[73:1] The date of Archilochus, the earliest of the historical figures among Greek poets, used to be fixed about 709 B.C. The researches of Gelzer, Das Zeitalter des Gyges, make it certain that this date is wrong, and must be reduced to at least 670 B.C.; for Archilochus names Gyges in an extant fragment, and Gyges appears on a cuneiform inscription as the vassal of an Assyrian king whose time is determinable. Moreover, an eclipse which Archilochus mentions seems to be that in April, 647 B.C., which was total at Thasos, where the poet spent his later years. Even the conservative Duncker (vol. ii. p. 175, English ed.) adopts these arguments. Nevertheless, some recent histories still acquiesce in the exploded date!
[74:1] The connected history was, however, not set down then, but by a late epic poet, Rhianus, and a late prose historian, Myron, both of whom Pausanias, who gives us what we now know of these wars, criticises severely, saying that the prose author is the worse of these bad or incomplete authorities (Pausanias, iv. 6), since he conflicts with Tyrtæus. How modern historians in the face of this passage can set down fixed dates for these wars, beginning with 785 B.C., passes my comprehension.
[74:2] It is perhaps the most extraordinary fact in the results of the excavations pointed out to me by Mr. Sayce, that in none of the early Greek tombs or treasures discovered have we a single specimen of early writing, though both Egyptians and Phœnicians, who supplied so much to them, must have been long familiar with that art. The author of the Sixth Book of the Iliad refers once to writing as a strange or mysterious thing, and yet on a folded tablet, which could not have been used at the origin of writing, or indeed till far later times.
[75:1] C. I. G. 2655.
[75:2] These inventions were produced at a comparatively late period, and therefore do not conflict with what I said of the rarity of invention in a primitive age which had no theories to support.
[76:1] I allude to the views of M. G. Maspero, in his admirable Archéologie égyptienne.
[76:2] We have now positive evidence that the Athenians registered their public acts on stone as early as 570-560 B.C. On the Acropolis has been found (in 1884) the broken slab which contained the decree as to the legal status of the first cleruchs sent to Salamis upon its conquest by Athens. (See the article of Koehler in the Mittheilungen of the German Institute at Athens, vol. ix. p. 117 sq., and the Bull. de Corresp. hell. xii. 1 sq. where Foucart comments upon the inscription.) Three conditions are implied: (1) the cleruch is assimilated to Athenian citizens, as to taxes and military service, though he is bound to reside on Salamis and not leave his land. This was no doubt a novelty, and distinguishes the Athenian cleruch from the older colonist who had gone to Pontus or Magna Græcia. (2) If he did not reside, or while he did not, he must pay a special absentee's tax to the State. (This is understood differently by Koehler and by Busolt, G. G. i. 548.) The original number of cleruchs was apparently 500 (Foucart op. cit. ibid.). (3) If he defaulted in his payment there was a fine of thirty drachmæ—a very small penalty, even regarding the modest means of the early Greek states.
