Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

try for her, that she, in imagination, might have an island of her own. But, in filling up the blanks of old histories, we need not be so scrupulous; for it is not to be feared that time should run backward, and, by restoring the things themselves to knowledge, make our conjectures appear ridiculous. What if some good copy of an ancient, author could be found, shewing, (if we have it not already,) the perfect truth of these uncertainties? Would it be more shame to have believed, in the meanwhile, Annius or Torniellus, than to have believed nothing? Here I will not say, that the credit which we give to Annius, may chance otherwhiles to be given to one of those authors whose names he pretendeth. Let it suffice, that in regard of authority, I had rather trust Scaliger or Torniellus, than Annius; yet him than them, if his assertion be more probable, and more agreeable to approved histories, than their conjecture, as in this point it seems to me; it having, moreover, gotten some credit by the approbation of many, and those not meanly learned.

To end this tedious disputation, I hold it a sure course, in examination of such opinions as have once gotten the credit of being general, so to deal as Pacuvius in Capua did with the multitude, finding them desirous to put all the senators of the city to death. He locked the senators up within the state-house, and offered their lives to the people's mercy; obtaining thus much, that none of them should perish, until the commonalty had both pronounced him worthy of death, and elected a better in his place. The condemnation was hasty, for as fast as every name was read, all the town cried, let him die; but the execution required more leisure; for in substituting another, some notorious vice of the person, or baseness of his condition, or insufficiency of his quality, made each new one that was offered to be rejected; so that finding the worse and less

choice, the further and the more that they sought, it was finally agreed, that the old should be kept for lack of better.

SECT. V.

Of the Olympiads, and the time when they began.

AFTER this division of the Assyrian empire, fol lows the instauration of the Olympian games, by Iphitus, in the reign of the same king Uzziah, and in his fifty-first year. It is, I know, the general opinion, that these games were established by Iphitus, in the first of Jotham; yet is not that opinion so general, but that authors, weighty enough, have given to them a more early beginning. The truth is, that in fitting those things unto the sacred history, which are found in profane authors, we should not be too careful of drawing the Hebrews to those works of time which had no reference to their af fairs; it is enough, that, setting in due order these beginnings of accounts, we join them to matters of Israel and Judah, where occasion requires.

These Olympian games, and exercises of activity, were first instituted by Hercules, who measured the length of the race by his own foot, by which Pythagoras found out the stature and likely strength of Hercules's body. They took name, not from the mountain Olympus, but from the city Olympia, otherwise Pisa, near unto Elis, where also Jupiter's temple in Elis, famous among the Grecians, and reputed among the wonders of the world, was known by the name of the temple of Jupiter Olympius. These games were exercised from every fourth year complete, in the plains of Elis, a city of Peloponnesus, near the river Alpheus.

After the death of Hercules, these meetings were discontinued for many years', till Iphitus, by advice from the oracle of Apollo, re-established them,

1 Aul. Gell. 1. i. c. i. ex Plut. Plut. out of Hermippus,

Lycurgus the law-giver then living; from which time they were continued by the Grecians, till the reign of Theodosius the emperor, according to Cedrenus: others think that they were dissolved under Constantine the Great.

From this institution, Varro accounted the Grecian times, and their stories, to be certain, but reckoned all before either doubtful or fabulous; and -yet Pliny gives little credit to all that is written of Greece, till the reign of Cyrus, who began in the fifty-fifth Olympiad, as Eusebius out of Diodorus, Castor, Polybius, and others hath gathered, in whose time the seven wise Grecians flourished; for Solon had speech with Croesus, and Croesus was overthrown and taken by Cyrus.

Many patient and piercing brains have laboured to find out the certain beginning of these Olympiads, namely, to set them in the true year of the world, and the reign of such and such kings; but seeing they all differ in the first account, that is, of the world's year, they can hardly jump in particulars thereon depending.

Cyril against Julian, and Didymus, begin the Olympiads the forty-ninth of Osias or Azariah.

