Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/60

 44 HISTORY OF GREECE. names composing them are authenticated by contemporary, or nearly contemporary, enrolment. At what period thL* practice of enrolment began, we have no information. Two remarks, however, may be made, in reference to any approximative guess as to the time when actual registration commenced : Firsf, thai the number of names in the pedigree, or the length of past time which it professes to embrace, affords no presumption of any superior antiquity in the time of registration : Secondly, that, looking to the acknowledged paucity and rudeness of Grecian writing, even down to the GOth Olympiad (540 B. c.), and to the absence of the habit of writing, as well as the low estimate of its value, which such a state of things argues, tiie presumption is, that written enrolment of family genealogies, did not commence until a long time after 776 B. c., and the obligation of proof falls upon him who maintains that it commenced earlier. And this second remark is farther borne out, when we observe that there is no registered list, except that of the Olympic victors, which goes up even so high as 776 B. c. The next list which 0. Mul- ler and Mr. Clinton produce, is that of the Karneonica3, or victors at the Karneian festival, which reaches only up to 676 B. c. If Mr. Clinton then makes little out of inscriptions to sustain his view of Grecian history and chronology anterior to the re- corded Olympiads, let us examine the inferences which he draws from his ether source of evidence, the early poets. And here it will be found, First, that in order to maintain the credibility of these witnesses, he lays down positions respecting historical evi- dence both indefensible in themselves, and especially inapplica- ble to the early times of Greece : Secondly, that his reasoning is at the same time inconsistent, inasmuch as it includes admis- sions, which, if properly understood and followed out, exhibit these very witnesses as habitually, indiscriminately, and uncon- sciously mingling truth and fiction; and therefore little fit to be believed upon their solitary and unsupported testimony. To take the second point first, he says, Introduction, p. ii-iii : ' 1 he authority even of the genealogies has been called in ques- But if any doubt be allowed upon this point, chronological computations, founded on genealogies, will be exposed to a serious additional suspicion Why are we to assume that Xeiiophon must give the samo dory ag Herodo- fui; unless his words naturally tell us so ?