1. BOOK sister; for the second, of Prometheus's mother of that name; and for the third, of a daughter of Epaphus. If we are yet so curious as to know the original of particular countries, then Italy must find its name from a calf of Hercules; because "Iraλos in Greek will signify some such thing; Sardinia and Africa must be from Sardos and Afer, two sons of Hercules; but yet if these will not serve, Hercules shall not want for children to people the world; for we hear of Scythes, Galatas, Lydus, some other sons of his, that gave names to Scythia, Lydia, and Galatia; with the same probability that Media had its name from Medea, and Spain and Lusitania from Pan and Lusus, two companions of Bacchus. If Persia want a founder, they have one Perseus, an Argive, ready for it; if Syria, Babylonia, and Arabia, want reasons of their names, the prodigal Greeks will give Apollo three sons, Syrus, Babylon, and Arabs, rather than they shall be heretical Acephalists. This vanity of theirs was universal, not confined to any place or age; but as any nation or people came into their knowledge, their Gods were not so decrepit but they might father one son more upon them, rather than any nation should be filia populi, and want a father. Only the grave Athenians thought scorn to have any father assigned them; their only ambition was to be accounted aborigines et genuini terræ, to be the eldest sons of their teeming mother the earth, and to have been born by the same equivocal generation that mice and frogs are, from the impregnated flime of the earth. Are we not like to have a wonderful account of ancient times, from those who could arrogate to themselves so much knowledge from such slender and thin accounts of the originals of people which they gave, and would have the world entertain, with the greatest veneration, upon their naked words? Have we not indeed great reason to hearken to those who did so frequently discover their affection to fables, and manifest their ignorance whenever they venture upon the history of other nations? X. The truth is, Herodotus himself (whom Tully calls the Father of History, which title he deserves, at least in regard of antiquity, being the oldest of the extant Greek historians) hath stood in need of his compurgators, who yet have not been able to acquit him of fabulousness, but have sought to make good his credit by recrimination, or by making it appear that Herodotus did not fully believe the stories he tells, but took them upon trust himself, and so delivers them to the world. Some impute it to l. xvii. P. 563. the ingenuity of Herodotus, that he calls his books of CHAP. history by the name of the Muses, on purpose to tell his IV. readers they must not look for mere history in him, but a mixture of such relations, which, though not true, might yet please and entertain his readers: though others think they were not so inscribed by himself, but the names were given to them by the Greeks, from the admiration his history had among them. However this were, this we are certain, that Herodotus was not first suspected of falsehood in these latter ages of the world, but even among the Greeks themselves there have been found some that would undertake to make good that charge against him. For so Suidas tells us of one Ælius Harpocration, who writ a book on purpose to discover the falsehood of Herodotus, Περὶ τῷ κατεψεῦσθαι τὴν Ἡροδότε isopíav. Plutarch's books are well known of the spite or malignity of Herodotus; but the occasion of that is sufficiently known likewise, because Herodotus had given no very favourable character of Plutarch's country. Strabo Strabo, likewise seems to accuse Herodotus much of nugacity, and mixing prodigious fables with his history; but I confess, observing the grounds on which Plutarch insists against Herodotus,. I am very prone to think that the ground of the great pique, in some of the Greek writers against Herodotus, was, that he told too many tales out of school, and had discovered too much of the infancy of Greece, and how much the Grecians borrowed of the Egyptian superstitions: which Plutarch expressly speaks Plutarch. de of, that Herodotus was too much led aside, Taïs A¡YUTTín Herod. Mal. p. 857. ἀλαζονείαις καὶ μυθολογίαις τὰ σεμνότατα καὶ ἁγνότατα τῶν Eλanvixãv ispõv åvaτpéдwv. Although, therefore, Herodotus may not be much to blame in the things which the Grecians most charge him with, yet those who favour him most cannot excuse his palpable mistakes in some things, and ignorance in others. Josephus thinks he was Joseph. c. deceived by the Egyptian priests in things relating