Page:A Skeleton Outline of Greek History.djvu/16

Other lists were those of the archons at Athens, first published by Demetrius of Phalerum, and of the ephors of Sparta.

The first Scholar who attempted to draw up a systematic chronology was Eratosthenes of Alexandria (B. C. 240), whose labours were the foundation of all that came after. His work was epitomised and corrected by Apollodorus (B. C. 140). This smaller work, which was composed in verse, became the standard manual on the subject in antiquity. If we possessed the works of these great chronologist entire, we should be in a much better position than we are, for the later writers (Eusebius, Jerome, Syncellus, Africanus), from whom our dates have come to us, copied and misunderstood them. Even in Eusebius we find that one and the same man and event is attributed to different years, a confusion which must have arisen from combining more than one work on chronology in his own treatise. In Suidas things are even worse; we have mere blunders, a man's floruit being put for his birth, or vice versa. As a rule, the later the authority the worse it is, because there is less of intelligent work, and more of slavish copying.

But even the best works on chronology in antiquity seem to have laboured under certain deficiencies, which were perhaps unavoidable at the time. Reigns are not distinguished from generations. The average length of a generation may be put at 30 or 30⅓ years (three generations making up a century), but reigns are shorter, and an average of 25 years is perhaps as much as can be allowed. On this calculation, nine generations make 300 years, buy nine reigns make only 225 years. But it will be seen from the list of early kings in Corinth, Sparta, and Argos (given below, that even 33⅓ years are below the average of the reigns which are required to cover the time between the first Olympiad and the traditional date of such event as the Trojan War and the Return of the Heracleids.

Again, attempts were made to reduce the chronology to system. In the scheme of Attic chronology attributed to Hellanicus, the same number of years is assumed for the reign of the Neleid family at Athens, and for the interval between