Page:The works of Anne Bradstreet in prose and verse.djvu/274

 i88 Afine BradJlreeVs Works.

So fuddenly Ihould loofe fo great a flate,

With petty Kings to joyne Confederate.

Norcanthofe Reafons which wife Raileih^ finds, [75]

Well fatisfie the moft confiderate minds :

We may with learned VJlier^ better fay,

He many Ages liv'd after that day.

And that Seniiramis then flourifhed

When famous Troy was fo beleaguered :

What e're he was, or" did, or how it fell.

We may fuggeft our thoughts but cannot tell.

For Ninias and all his race are left

In deep oblivion, of a6ts bereft:

And many^ hundred years in lilence fit,

Save a few Names a new Berofus^ writ.

And fuch as care not what befalls their fames,

May feign as man}^ a6ts as he did Names;

It may fuffice,'' if all be true that's pafi;.

T' SardaiiapaJas next, we will make hafi;e.

��* See Introduction.

" they. / eleav'n. q It is enough.

t See Raleigh's " Hiftory of the World," Bk. I. ch. 8, sec. 5, and Bk. II. ch. I, sec. I. "The work entitled Beroji Antiquitatum libri quinque cum Cotnmeniartts Joannis Annit, which appeared at Rome in 149S, fol., and was afterwards often reprinted and even translated into Italian, is one of the many fabrications of Giovanni Nanni, a Dominican monk of Vitei'bo, better known under the name of Annius ofViterbo, who died in 1502." — Smith's "Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology."

The writings of the real Berosus exist only in a fragmentary condition, as quoted by Josephus and other authors. See page [182.]

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