e whole time
from the Reign of _Menes_ to that of _Sethon_ was 11340 years. And by this
way of reckoning, and allotting longer Reigns to the Gods of _Egypt_ than
to the Kings which followed them, _Herodotus_ tells us from the Priests of
_Egypt_, that from _Pan_ to _Amosis_ were 15000 years, and from _Hercules_
to _Amosis_ 17000 years. So also the _Chaldaeans_ boasted of their
Antiquity; for _Callisthenes_, the Disciple of _Aristotle_, sent
Astronomical Observations from _Babylon_ to _Greece_, said to be of 1903
years standing before the times of _Alexander_ the great. And the
_Chaldaeans_ boasted further, that they had observed the Stars 473000 years;
and there were others who made the Kingdoms of _Assyria_, _Media_ and
_Damascus_, much older than the truth.

Some of the _Greeks_ called the times before the Reign of _Ogyges_,
Unknown, because they had No History of them; those between his flood and
the beginning of the Olympiads, Fabulous, because their History was much
mixed with Poetical Fables: and those after the beginning of the Olympiads,
Historical, because their History was free from such Fables. The fabulous
Ages wanted a good Chronology, and so also did the Historical, for the
first 60 or 70 Olympiads.

The _Europeans_, had no Chronology before the times of the _Persian_
Empire: and whatsoever Chronology they now have of ancienter times, hath
been framed since, by reasoning and conjecture. In the beginning of that
Monarchy, _Acusilaus_ made _Phoroneus_ as old as _Ogyges_ and his flood,
and that flood 1020 years older than the first Olympiad; which is above 680
years older than the truth: and to make out this reckoning his followers
have encreased the Reigns of Kings in length and number. _Plutarch_ [4]
tells us that the Philosophers anciently delivered their Opinions in Verse,
as _Orpheus_, _Hesiod_, _Parmenides_, _Xenophanes_, _Empedocles_, _Thales_;
but afterwards left off the use of Verses; and that _Aristarchus_,
_Timocharis_, _Aristillus_, _Hipparchus_, did not make Astronomy the more
contemptible by describing it in Prose; after _Eudoxus_, _Hesiod_, and
_Thales_ had wrote of it in Verse. _Solon_ wrote [5] in Verse, and all the
Seven Wise Men were addicted to Poetry, as _Anaximenes_ [6] affirmed. 'Till
those days the _Greeks_ wrote only in Verse, and while they did so there
could be no Chronology, nor any other History, than such as was mixed with
poetical fancies. _Pliny_, [7] in reckoning up the Invento