[263] For England from its unification under Alfred the Great to the present time the average is about twenty years; for France from 840 to 1793 it is between twenty-three and twenty-four years.
[264] Forsch. z. alten Geschichte, p. 170 f. The reckoning is not due to Herodotus himself but taken over by him from an earlier writer. Prof. Meyer suggests as its author Hecataeus, who was a contemporary of Cleomenes.
[265] Op. cit. p. 178 ff.
[266] Eratosthenes reckons nearly 320 years from the accession (birth) of Eurysthenes to that of Alcamenes in the ninth generation, while the reigns of the father, grandfather, great-grandfather and great-great-grandfather of the latter make up 159 years. Sosibius, who reckoned by the Eurypontid dynasty, appears to have had a similar period of 320 years from Procles to Theopompos, although his dates were different from those of Eratosthenes—1091/0 to 771/0 according to Prof. Meyer (op. cit. p. 179 f.). The accession of Theopompos was equated with that of Alcamenes by Eratosthenes. Possibly these periods were originally subdivisions of a longer period of 640 years, reckoned from the fortieth year of Cleomenes (or Leonidas?).
[267] Two names (Prytanis and Eunomos) in the Eurypontid list are generally regarded with doubt, but none of the Agiad names is really of a suspicious character. The fact that Agis and Eurypon are not the first names in the genealogies ought not to be used as an argument against the trustworthiness of the tradition. In many Teutonic genealogies—e.g. the Gothic, Frankish (Merovingian), Kentish, East Anglian and Mercian—the name which performs patronymic function is not that which stands first in the list.
[268] Prof. Meyer's view is not that the chronologists fixed too early a date for the Dorian invasion, but that the early parts of the genealogies themselves are unhistorical.
[269] Prof. Meyer (op. cit. p. 173 and note) cites the case of Telamon the son of Poseidon, ancestor of the priests of Poseidon at Halicarnassos, whom he places after the Return of the Heracleidai. But the question is a complicated one. The genealogy cannot be used for our purpose, as we do not know where it ends.
[270] Cf. Töpffer, Attische Genealogie, p. 278 f.; Meyer, op. cit. p. 174, note.
[271] Battos I is believed to have founded Cyrene about 630. It may be observed that the interval between that date and 466 is surprisingly short for the lapse of seven generations.
[272] British School at Athens, Ann. XIV, pp. 3, 18 f.