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HELLANlCUS 131 in his treatment of dates inexact," is the judgment passed upon him by Thucydides. But dates were the man's great glory ! He reckoned by generations, three to a cen- tury, in the earhest times, by the annual archons as soon as they were established. Thucydides, in all probability, means that the system of putting the events down in a lump against the archon's name, was inexact compared with his own division of succeeding summers and winters. Hellanicus was a widely-read and influential author, but he gets rough handling from his critics : Ephorus " puts him in the hrst rank of liars." ^ Apollodorus says, " He shows the greatest carelessness in almost every treatise " ; Strabo himself " would sooner believe Homer, Hesiod, and the tragedians." This last statement seems only to mean that the general tradition embodied in the poets is safer than the local tradition followed by Hellanicus. He was an able, systematic, conscientious historian, though it might possibly have been better for history had he never existed. 1 iv Toi! 7rei(TT0is {/evd6fievov. QC Josephus c. Ap. i. 3 ; Strabo, x. 451, and xiii. 612.