Page:Ante-Nicene Christian Library Vol 4.djvu/426

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422
THE MISCELLANIES.
[Book i.

Cecrops, who was an aboriginal of double race, as Tatian expressly says; and Arcadia, founded by Pelasgus, younger too by nine generations; and he, too, is said to have been an aboriginal. And more recent than this last by fifty-two generations, was Pthiotis, founded by Deucalion. And from the time of Inachus to the Trojan war twenty generations or more are reckoned; let us say, four hundred years and more. And if Ctesias says that the Assyrian power is many years older than the Greek, the exodus of Moses from Egypt will appear to have taken place in the forty-second year of the Assyrian empire,[1] in the thirty-second year of the reign of Belochus, in the time of Amosis the Egyptian, and of Inachus the Argive. And in Greece, in the time of Phoroneus, who succeeded Inachus, the flood of Ogyges occurred; and monarchy subsisted in Sicyon first in the person of Ægialeus, then of Europs, then of Telches; in Crete, in the person of Cres. For Acusilaus says that Phoroneus was the first man. Whence, too, the author of Phoronis said that he was "the father of mortal men." Thence Plato in the Timæus, following Acusilaus, writes: "And wishing to draw them out into a discussion respecting antiquities, he[2] said that he ventured to speak of the most remote antiquities of this city[3] respecting Phoroneus, called the first man, and Niobe, and what happened after the deluge." And in the time of Phorbus lived Actreus, from whom is derived Actaia, Attica; and in the time of Triopas lived Prometheus, and Atlas, and Epimetheus, and Cecrops of double race, and Ino. And in the time of Crotopus occurred the burning of Phaethon, and the deluge[4] of Deucalion; and in the time of Sthenelus, the reign of Amphictyon, and the arrival of Danaus in the Peloponnesus; and under Dardanus happened the building of Dardania, whom, says Homer,

"First cloud-compelling Zeus begat,"—

  1. The deficiencies of the text in this place have been supplied from Eusebius' Chronicles.
  2. i.e. Solon, in his conversation with the Egyptian priests.
  3. πόλει, "city," is not in Plato.
  4. ἐπομβοια.