Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/56

46 Dr Arnold on the conquerors, and therefore strength among the conquered. But he goes on to say that they reduced the Periceci to the abject state in which he describes them, without any mention of an intervening period of comparative liberty and equality"^ : so that his account is completely irreconcilable with that of Ephorus adopted by Dr Arnold. In the foregoing remarks I have argued on the supposition of Mliller, adopted by Dr Arnold, that the names and chro- nology of the Spartan kings from the Doric conquest are historical. Although Miiller has been censured by Dr Arnold as too much inclined to scepticism, in this point it appears to me that he is more justly chargeable with too great cre- dulity. For there is little reason for supposing that the Spartans possessed an earlier regular history than any other state of Greece, when we consider, 1. The fact noticed by Mr Clinton, F. H. Part ii. p. 206, that the average length of the reigns before the beginning of au- thentic history considerably exceeds the average length of those after that epoch. 2. That the 14 first kings of both houses are represented as succeeding in the direct line from father to son, or from grandfather to grandson, without a single instance of female or collateral succession : a cir- cumstance, which, as far as I am aware, cannot be paral- leled by any single line of hereditary princes, and which moreover ceases in Sparta at the commencement of con- temporary history ; and how much is the improbability increased when the lire is double! 3. Plutarch Lye. 1. says that Eratosthenes and Apollodorus calculated the date of Lycurgus by the successions of the Spartan kings, i. e. by assuming a certain average number of years for everv reign: which they would hardly have done, if there had been an accredited chronology of those reigns founded on contempo- rary registers. Buttmann has the following remarks on this subject : " The celebrated patronymic family-names are com- monly derived from an ancestor belonging to the transition- period between fable and history, to the interval between the "^ irapd acfyicrl fxcv avro7^ Irrovofdav KaTaa-TrjvaL Kal ^ijfxoKpartav ToiavTijv, o'lav irep XP^i Tov^ fieWovTus airavTa tov p6vov ofiovoifrreLU, Toif oe cijfiou irepLoiKov^ TTOujo-acrdai p. 270. C. tcou yelp ourm fikv ej (ipx^l^ 8eiud TreirovdoTwu &c. p. 271 B.