udson's note here, which as it justly contradicts the
common opinion that Josephus either died under Domitian, or at least
wrote nothing later than his days, so does it perfectly agree to my own
determination, from Justus of Tiberias, that he wrote or finished his
own Life after the third of Trajan, or A.D. 100. To which Noldius also
agrees, de Herod, No. 383 [Epaphroditus]. "Since Florius Josephus,"
says Dr. Hudson, "wrote [or finished] his books of Antiquities on the
thirteenth of Domitian, [A.D. 93,] and after that wrote the Memoirs of
his own Life, as an appendix to the books of Antiquities, and at last
his two books against Apion, and yet dedicated all those writings
to Epaphroditus; he can hardly be that Epaphroditus who was formerly
secretary to Nero, and was slain on the fourteenth [or fifteenth] of
Domitian, after he had been for a good while in banishment; but another
Epaphroditas, a freed-man, and procurator of Trajan, as says Grotius on
Luke 1:3."

[3] The preservation of Homer's Poems by memory, and not by his own
writing them down, and that thence they were styled Rhapsodies, as sung
by him, like ballads, by parts, and not composed and connected
together in complete works, are opinions well known from the ancient
commentators; though such supposal seems to myself, as well as to
Fabricius Biblioth. Grace. I. p. 269, and to others, highly improbable.
Nor does Josephus say there were no ancienter writings among the Greeks
than Homer's Poems, but that they did not fully own any ancienter
writings pretending to such antiquity, which is trite.

[4] It well deserves to be considered, that Josephus here says how all
the following Greek historians looked on Herodotus as a fabulous author;
and presently, sect. 14, how Manetho, the most authentic writer of the
Egyptian history, greatly complains of his mistakes in the Egyptian
affairs; as also that Strabo, B. XI. p. 507, the most accurate
geographer and historian, esteemed him such; that Xenophon, the
much more accurate historian in the affairs of Cyrus, implies that
Herodotus's account of that great man is almost entirely romantic. See
the notes on Antiq. B. XI. ch. 2. sect. 1, and Hutchinson's Prolegomena
to his edition of Xenophon's, that we have already seen in the note on
Antiq. B. VIII. ch. 10. sect. 3, how very little Herodotus knew about
the Jewish affairs and country, and that he greatly affected what we
call the marvelous, as Monsieur Rollin has lately and