Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/57

 CiriTONOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF INSCRIPTIONS. 41 Olympiads up to Phor6neus, docs iu truth turn upon this point : Are those genealogies, which profess to cover the spa:e between (he two, authentic and trustworthy, or not ? Mr. Clinton appears to feel that they are not so, when he admits the essential difference in the character of the evidence and the necessity of altering the method of computation, before and after the first recorded Olym- piad ; yet, in his Preface, he labors to prove that they possess historical worth and are in the main correctly set forth : moreover, that the fictitious persons, wherever any such are intermingled, may be detected and eliminated. The evidences upon which he relies, are : 1. Inscriptions ; 2. The early poets. 1. An inscription, being nothing but a piece of writing on mar- ble, carries evidentiary value under the same conditions as a pub- lished writing on paper. If the inscriber reports a contemporary tact which he had the means of knowing, and if there be no rea- son to suspect misrepresentation, we believe his assertion : if, on the other hand, he records facts belonging to a long period before his own time, his authority counts for little, except in so far as we can verify and appreciate his means of knowledge. In estimating, therefore, the probative force of any inscription, the first and most indispensable point is to assure ourselves of its date. Amongst all the public registers and inscriptions alluded to by Mr. Clinton, there is not one which can be positively refer- red to a date anterior to 776 B. c. The quoit of Iphitus, the public registers at Sparta, Corinth, and Elis, the list of the priestesses of Juno at Argos, are all of a date completely un- certified. 0. Midler does, indeed, agree with Mr. Clinton (though in my opinion without any sufficient proof) in assigning the quoit of Iphitus to the age ascribed to that prince : and if we even grant thus much, we shall have an inscription as old (adopt- ing Mr. Clinton's determination of the age of Iphitus) as 828 B. c. But when Mr. Clinton quotes O. Mialler as admitting the registers of Sparta, Corinth, and Elis, it is right to add that the latter does not profess to guarantee the authenticity of these doc- uments, or the age at which such registers began to be kept. It is not to be doubted that there were registers of the kings of Sparta carrying them up to Herakles, and of the kings of Elis from Oxylus to Iphitus ; but the question is, at what time did these lists begin to be kept continuously ? This is a point which