Eusebius, who is contrary to himself in this reckoning, accounts with those that find the first Olympiad in the beginning of the four hundred and sixth year after Troy; yet he telleth us that it was in the fiftieth year of Uzziah, which is, (as I find it,) two years later.

Eratosthenes placeth the first Olympiad four hundred and seven years after Troy, reckoning the years that passed between; to whom Dionysius Halicarnasseus, Diodorus Siculus, Solinus, and many others adhere.

The distance between the destruction of Troy and

2 Plin. l. xxxvi. c. iv. 3 Euseb. de Præp. Evang. 1. x. c. iii, 4 Eratosth. apud Clem. Alezand, Strom, l. i.

the first Olympiad, is thus collected by Eratosthenes From the taking of Troy to the descent of Hercules's posterity into Peloponnesus, were fourscore years; thence to the Ionian expedition, threescore years; from that expedition to the time of Lycurgus's government in Sparta, one hundred and fifty-nine; and thence to the first Olympiad, one hundred and eight years. In this account the first year of the first Olympiad is not included.

But vain labour it were to seek the beginning of the Olympiads by numbering the years from the taking of Troy, which is of a date far more uncertain. Let it suffice, that by knowing the instauration of these games to have been in the four hundred and eighth year current after Troy, we may reckon back to the taking of that city, setting that and other accidents, which have reference thereto, in their proper times. The certainty of things following the Olympiads, must needs teach us how to find when they began.

To this good use, we have the ensuing years, unto the death of Alexander the Great, thus divided by the same Eratosthenes. From the beginning of the Olympiads, to the passage of Xerxes into Greece, two hundred fourscore and seventeen years; from thence to the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, eight and forty years; forwards to the victory of Lysander, seven and twenty; to the battle of Leuctra, thirty-four; to the death of Philip king of Macedon, five and thirty; and, finally, to the death of Alexander, twelve. The whole sum ariseth to four hundred and fifty-three years; which number he otherwise also collecteth, and it is allowed by the most.

Now, for placing the institution of the Olympiads in the one and fiftieth year of Uzziah, we have arguments, grounded upon that which is certain, concerning the beginning of Cyrus's reign, and the death of Alexander; as also upon the astronomical calculation of sundry eclipses of the sun; as of that which

happened when Xerxes set out of Sardis with his army to invade Greece, and of divers others.

Touching Cyrus; it is generally agreed that his reign as king, before he was lord of the great monarchy, began the first year of the five and fiftieth Olympiad, and that he reigned thirty years; they who give him but twenty-nine years of reign, (following Herodotus rather than Tully,' Justin, Eusebius, and others,) begin a year later, which comes all to one reckoning. So is the death of Alexander set by all good writers, in the first year of the hundred and fourteenth Olympiad. This later note of Alexander's death, serves well to lead us back to the beginning of Cyrus; as many the like observations do. For if we reckon upwards from the time of Alexander, we shall find all to agree with the years of the Olympiads, wherein Cyrus began his reign, either as king, or, (taking the word monarch to signify a lord of many kingdoms,) as a great monarch. From the beginning of Cyrus, in the first year of the fifty-fifth Olympiad, unto the end of the Persian empire, which was in the third of the hundred and twelfth Olympiad, we find two hundred and thirty years complete : from the beginning of Cyrus's monarchy, which lasted but seven years, we find complete two hundred and seven years, which was the continuance of the Persian empire.

Now, therefore, seeing that the first year of Cyrus's monarchy (which was the last of the sixtieth Olympiad, and the two hundred and fortieth year from the institution of those games by Iphitus,) followed the last of the seventy years of the captivity of Judah, and desolation of the land of Israel; manifest it is, that we must reckon back those seventy years, and one hundred and seventy years more, the last which passed under the kings of Judah, to find the

5 Tull. de Div. l. 1. Just. l. 1. Euseb. de Præp. Evang. 1. 10. c. 3. et de Dem. Evang. 1. 8. c. 2.

« AnteriorContinuar »