Note 528 — GRECIAN WRITERS.

Nor did these prejudices appear only in respect to their own rites and theology, and the history of their own nation: the accounts which they gave of other countries were always tinctured with this predominant vanity. An idle zeal made them attribute to their forefathers the merit of many great performances to which they were utterly strangers: and supposed them to have founded cities in various parts of the world where the name of Greece could not have been known; cities which were in being before Greece was a state. Wherever they got footing, or even a transient acquaintance, they in their descriptions accommodated every thing to their own preconceptions; and expressed all terms according to their own mode of writing and pronunciation, that appearances might be in their favour. To this were added a thousand silly stories to support their pretended claim. They would persuade us that Jason of Greece founded the empire of the Medes; as Perseus, of the same country, did that of the Persians. Armenus, a companion of Jason, was the reputed father of the Armenians. They gave out that Tarsus, one of the most antient cities in the world, was built by people from [528]Argos; and that Pelusium of Egypt had a name of Grecian [529]original. They, too, built Sais, in the same [530]country: and the city of the Sun, styled Heliopolis, owed its origin to an [531]Athenian. They were so weak as to think that the city Canobus had its name from a pilot of Menelaus, and that even Memphis was built by Epaphos of [532]Argos. There surely was never any nation so incurious and indifferent about truth. Hence have arisen those contradictions and inconsistences with which their history is [533]embarrassed.