Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/53

 APPLICATION OF CHRONOLOGY TO .Li:r,EXr>. 87 Wherever chronology is possible, researches such as those of Mr. Clinton, which have conduced so much to the better un- derstanding of the later times of Greece, deserve respectful attention. But the ablest chronologist can accomplish nothing, unless he is supplied with a certain basis of matters of fact, pure and distinguishable from fiction, and authenticated by witnesses both knowing the truth and willing to declare it. Possessing this preliminary stock, he may reason from it to refute distinct falsehoods and to correct partial mistakes : but if all the original statements submitted to him contain truth (at least wherever there is truth) in a sort of chemical combination with fiction, which he has no means of decomposing, he is in the condition of one who tries to solve a problem without data : he is first obliged to construct his own data, and from them to extract his conclusions. The statements of the epic poets, our only original witnesses in this case, correspond to the description here given. Whether the proportion of truth contained in them be smaller or greater, it is at all events unassignable, and the constant and intimate admixture of fiction is both indisputable in itself, and, indeed, essential to the purpose and profession of those from whom the tales proceed. Of such a character are all the depos ing witnesses, even where their tales agree ; and ^t is out of a heap of such tales, not agreeing, but discrepant in a thousand ways, and without a morsel of pure authenticated truth, that the critic is called upon to draw out a methodical series of his- torical events adorned with chronological dates. If we could imagine a modern critical scholar transported into Greece at the time of the Persian war, endued with his present habits of appreciating historical evidence, without sharing in the religious or patriotic feelings of the country, and invited to prepare, out of the great body of Grecian epic which then existed, a History and Chronology of Greece anterior to 776 B. c., assigning reasons as well for what he admitted as for what he rejected, I feel persuaded that he would have judged the undertaking to be little better than a process of guesswork. But the modern critic finds that not only Pherekydes and Hellanikus, but also Herodotus and Thucydides, have either attempted the task or sanctioned the belief that it was practicable, a matter not at all surprising, when we consider both their narrow ex-