Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/55

 ERATOSTHENES. -THE FIRST OLYMPIAD. 39 If in the absence of a better light we seek for what is probable, we are not to forget the distinction between conjecture and proof between what is probable and what is certain. The computation, then, of Eratosthenes for the war of Troy is open to inquiry ; and if we find it adverse to the opinions of many preceding writers, who fixed a lower date, and adverse to the acknowledged length of generation in the most authentic dynasties, we are allowed to follow other guides, who give us a lower epoch." Here Mr. Clinton again plainly acknowledges the want of evi dence, and the irremediable uncertainty of Grecian chronology before the Olympiads ; and the reasonable conclusion from his argument is, not simply, that " the computation of Eratosthenes was open to inquiry," (which few would be found to deny,) but that both Eratosthenes and Phanias had delivered positive opin- ions upon a point on which no sufficient evidence was accessible, and therefore that neither the one nor the other was a guide to be followed. 1 Mr. Clinton does, indeed, speak of authentic dynas- ties prior to the first recorded Olympiad, but if there be any such, reaching up from that period to a supposed point coeval with or anterior to the war of Troy, I see no good reason for the marked distinction which he draws between chronology before and chronology after the Olympiad of Korrebus, or for the necessity which he feels of suspending his upward reckoning at the last-mentioned epoch, and beginning a different process, called " a downward reckoning," from the higher epoch (supposed to be somehow ascertained without any upward reckoning) of the first patriarch from whom such authentic dynasty emanates. 2 Herod- otus and Thucydides might well, upon this supposition, ask of 1 Karl Miiller observes (in the Dissertation above referred to, appended to the Fragmenta Historicum Graecorum, p. 568) : "Quod attinet asram Tro janam, tot obruimur et tarn diversis veterum scriptorum computationibus, ut singulas enumerare negotium sit taedii plenum, eas vel probare vel improbara res vana nee vacua ab arrogantia. Nam nemo hodie nescit quaenam fidea his habenda sit omnibus." 2 The distinction which Mr. Clinton draws between an upward and a down- ward chronology is one that I am unable to comprehend. His doctrine is, that upward chronology is trustworthy and practicable up to the first record- ed Olympiad ; downward chronology is trustworthy and practicable from Pho- roneus down to the Ionic migration : what is uncertain is, the length of th intermediate line which joins the Ionic migration to the first recortVd Olym