to the App. 1. i. state of their affairs; of which Jos. Scaliger gives many Isagog.l. iii. accounts. Either, saith he, the persons who gave him his intelligence were ignorant themselves, or else, like true Egyptians, they were cunning enough, and imposed upon Herodotus, being a stranger, and unacquainted with their artifices; or else he did not understand his interpreter, or was deceived by him; or lastly, Herodotus might have so much of a Grecian in him, as to adulterate the true history with some fables of his own; wherefore he rather adheres to Manetho than Herodotus as to the Egyptian history: Ed. Xyl. Scal. Can. 1. BOOK who yet elsewhere (I will not say with what constancy to himself) vouchsafes him this high elogium, that he is Idem ad fcrinium originum Græcarum et Barbararum, auctor à num. Eus. doctis nunquam deponendus. 1572. XI. c. 23. Arrian. It cannot be denied but a great deal of very useful history may be fetched out of him; yet who can excuse his ignorance, when he not only denies there is an ocean compassing the land, but condemns the geographers for Herod. l. ii. asserting it? Unless this might be any plea for his ignorance in geography, that he had so many great names besides him guilty of the same : witness Aristotle's suspicion that the Indies should be joined to Europe about the Streights, where they feigned Hercules's Pillars to be and the Theræans' ignorance where any such place as Libya was, when the Oracle bade them plant a colony there. Would it not have been worth one's while to have heard the great noise the sun used to make every night when he doused his head in the ocean, as none of the most ignorant Greeks imagined? and to have seen the sun about Hercules's Pillars to be an hundred times bigger than he appeared to them, as they commonly fancied? Was not Alexander, think we, well tutored in his cosmography by his master Aristotle, when he writ word to his mother, he had found out the head of Nilus in the East Indies, as Arrian relates the story? No wonHist. Alex. der, then, his soldiers should mistake the mountain Paropamisus, in the Indies, for Caucasus, near Colchis, when even their learned men thought Colchis the utmost boundary of the world on that side, as Hercules's Pillars on this. What a lamentable account then were they able to give of the most ancient times, who were so ignorant of the state of the world in their own time, when learning was in its height in Greece, and frequent discoveries daily made of the world, by the wars which were made abroad? Eratosthenes confesseth the Grecians were ignorant of a great part of Asia, and the northern parts of Europe, before Alexander's expedition; and Strabo, 1. i. Strabo confesseth as much of the western parts of Europe, till the Roman expeditions thither. Palus Mæotis and Colchis, saith he, were not fully known till the time of Mithridates; nor Hyrcania, Bactriana, and Scythia, till the Parthian wars. Eratosthenes mentions some who thought the Arabian sea to be only a lake. And it further argues their ignorance in geography, that the later geographers always correct the errors of the elder; as Ptolemy doth Marinus, Eratosthenes those before him, 1. vi. IV. Hipparchus Eratosthenes; and Strabo not only both CHAP. them, but Eudoxus, Ephorus, Dicæarchus, Polybius, Posidonius, and almost all that had writ before him. Í insist on these things, not that I would destroy the credibility of any human history, where the authors are guilty of any mistakes, (for that were to take away the credit of all human history,) but to shew how insufficient those historians are to give us a certain account of the original of nations, who were so unacquainted with the state of those nations which they pretend to give an account of. For where there is wanting divine revelation, (which was not pretended by any Greek historians; and if it had, had been easily refuted,) there must be supposed a full and exact knowledge of all things pertaining to that which they pretend to give an account of; and if they discover apparent defect and insufficiency, (which hath been largely manifested as to them in the precedent discourse,) we have ground to deny the credibility of those histories upon the account of such defect and insufficiency. So much then will abundantly suffice for the making good the first argument against the credibility of profane histories, as to the account which they give of ancient times, different from the word of God. VOL. I. BOOK I. I. CHAP. V. The general Uncertainty of Heathen Chronology. I. The Want of Credibility in Heathen History further proved, THE |