Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/381

371 From the Marm. Oxon. 21. p. 15 it may be inferred that the Poseidia were celebrated on the eighth of Poseideon.) The father of Theseus is said to have been either the god Poseidon (Phit. 6) or the Attic king Ægeus, whose name, being derived from waves, is a designation of the god of the sea, places consecrated to whom were called Mo-ea. and who was called on the Isthmus Ægeon (Callim. ap. Plut. Sympos. V. 3. S) otherwise Ægoeus (Pherecydes ap. Schol. Apoll. Apod. I. 831. comp. Lycophr. 135.) Hes. Ægeus is only another name for Poseidon." The reign of Ogyges began, as M. Raoul Rochette assures us, 1796 years before the Christian æra. "Cette date est précise, autorisée et se concilie aisément avec tous les temoginages historiques." Vol. p. 101. It is at least equally certain that Theseus lived about 1200  Dr Lempriere says " the rape of Helen by Theseus took place 1215 " Making a reasonable allowance for the time which he would spend in this and other juvenile exploits, we may suppose him to have begun his graver labours as a legislator at the date abovementioned. Here then we have nearly 6OO years of Attic history, and we have obtained nothing from it, but names derived from the mythology of the country, and tales connected with those names, evidently designed to explain rites, customs, institutions, and national affinities and relations, the true origin of which was lost. From Erechtheus to Ægeus we have been travelling round a circle, setting out from the worship of Neptune to arrive at the same fact again. There is nothing here which might not just as well have been invented and referred back to a venerable antiquity as preserved by tradition. The adaptations of names and explanations of customs are not incidental and occasional, in a history bearing in other respects the character of a real tradition; they are absolutely the whole of the history; there is not a single name in the list of kings, which has not an obvious reference to something which seemed to require an historical explanation. The history must therefore be referred to the desire to produce such an explanation, and what is true in it is only the existence of the facts to be explained, what is probable is only better imagined or more sagaciously inferred than what is improbable.