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177 Memnoii, 1 77 accepted as such without suspicion an interpretation given to certain hieroglyphics by an ancient legend, or even inscrip- tions by which a later generation attested its belief in a legendary fact ^^Z' It must be allowed that these doubts are not arbitrary and groundless suspicions. The arguments ad- duced by Herodotus in favour of his conjecture about the Colchians excite our curiosity with respect to the particulars which he has passed over^^, but cannot convince us that he did not misconstrue them; more especially as here we do not even hear of any such monuments as were said to have marked the bounds of the conqueror'^s march in Thrace ^^ As to those which the historian himself saw in Palestine and in Ionia, beside the general objections thrown out by Butt- mann, they seem liable to doubt on some more special grounds. The relations between Egypt and Syria, which arose in an early historical period, render it impossible to draw any safe inference from Egyptian monuments in the latter country, as to events assigned to the mythical ages. And a similar ob- jection is applicable to the authority of those sculptures seen by Herodotus in Ionia, of which he pronounces, with a con- fidence which we cannot share without knowing something more of his reasons, that they were monuments, not of Mem- non, but of Sesostris. We learn from Xenophon, that Cyrus planted some colonies of Egyptians in Asia Minor. And though this statement is suspicious from the place in which it appears, it is in substance at least confirmed by a more historical testimony ^^. Whether these Egyptians were, as Xenophon represents them, auxiliaries of Croesus, or on the contrary of Cyrus himself, which would be quite consistent «2 Buttmann Mythologus i. 198. ^^ How desirable would it be to know the precise grounds of the remark Kal ij Jor^Trao-a Kal i] yXuiaara e/mcpepri^ ea^iv aXioL(ji^ and whether with respect to the latter point they were more cogent, than from the specimen given they seem to have been as to the former ! 6^ It is not clear whether we must add, and in Scythia^ as Buttmann appears to do in the passage quoted above. But it seems better in ii. 103 to refer toutous and Tovrtxiv to the Thracians only, since it is probable that Herodotus was speaking with reference to Greece. 6s Cyropged. vii. 1. 45. The Egyptians receive several cities from Cyrus, Ta9 /x€i/ avui at €TL Kal vdu TroXets AlyvirTLcov KaXovurat, XdpKrrrav Se Kal KvXnvi)v Trapd K6ixf)u irXncTiov daXdami^, a9 eVt Kal vvv ol aV Ueivi^v exovai. This Egyptian La- rissa is again mentioned in Hell. iii. 1. 7* Vol. II. No. 4. Z