Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/145

 THE LEGENDARY CHRONICLERS 121 Ages, the chronicles were continued and altered and ex- panded under a succession of editors. The names of the earliest chroniclers have a mythical ring. The Chronicle of Corinth was written by ' Eume- lus' himself, the Corinthian Homer; the Ephesian by ' Kreoph^lus,' the Cretan by ' Epimenides.' That of Miletus, commonly acknowledged to be the oldest of all, was the first thing written by Cadmus, when he had invented letters! He is called 'Cadmus of Miletus,' though by birth a Phoenician, just as the Argive chronicler is called 'AcusilAus of Argos,' though a native, like Hesiod, of a little village in Boeotia. His chronicle is said to have consisted of Hesiod turned into prose and 'corrected.' But even Acusilaus {^ Hearken- people') is not misty enough to be its real author; he only transcribed it from the bronze tablets which his father found buried in the earth ! The Chronicle of Athens, afterwards worked up by many able men such as Cleidemos, Androtion, Philochorus, has left no tradi- tion of its origin. A certain Melesagoras, who knows why no crow has ever been seen on the Acropolis, seems to represent the sacred Chronicle of Eleusis, and thus in part that of Athens. There are many impor- tant fragments quoted from ' Pherekydes ' : Suidas dis- tinguishes three of the name, from Syros, Leros, and Athens, respectively ; modern scholars generally allow two only — a seventh-century philosopher from Syros, and a fifth-century Athenian historian born in Leros ; while a critical study of the evidence will probably reduce the list to one — whose chronicle began with the origin of the gods and contained the 'words of Orpheus ' — a half-mythical ' Bring-renown ' parallel to ^ Hearken-pcople' of Argos.