And now, in the first place, I cannot but greatly wonder at those
men, who suppose that we must attend to none but Grecians, when we are
inquiring about the most ancient facts, and must inform ourselves of their
truth from them only, while we must not believe ourselves nor other men;
for I am convinced that the very reverse is the truth of the case. I mean
this, - if we will not be led by vain opinions, but will make inquiry after
truth from facts themselves; for they will find that almost all which concerns
the Greeks happened not long ago; nay, one may say, is of yesterday only.
I speak of the building of their cities, the inventions of their arts,
and the description of their laws; and as for their care about the writing
down of their histories, it is very near the last thing they set about.
However, they acknowledge themselves so far, that they were the Egyptians,
the Chaldeans, and the Phoenicians (for I will not now reckon ourselves
among them) that have preserved the memorials of the most ancient and most
lasting traditions of mankind; for almost all these nations inhabit such
countries as are least subject to destruction from the world about them;
and these also have taken especial care to have nothing omitted of what
was [remarkably] done among them; but their history was esteemed sacred,
and put into public tables, as written by men of the greatest wisdom they
had among them. But as for the place where the Grecians inhabit, ten thousand
destructions have overtaken it, and blotted out the memory of former actions;
so that they were ever beginning a new way of living, and supposed that
every one of them was the origin of their new state. It was also late,
and with difficulty, that they came to know the letters they now use; for
those who would advance their use of these letters to the greatest antiquity
pretend that they learned them from the Phoenicians and from Cadmus; yet
is nobody able to demonstrate that they have any writing preserved from
that time, neither in their temples, nor in any other public monuments.
This appears, because the time when those lived who went to the Trojan
war, so many years afterward, is in great doubt, and great inquiry is made,
whether the Greeks used their letters at that time; and the most prevailing
opinion, and that nearest the truth, is, that their present way of using
those letters was unknown at that time. However, there is not any writing
which the Greeks agree to he genuine among them ancienter than Homer's
Poems, who must plainly he confessed later than the siege of Troy; nay,
the report goes, that even he did not leave his poems in writing, but that
their memory was preserved in songs, and they were put together afterward,
and that this is the reason of such a number of variations as are found
in them. 3
As for those who set themselves about writing their histories, I mean such
as Cadmus of Miletus, and Acusilaus of Argos, and any others that may be
mentioned as succeeding Acusilaus, they lived but a little while before
the Persian expedition into Greece. But then for those that first introduced
philosophy, and the consideration of things celestial and divine among
them, such as Pherceydes the Syrian, and Pythagoras, and Thales, all with
one consent agree, that they learned what they knew of the Egyptians and
Chaldeans, and wrote but little And these are the things which are supposed
to be the oldest of all among the Greeks; and they have much ado to believe
that the writings ascribed to those men are genuine.
