Page:The Journal of Classical and Sacred Philology, Volume 1, 1854.djvu/421

 Notices of New Books. 411 while as regards the matter, besides a selection from the stores ac- cumulated by previous editors, we find numerous references to the latest authorities : thus Major Rawlinson on Books I. and III., Sir G. Wilkinson and Bunsen on Egypt, Bitter and Hoffmann on Geo- graphy, Professor Owen on some points of Natural History, have all been laid under contribution. Upon the whole, this edition seems to supply a gap which had been long felt, and to be the best for the use of ordinary students, at School or College, which has yet appeared in England, or probably elsewhere. The chief feature?, perhaps, of interest to scholars are the Introduc- tion and Excursus appended to the different books. In the Introduction, after a brief outline of the characteristics of such Greek Prose writers as flourished before or immediately after the Father of History, Mr Blakesley proceeds to give an animated sketch of the state of Greece in the fifth century before the Christian Era, the difficulties and perils to which travellers were exposed, the erroneous notions of geography and lax canons of historical criticism which prevailed; and finally the sources, in the shape of local traditions, and legends indigenous to particular shrines, first appearing in a simple and afterwards in a more elaborate poetical garb, with registers of the series of priests or priestesses at famous temples as standards of chronology, from which, when discordant elements had been partially harmonized and adapted to each other, and a supple- ment of travellers' stories added, the history was composed. Appended to the second book is a comparison of the accounts given of the Lake Mceris (Birket el Keroun) by Herodotus and Strabo, with the explanation by which they may be to some extent reconciled with each other, and with the facts of the case, as deduced from modern observation. The subject was first satisfactorily elucidated by French writers (MM. Jomard and Martin), and since their papers were written has been discussed in Ritter's Erdkunde, and by Bunsen ; but we believe Mr Blakesley has first presented the results in an English dress. On the third book we have an examination of the theory (more than a century old, and recently advanced anew by Major Rawlinson) of the identity of Kadytis with Gaza. Against this forcible arguments are urged : but it does not seem that the hypothesis which Mr Blakesley himself appears to favour, that Kadytis is intended for Kadesh Naphtali, is much more plausible. Kadesh Naphtali appears to have been a place of very trifling conse- quence : it lay far inland, and how it should be spoken of as "probably of no less importance than Sardis," the capital of the Lydian monarchy, and as the centre of a dependent territory, which seems to be implied in the expression pexP 1 ovpov t>v KaSvnos nokios, if it were really no moro than a small town in Galilee, is not at all evident. After all it seems not improbable that there may be some corruption of the text in the passage. Next after this follows a view of the results derived from the Behistun Inscription, according to Major Rawlinson's interpretation, which has thrown a wholly new light upon the revolution which placed Darius on the throne of the Persian empire, as well as the subsequent hbtory and policy of his reign. Vol. t. November, 1854. 28