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 UNKNOWN DATE OF THE INSCRIPTIONS. 43 lenic world abounded, 1 a class of documents which become historical evidence only so high in the ascending series as the 1 See the string of fabulous names placed at the head of the Halikarnas- sian Inscription, professing to enumerate the series of priests of Poseidon from the foundation of the city (Inscript. No. 2655. Boeckh), with the com- mentary of the learned editor : compare, also, what he pronounces to be an inscription of a genealogy partially fabulous at Hierapytna in Krt-te (No. 2563). The memorable Parian marble is itself an inscription, in which legend and history gods, heroes, and men are blended together in the various suc- cessive epochs without any consciousness of transition in the mind of the inscriber. That the Catalogue of Priestesses of Here at Argos went back to the ex- treme of fabulous times, we may discern by the Fragments of Hellanikus (Frag. 45-53). So also did the registers at Sikyon : they professed to re cord Amphion, son of Zeus and Antiope, as the inventor of harp-musio (Plutarch, De Musica, c. 3, p. 1132). I remarked in the preceding page, that Mr. Clinton erroneously cites K. 0. M tiller as a believer in the chronological authenticity of the lists of the early Spartan kings : he says (vol. iii. App. vi. p. 330), "Mr. Miiller is of opinion that au authentic account of the years of each Lacedaemonian reign from the return of the Heraclidre to the Olympiad of Korcebus had been preserved to the time of Eratosthenes and Apollodorus." But this is a mistake ; for Miiller expressly disavows any belief in the authenticity of the lists (Dorians, 1. p. 14fi) : he says: " I do not contend that the chronological accounts in the Spartan lists form an authentic document, more than those in the catalogue of the priestesses of Here and in the list of Halikarnassian priests. The chro nological statements in the Spartan lists may have been formed from imper- fect memorials : but the Alexandrine chronologists must have found such tables in existence," &c. The discrepancies noticed in Herodotus (vi. 52) are alone sufficient to prove that continuous registers of the names of the Lacedaemonian kings did not begin to be kept until very long after the date here assigned by Mr. Clinton. Xenophon (Agesilaus, viii. 7) agrees with what Herodotus mentions to have been the native Lacedaemonian story, that Aristodemus (and not his sons) was the king who conducted the Dorian invaders to Sparta. What is farther remarkable is, that Xenophon calls him 'A.piffTo6rjfj.of 6 'Hpa/c7iovc. The reasonable inference here is, that Xenophon believed Aristodemus to be the sow of Herakles, and that this was one of the various genealogical stories current. But here the critics interpose ; i; o 'ITpa/cAfovf (observes Schneider,) non Tralc, sed unoyovoc, ut ex Herodoto. viii. 131, admonuit Weiske." Surely, if Xenophon had meant this, he would have said 6 u' 'llpanheovc. Perhaps particular exceptional cases might be quoted, wherein the very common phrase of o, followed by a genitive, means descendant, and net son