Note 521 — Chapter IV · EARLIEST HISTORICAL VIEW OF PELOPONNESUS. DORIANS IN ARGOS AND THE NEIGHBORING CITIES.

Ephor. Fragm. 15, ed. Marx; ap. Strabo, viii. p. 358; Theopompus, Fragm. 30, ed. Didot; ap. Diodor. Fragm. lib. iv.

The Parian Marble makes Pheidôn the eleventh from Hêraklês, and places him B. C. 895; Herodotus, on the contrary (in a passage which affords considerable grounds for discussion), places him at a period which cannot be much higher than 600 B. C. (vi. 127.) Some authors suspect the text of Herodotus to be incorrect: at any rate, the real epoch of Pheidôn is determined by the 8th Olympiad. Several critics suppose two Pheidôns, each king of Argos,—among others, O. Müller (Dorians, iii. 6, 10); but there is nothing to countenance this, except the impossibility of reconciling Herodotus with the other authorities. And Weissenborn, in a dissertation of some length, vindicates the emendation of Pausanias proposed by some former critics,—altering the 8th Olympiad, which now stands in the text of Pausanias, into the twenty-eighth, as the date of Pheidôn’s usurpation at the Olympic games. Weissenborn endeavors to show that Pheidôn cannot have flourished earlier than 660 B. C.; but his arguments do not appear to me very forcible, and certainly not sufficient to justify so grave an alteration in the number of Pausanias (Beiträge zur Griechischen Alterthumskunde, p. 18, Jena, 1844). Mr. Clinton (Fasti Hellenici, vol. i. App. 1, p. 249) places Pheidôn between 783 and 744 B. C.; also, Boeckh. ad Corp. Inscript. No. 2374, p. 335, and Müller, Æginetica, p. 63.