Page:History of Greece Vol II.djvu/70

 54 HISTORY OF GREECE. it to be also those of real persons : but this has no application fa the time anterior to the Olympiads, still less to the pretended times of the Trojan war, the Kalydonian boar-hunt, or the del- uge of Deukalion. To reason (as Mr. Clinton does, Introd. p. vi.), " Because Aristomachus was a real man, therefore his father Cleodaeus, his grandfather Hyllus, and so farther upwards, etc., must have been real men," is an inadmissible conclusion. The historian Ilekataeus was a real man, and doubtless his father Hegesander, also, but it would be unsafe to march up his gene- alogical ladder fifteen steps, to the presence of the ancestoruil god of whom he boasted : the upper steps of the ladder will be found broken and unreal. Not to mention that the inference, from real son to real father, is inconsistent with the admissions in Mr. Clinton's own genealogical tables ; for he there inserts the names of several mythical fathers as having begotten real his- torical sons. The general authority of Mr. Clinton's book, and the sincere respect which I entertain for his elucidations of the later chro- nology, have imposed upon me the duty of assigning those grounds on which I dissent from his conclusions prior to the first recorded Olympiad. The reader who desires to see the numerous and con- tradictory guesses (they deserve no better name) of the Greeks themselves in the attempt to chronologize their mythical narra- tives, will find them in the copious notes annexed to the first half of his first volume. As I consider all such researches not merely as fruitless, in regard to any trustworthy result, but as serving to divert attention from the genuine form and really illustrative character of Grecian legend, I have not thought it right to go over the same ground in the present work. Differing as I do, however, from Mr. Clinton's views on this subject, I concur with him in deprecating the application of etymology (Intr. pp. xi-xii.) as a general scheme of explanation to the characters and events of Greek legend. Amongst the many causes which operated as suggestives and stimulants to Greek fancy in the creation of thesp interesting tales, doubtless etymology has had its share ; but it cannot be applied (as Hermann, above all others, has sought to apply it) for the purpose of imparting supposed sense and system to the general body of mythical narrative. I have already re- marked on this topic in a former chapter.