogency of demonstration. Thus in his proof that Jupiter is Sesostris, p. 159: Now, I must say, that such a character, however poetical in 'the embellishment, could not be of very doubtful application. |