which was described by Herodotus, Thucydides, and Plutarch, in his life of Theseus, to have been a turbulent and insecure state of piracy, rapine, and violence of every kind. Such was the rape of Io, the daughter of Inachus, king of Argos, by some Phoenician traders, about B.C. 1745; the rape of Europa, daughter of Agenor, king of Tyre, by some Greeks, in reprisal, about B.C. 1600; which formed a precedent for the rape of Helen afterwards, by Alexander, or Paris, of Troy. Herod. Lib. I. 1.. These seem to be described by Hesiod's" Brazen race, in no respect like the Silver; robust, warlike, hardy, and rapacious; having brazen weapons, and brazen houses (probably armour) and working with brazen tools, for iron was not yet discovered. They perished by each other's hands, and went to the house of Hades, nameless, (or without renown,")-because they wanted poets or historians, in those rude and barbarous times, to celebrate their exploits *. Vers. 144, 145. This age ended with Deucalion's flood; for we are told by Apollodorus, and by Proclus, in their Scholia, that " Jove sent a flood to destroy the men of the Brazen Age." See Homer, Iliad. 1, 10. Didym. This Deucalion and his flood, however, are not to be confounded with the former Deucalion, or Noah, described by Ovid, Lucian, &c. and the general deluge; though several of the circumstances of the former are injudiciously applied to the latter, by the poets and their scholiasts. Deucalion was a proper name in frequent use among the Greeks, on account of the celebrity of the first. There are four Deucalions, at least, on record: Noah, the first; the present Deucalion, king of Thessaly; Deucalion, son of Prometheus, and brother of Atlas; and Deucalion, the son of Minos, an Argonaut, and the father of * This interpretation of avovvμo, "nameless," by which the Brazen was distinguished from the Heroic Age, is supported by Horace in the following marked references : Vixere fortes unte Agamemnona Multi: sed omnes illacrymabiles Urgentur, ignotique, longâ Nocte; carent quia vate sacro.—Od. 4, 9, 25. Nam fuit ante Helenam mulier teterrima belli Causa: sed ignotis perierunt mortibus illi, Quos Venerem incertam rapientes, more ferarum, Viribus editior cædebat, ut in grege taurus.-SAT. 1, 3, 108. Idomeneus, who warred at Troy. Indeed, the confusion of different persons bearing the same name, is one of the most fruitful sources of error and perplexity in ancient history and chronology. 4. The Heroic Age, which succeeded, is represented by Hesiod as "A divine race, juster and better than the brazen; they were called demigods. But the two last generations thereof perished in destructive war and direful combat; namely, they who warred at Thebes about the sheep of Edipus, [or disputed the succession to his inheritance, such as Tydeus, Capaneus, &c.] and they who invaded Troy by sea in ships, to avenge the rape of Helen, [such as their sons, Diomedes, Sthenelus, &c.] yet these were, after death, translated by Jove to the happy isles, in the deep [Atlantic] ocean. There they pass a quiet life, and the earth produces them annually a triple harvest of pleasant fruits." Vers. 156-174. This Heroic Age, so celebrated by the principal poets and historians of Greece,-Hesiod, Homer, Apollonius, Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, &c. Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Diodorus Siculus, &c. included six or seven generations, which Sir Isaac has so unmercifully pared away to four! For we learn from Apollodorus, in his Scholia on Homer, Iliad. xii. 117, and from Homer himself, Iliad. vi. 154-206, combined, that Deucalion, king of Thessaly, had seven descendants in one line; and from Proclus, that he had six by another, from the flood to the end of the Trojan war; namely, Hellen, Eolus, Sisyphus, Glaucus, Bellerophon, Hippolochus, and Glaucus II. in the former; and Hellen, Eolus, Critheus, Pheretes, Admetus, and Eumelus, in the latter. It began therefore, with Deucalion's flood, in the second year of his reign, B.C. 1548, according to the Parian Chronicle; and it ended B.C. 1183. 5. The Iron Age followed the destruction of Troy, in the course of which Hesiod himself lived. He abruptly introduces his account of it by an ardent wish, either "that he had died before it began, or should be born after its end;" struck with a lively sense of the daily and incessant toils and miseries of life. And he predicts, that Jove shall destroy this race likewise, when the natural and moral degeneracy of mankind shall come to the full; when men shall grow grey-headed soon after their birth, or the term of life shall dwindle to its shortest standard, * Ευτ' αν γεινομενοι πολιοκροτάφοι τελεθωσιν. This expression is similar to that which Josephus puts in the mouth of Abraham, deploring the shortness of his son Isaac's compared with the original in the Golden Age; when human miseries, and crimes of every kind against God and man shall prevail universally: then shall white-robed Modesty and retributive Justice, forsaking the world, fly away to heaven, leaving grievous woes to mortals; and of evil there shall be no remedy *." Vers. 174-201. 6. Hesiod no where notices expressly a sixth age to succeed the Iron, nor that it should be a state of regeneration, or revival of the Golden Age. Both these circumstances, however, are strongly implied in the wish itself: Μηκετ' επειτ' ωφειλον εγω πεμπτοισι μετείναι Ανδρασιν, αλλ' η προσθε θανειν, η επειτα γενεσθαι "O that I had not been doomed to live among Men of the fifth race; but that I had either For now, indeed, there is an iron race." And this is confirmed by that profound antiquary Virgil, who, in his celebrated description of the Golden Age revived, unquestionably refers to several of the preceding passages, and furnishes an excellent supplement, as it were, to Hesiod. Ultima Cumai venit jam carminis ætas : Permixtos Heroas; et ipse videbitur illis, Eclog. 