Note 80 — Chapter XIX · APPLICATION OF CHRONOLOGY TO GRECIAN LEGEND.
Reading edition
Larcher, Chronologie d’Hérodote, chap. xiv. pp. 352-401.
From the capture of Troy down to the passage of Alexander with his invading army into Asia, the latter a known date of 334 B. C., the following different reckonings were made:—
Phanias gave 715 years.
Ephorus ” 735 ”
Eratosthenês ” 774 ”
Timæus ” 820 ”
Kleitarchus
Duris ” 1000 ”
(Clemens Alexand. Strom. i. p. 337.)
Democritus estimated a space of seven hundred and thirty years between his composition of the Μικρὸς Διάκοσμος and the capture of Troy (Diogen. Laërt. ix. 41). Isokratês believed the Lacedæmonians to have been established in Peloponnêsus seven hundred years, and he repeats this in three different passages (Archidam. p. 118; Panathen. p. 275; De Pace, p. 178). The dates of these three orations themselves differ by twenty-four years, the Archidamus being older than the Panathenaïc by that interval; yet he employs the same number of years for each in calculating backwards to the Trojan war, (see Clinton, vol. i. Introd. p. v.) In round numbers, his calculation coincides pretty nearly with the eight hundred years given by Herodotus in the preceding century.
The remarks of Boeckh on the Parian marble generally, in his Corpus Inscriptionum Græc. t. ii. pp. 322-336, are extremely valuable, but especially his criticism on the epoch of the Trojan war, which stands the twenty-fourth in the Marble. The ancient chronologists, from Damastês and Hellanikus downwards, professed to fix not only the exact year, but the exact month, day, and hour in which this celebrated capture took place. [Mr. Clinton pretends to no more than the possibility of determining the event within fifty years, Introduct. p. vi.] Boeckh illustrates the manner of their argumentation.
O. Müller observes (History of the Dorians, t. ii. p. 442, Eng. Tr.), “In reckoning from the migration of the Heraklidæ downward, we follow the Alexandrine chronology, of which it should be observed, that our materials only enable us to restore it to its original state, not to examine its correctness.”
But I do not see upon what evidence even so much as this can be done. Mr. Clinton, admitting that Eratosthenês fixed his date by conjecture, supposes him to have chosen “a middle point between the longer and shorter computations of his predecessors.” Boeckh thinks this explanation unsatisfactory (l. c. p. 328).