FROM THE
First Memory of Things in _Europe_,
TO THE
Conquest of _Persia_ by _Alexander_ the Great.

* * * * *

The INTRODUCTION.

The _Greek_ Antiquities are full of Poetical Fictions, because the _Greeks_
wrote nothing in Prose, before the Conquest of _Asia_ by _Cyrus_ the
_Persian_. Then _Pherecydes Scyrius_ and _Cadmus Milesius_ introduced the
writing in Prose. _Pherecydes Atheniensis_, about the end of the Reign of
_Darius Hystaspis_, wrote of Antiquities, and digested his work by
Genealogies, and was reckoned one of the best Genealogers. _Epimenides_ the
Historian proceeded also by Genealogies; and _Hellanicus_, who was twelve
years older than _Herodotus_, digested his History by the Ages or
Successions of the Priestesses of _Juno Argiva_. Others digested theirs by
the Kings of the _Lacedaemonians_, or Archons of _Athens_. _Hippias_ the
_Elean_, about thirty years before the fall of the _Persian_ Empire,
published a breviary or list of the Olympic Victors; and about ten years
before the fall thereof, _Ephorus_ the disciple of _Isocrates_ formed a
Chronological History of _Greece_, beginning with the return of the
_Heraclides_ into _Peloponnesus_, and ending with the siege of _Perinthus_,
in the twentieth year of _Philip_ the father of _Alexander_ the great: But
he digested things by Generations, and the reckoning by Olympiads was not
yet in use, nor doth it appear that the Reigns of Kings were yet set down
by numbers of years. The _Arundelian_ marbles were composed sixty years
after the death of _Alexander_ the great (_An._ 4. _Olymp._ 128.) and yet
mention not the Olympiads: But in the next Olympiad, _Timaeus Siculus_
published an history in several books down to his own times, according to
the Olympiads, comparing the Ephori, the Kings of _Sparta_, the Archons of
_Athens_, and the Priestesses of _Argos_, with the Olympic Victors, so as
to make the Olympiads, and the Genealogies and Successions of Kings,
Archons, and Priestesses, and poetical histories suit with one another,
according to the best of his judgment. And where he left off, _Polybius_
began and carried on the history.

So then a little after the death of _Alexander_ the great, they began to
set down the Generations, Reigns and Successions, in numbers of years, and
by putting Reigns and Successions equipollent to Generations, and three
Generations to an hundred or an hundred and twenty years (as appears by
their C