THE CLASSICAL JOURNAL; N°. LXXV. SEPTEMBER, 1828. AN INQUIRY Into the Credit due to DIONYSIUS of HALICARNASSUS as a Critic and Historian;-By the Author of Remarks on the supposed Dionysius Longinus.' [Continued from No. LXXIV.] Περὶ μὲν γὰρ ̓Αρκάδων τί δεῖ λέγειν αὐχούντων ἀρχαιότητα, μόλις γὰρ οὗτοι καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα γράμμασιν ἐπαιδεύθησαν ; WITHIN Josephus contra Apionem, lib. i. c. 4. The Enotri and Aborigines. ITHIN a century after Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Jew published a history of his own nation, which, beginning with the origin of the world, and ending with his own times, comprised a space of 5000 years. In disproof of the high antiquity which Josephus claimed for his countrymen, his enemies alleged the silence of the best Greek historians: and to this and other attacks on his veracity we owe the two books against Apion; in which Josephus without much ceremony asserts, that as to all which regards civilisation, the Greeks were but the children of yesterday; that their earliest pretensions to the use of letters reached no higher than to the time of Cadmus; and that according to the opinion which was then more generally received, letters were not in use among the Greeks so early as the siege of Troy. The Ægyptians, Chaldeans, and Phoenicians, however unfit to be compared with the Jews, were yet allowed by the Greeks VOL. XXXVIII. CI. JI. NO. LXXV. A |