| 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).
[81] Καὶ τοὺς θεοὺς δὲ διὰ τοῦτο πάντες φασὶ βασιλεύεσθαι, ὅτι καὶ αὐτοὶ, οἱ μὲν ἔτι καὶ νῦν, οἱ δὲ τὸ ἀρχαῖον, ἐβασιλεύοντο. Ὥσπερ δὲ καὶ τὰ εἴδη ἑαυτοῖς ἀφομοιοῦσιν οἱ ἄνθρωποι, οὕτω καὶ τοὺς βίους τῶν θεῶν (Aristot. Politic. i. 1. 7).
[82] In the pictures of the Homeric Heroes, there is no material difference of character recognized between one race of Greeks and another,—or even between Greeks and Trojans. See Helbig, Die Sittlichen Zustände des Griechischen Heldenalters, part ii. p. 53.
[83] Niebuhr, Römische Geschichte, vol. i. p. 55, 2d edit. “Erkennt man aber, dass aller Ursprung jenseits unserer nur Entwickelung und Fortgang fassenden Begriffe liegt; und beschränkt sich von Stufe auf Stufe im Umfang der Geschichte zurückzugehen, so wird man Völker eines Stammes (das heisst, durch eigenthümliche Art und Sprache identisch) vielfach eben an sich entgegenliegenden Küstenländern antreffen ... ohne dass irgend etwas die Voraussetzung erheischte, eine von diesen getrennten Landschaften sei die ursprüngliche Heimath gewesen von wo ein Theil nach der andern gewandert wäre.... Dies ist der Geographie der Thiergeschlechter und der Vegetation analog: deren grosse Bezirke durch Gebürge geschieden werden, and beschränkte Meere einschliessen.”
“When we once recognize, however, that all absolute beginning lies out of the reach of our mental conceptions, which comprehend nothing beyond development and progress, and when we attempt nothing more than to go back from the later to the earlier stages in the compass of history, we shall often find, on opposite coasts of the same sea, people of one stock (that is, of the same peculiar customs and language,) without being warranted in supposing that either of these separate coasts was the primitive home from whence emigrants crossed over to the other. This is analogous to the geography of animals and plants, whose wide districts are severed by mountains and inclose internal seas.”