Page:History of Greece Vol III.djvu/266

 250 HISTORY OF GREECE. thors, wha, probably, had these poems before them, ve learn the Cimmerian host, having occupied the Lydian chief town which Herodotus alludes, appears fixed for some date in the reign of Ardys the Lydian, 640-629 B. c., and may stand for 635 u. c. as Mr. Clinton puts it; and I agree with O. Miiller that the fragment of the poet Kallinus above cited alludes to this invasion ; for the supposition of Mr. Clinton, that Kallinus here alludes to an invasion past and not present, appears to be excluded by the word vvv. Mr. Clinton places both Kallinus and Archilo- chus (in my judgment) half a century too high ; for I agree with 0. Mailer in disbelieving the story told by Pliny of the picture sold by Bularchus to Kandaules. O. Mailer follows Strabo (i, p. 61) in calling Madys a Cimme- rian prince, who drove the Treres out of Asia Minor; whereas Herodotus mentions him as the Scythian prince, who drove the Cimmerians out of their own territory into Asia Minor (i, 103). The chronology of Herodotus is intelligible and consistent with itself: that of Strabo we cannot settle, when he speaks of many different invasions. Nor does his language give us the smallest reason to suppose that he was in possession of any means of determining dates for these early times, nothing at all calculated to justify the positive chronology which Mr. Clinton deduces from him: compare his Fasti Hellenici, B. c. 635, 629, 617. Strabo says, after affirming that Homer knew both the name and the reality of the Cim- merians (i, p. 6 ; iii, p. 149), KOI yap KO-&' 'Ofirjpov, 7} irpo avrov p.iKpbi> heyovai. Tfjv riJv Kiftfiepiuv etfiodov -yevECF&ai TT/V fi%pi rfj^ Ai'o/Udof Kal rf/f 'l(jvia<;. "which places the first appearance of the Cimmerians in Asia Minor a century at least before the Olympiad of Corcebus," (says Mr. Clin- ton.) But what means could Strabo have had to chronologize events as happening at or a little before the time of Homer ? No date in the Grecian world was so contested, or so indeterminable, as the time of Homer : nor will it do to reason, as Mr. Clinton does, t. e. to take the latest date fixed for Homer among many, and then to say that the invasion of the Cimmerians must be at least B. c. 876 : thus assuming it as a certainty that, whether the date of Homer be a century earlier or later, the invasion of the Cimmerians must be made to fit it. When Strabo employs such untrustworthy chrono- logical standards, he only shows us what everything else confirms that there existed no tests of any value for events of that early date in the Grecian world. Mr. Clinton announces this ante-Homeric calculation as a chronological certainty : " The Cimmerians first appeared in Asia Minor about a century before B. c. 776. An irruption is recorded in B. c. 782. Their last inroad was in B. c. 635. The settlement of Ambron (the Milesian, at Sinope) may bo placed at about B. c. 782, twenty-six yef.rs before the era assigned to (the Milesian or Sinopic settlement of) Trapezus." On what authority does Mr. Clinton assert that a Cimmerian irruption was recorded in B. c. 782 ? Simply on the following passage of Orosius,