Note 75 — Chapter XIX · APPLICATION OF CHRONOLOGY TO GRECIAN LEGEND.

See the string of fabulous names placed at the head of the Halikarnassian Inscription, professing to enumerate the series of priests of Poseidôn from the foundation of the city (Inscript. No. 2655, Boeckh), with the commentary of the learned editor: compare, also, what he pronounces to be an inscription of a genealogy partially fabulous at Hierapytna in Krête (No. 2563).

The memorable Parian marble is itself an inscription, in which legend and history—gods, heroes, and men—are blended together in the various successive epochs without any consciousness of transition in the mind of the inscriber.

That the Catalogue of Priestesses of Hêrê at Argos went back to the extreme of fabulous times, we may discern by the Fragments of Hellanikus (Frag. 45-53). So also did the registers at Sikyôn: they professed to record Amphion, son of Zeus and Antiopê, as the inventor of harp-music (Plutarch, De Musicâ, c. 3, p. 1132).

I remarked in the preceding page, that Mr. Clinton erroneously cites K. O. Müller as a believer in the chronological authenticity of the lists of the early Spartan kings: he says (vol. iii. App. vi. p. 330), “Mr. Müller is of opinion that an authentic account of the years of each Lacedæmonian reign from the return of the Heraclidæ to the Olympiad of Korœbus had been preserved to the time of Eratosthenês and Apollodôrus.” But this is a mistake; for Müller expressly disavows any belief in the authenticity of the lists (Dorians, i. p. 146): he says: “I do not contend that the chronological accounts in the Spartan lists form an authentic document, more than those in the catalogue of the priestesses of Hêrê and in the list of Halikarnassian priests. The chronological statements in the Spartan lists may have been formed from imperfect memorials: but the Alexandrine chronologists must have found such tables in existence,” &c.

The discrepancies noticed in Herodotus (vi. 52) are alone sufficient to prove that continuous registers of the names of the Lacedæmonian kings did not begin to be kept until very long after the date here assigned by Mr. Clinton.

Xenophôn (Agesilaus, viii. 7) agrees with what Herodotus mentions to have been the native Lacedæmonian story,—that Aristodêmus (and not his sons) was the king who conducted the Dorian invaders to Sparta. What is farther remarkable is, that Xenophôn calls him—Ἀριστόδημος ὁ Ἡρακλέους. The reasonable inference here is, that Xenophôn believed Aristodêmus to be the son of Hêraklês, and that this was one of the various genealogical stories current. But here the critics interpose; “ὁ Ἡρακλἑους (observes Schneider,) non παῖς, sed ἀπόγονος, ut ex Herodoto, viii. 131, admonuit Weiske.” Surely, if Xenophôn had meant this, he would have said ὁ ἀφ᾽ Ἡρακλέους.

Perhaps particular exceptional cases might be quoted, wherein the very common phrase of ὁ, followed by a genitive, means descendant, and not son. But if any doubt be allowed upon this point, chronological computations, founded on genealogies, will be exposed to a serious additional suspicion. Why are we to assume that Xenophôn must give the same story as Herodotus, unless his words naturally tell us so?