[348] This important date depends upon the evidence of Solinus (Polyhistor, i, 112) and Sosikratês (ap. Diog. Laërt. i, 95): see Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellen. ad ann. 546, and his Appendix, ch. 17, upon the Lydian kings.
Mr. Clinton and most of the chronologists accept the date without hesitation, but Volney (Recherches sur l’Histoire Ancienne, vol. i, pp. 306-308; Chronologie des Rois Lydiens) rejects it altogether; considering the capture of Sardis to have occurred in 557 B. C., and the reign of Crœsus to have begun in 571 B. C. He treats very contemptuously the authority of Solinus and Sosikratês, and has an elaborate argumentation to prove that the date which he adopts is borne out by Herodotus. This latter does not appear to me at all satisfactory: I adopt the date of Solinus and Sosikratês, though agreeing with Volney that such positive authority is not very considerable, because there is nothing to contradict them, and because the date which they give seems in consonance with the stream of the history.
Volney’s arguments suppose in the mind of Herodotus a degree of chronological precision altogether unreasonable, in reference to events anterior to contemporary records. He, like other chronologists, exhausts his ingenuity to find a proper point of historical time for the supposed conversation between Solon and Crœsus (p. 320).
[349] Herodot. i, 141.
[350] Herodot. i, 152. The purple garment, so attractive a spectacle amid the plain clothing universal at Sparta, marks the contrast between Asiatic and European Greece.
[351] Herodot. i, 153. ταῦτα ἐς τοὺς πάντας Ἕλληνας ἀπέῤῥιψε ὁ Κῦρος τὰ ἔπεα, etc.
[352] Herodot. i, 155.
[353] Herodot. i, 159.
[354] Herodot. i, 160. The short fragment from Charôn of Lampsakus, which Plutarch (De Malignitat. Herod. p. 859) cites here, in support of one among his many unjust censures on Herodotus, is noway inconsistent with the statement of the latter, but rather tends to confirm it.
In writing this treatise on the alleged ill-temper of Herodotus, we see that Plutarch had before him the history of Charôn of Lampsakus, more ancient by one generation than the historian whom he was assailing, and also belonging to Asiatic Greece. Of course, it suited the purpose of his work to produce all the contradictions to Herodotus which he could find in Charôn: the fact that he has produced none of any moment, tends to strengthen our faith in the historian of Halikarnassus, and to show that in the main his narrative was in accordance with that of Charôn.