4. life, when going to be sacrificed : επειδη γεννηθεις αποθανοιη, “ since you must die soon after your birth!” Ant. i. 13, 3. And Hesiod himself has explained it shortly after by αιψα γηράσκοντας τοκρας, men “ speedily growing old after they become parents." Vers. 185. Newton has miserably misunderstood the meaning, and perverted the application of this passage; 1. by supposing that it related to the men then living in Hesiod's days; and 2. that it was applicable to the preceding ages, when the men then living in each of them should grow old also, as symptomatic of their dissolution. * This gradual deterioration of the Iron Age is well expressed by Horace : Damnosa quid non imminuit dies!— Ætas parentum, pejor avis, tulit Nos nequiores; mox daturos Progeniem vitiosiorem.-OD. 3, 6, 45. Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quæ vehat Argo Atque iterum ad Trojam magnus mittetur Achilles.— Omnis feret omnia Tellus. Here" the last age," "the renewal of a great succession of generations," "the return of the virgin, Astræa, or Justice," who had fled near the close of the Iron Age; "the return of Saturn's reign," which began with the Golden Age; "the birth of this Apollo at the end of the Iron Age, and recommencement of the Golden;""his living the life of the gods, and conversing with (Divis) the Demons, Demigods, and Heroes ;" and " the restoration of universal peace and plenty," as in Saturn's reign, &c. all convey the strongest marks of reference to Hesiod's account of the ages. Virgil, however, professed to record only the "Cumaan Sibyl's prophecy;" and Hesiod, too, might have derived his ages of the world from the same source; for this Sibyl, or wandering prophetess, Phœbi Triviæque Sacerdos, "priestess of the Sun and Moon," came originally, we are told, from Babylonia, and settled at Cuma, on the coast of Italy, about or after the time of the destruction of Troy, where she was supposed to have lived to the reign of Tarquin, to whom she offered for sale her prophecies, comprised in nine volumes; of which the king at length, after she had burnt the rest, purchased three, for the same price she had demanded, at first, for the whole. But Hesiod's father lived at Cuma, and removed from thence to Ascra, in Boeotia; consequently, he might have been acquainted with that early tradition of six millenary ages of the world, which prevailed throughout the East, and was propagated to the West, by the Sibyls and others: which perhaps was founded on Balaam's prophecies, foretelling the coming of CHRIST. "A star shall arise from Jacob," &c. And it is truly remarkable, that "the Star of our salvation," the true Apollo, or " Sun of righteousness," ‚”“the Prince of peace," was actually born in the course of the sixth millenary age, about A.M. 5411, or shortly before, according to our rectification; and began that partial regeneration of the world, which the true word of prophecy tells us will be completed at his second advent in glory. The adulation of Virgil, indeed, misapplied this Sibylline prophecy, to the infant of whom Scribonia, the wife of Augustus, was then pregnant, in the year of Pollio's consulship, B.C. 40; but who, belying the poet's prediction, proved to be a daughter, according to Dio Cassius, namely, the infamous Julia, as she afterwards turned out. See Martyn's learned Notes on the fourth Eclogue of Virgil, p. 156. The age of Hesiod, therefore, (to return to that) was not " within 30 or 35 years after the destruction of Troy," as Newton misrepresents, but rather the Parian date, B.C. 944, not less than 239 years after; nay, it was probably more than 239 years: for Thucydides declares, that "Homer was born a long time after the Trojan war;" and Homer flourished B.C. 907, according to the Parian Chronicle, only 37 years after Hesiod. And Herodotus also, born B.C. 484, represents Hesiod and Homer as living not above 400 years before his time, or about B.C. 884*, which is about 300 years lower than the established date of Troy. And this testimony of Herodotus," the oldest historian of the Greeks now extant," which Newton himself cites, p. 160, militates most strongly against him; for B.C. 884, substracted from his curtailed date of Troy, B.C. 904, leaves only an interval of 20 years; which is altogether absurd, as well as inconsistent with the foregoing, of 30 or 35 years. I strongly suspect that Newton himself was aware of this absurdity and inconsistency, and to hide it, referred the time of Hesiod and Homer, by a round-about reckoning, to the remoter date of Solomon's death, instead of immediately referring it to the nearer date of Troy. "And therefore (says he) Hesiod and Homer flourished (B.C. 884.) within 110 or 120 years after the death of Solomon (B.C. 979.) and according to my reckoning, the taking of Troy was but one generation earlier," p. 160. We miss, indeed, in his Chronology, that luminous arrangement, accuracy, and precision, which mark his earlier productions in philosophy and mathematics; for 979-884-95 years only. I have been thus particular in noticing and correcting the leading errors and defalcations in Newton's Grecian Chronology, because it is the most ingenious, and also the most elaborate, abstruse, and difficult part of the work; and because, from the imposing authority of his great name, it is still held in estimation by some respectable historians and chronologers. For although it has been censured by many of the learned—Whiston and Bedford, in 1728, the very year of its publication; Shuck * Clemens Alexandrinus says, that Lycurgus, when he was a young man, conversed with Homer. He afterwards collected his Rhapsodies, or scattered poems, together. |