260 HEIDEL. 



derived from some chronicle, was it would seem, somewhat awk- 

 wardly combined with a bibliography, which has in cons^ciuence 

 been lost.^^ It admits of no doubt, however, that the chronologist 

 was himself cjuite clear in regard to the Milesian writers and their 

 date; and I do not entertain the least doubt that the chronological 

 datum comes ultimately from Apollodorus. In form it agrees per- 

 fectly with numerous others derived from his Chronicles: it is obviously 

 intended to fix the floruit of Hecataeus and Dionysius at the year 

 520 B.C., the year in which Darius, the last Persian king with whom 

 the chronologist could establish a connection, became King of Baby- 

 lon.^ ^ Apollodorus no doubt dated by the Athenian Archon Epony- 

 mus, but some later author converted the date, using the corresponding 

 Olympiad. We thus see that Apollodorus might perfectly well name 

 the two Milesian historians in either order, Dionysius and Hecataeus, 

 or Hecataeus and Dionysius, since he fixed their floruit in the same 

 year. The two statements therefore complement and confirm one 

 another. Regarding Hecataeus, at any rate, the date, which would 

 make him over sixty years of age at the time of the Ionian Revolt, 

 cannot be far wrong: and respecting Dionysius we have no informa- 

 tion that in the least justifies us in questioning the correctness of 

 Apollodorus' calculation. 



Having disposed of the objections to the acceptance of the state- 

 ment attributed to Apollodorus and having justified our reference of 

 it to the elder Anaximander, it remains for us to signalize the impor- 

 tance of the fact reported as evidence of the character and contents 

 of his book. So much at least we may confidently affirm: that it 

 did not confine itself to cosmological and other cognate matters 

 which might justify the title On Nature to the exclusion of such a 

 title as Tour of the Earth; for a glance at the list of authorities whom 

 the scholiast on Dionysius Thrax cites in regard to the origin of the 



55 The statement that Herodotus, his junior, profited by the work of Heca- 

 taeus, which here occurs, recurs elsewhere; when it is asserted that Hecataeus 

 was a 'hearer' of Protagoras, there is obviously a confusion, most probably 

 due to the dropping out of a sentence or two. Protagoras probably came into 

 the passage as going with Herodotus to Thurii; beyond that one is at a loss for 

 reasonable conjecture. The further statement of the entry regarding Heca- 

 taeus, that he was the first to pubhsh a prose history, while Pherecydes pub- 

 lished the first prose treatise, a farrago of Uterary odds and ends belonging to 

 the class of evprnxara, shows the general character of the source from which 

 Suidas derived this part of his notice. It somehow crowded out the data 

 regarding Hecataeus' own book derived from the catalogues of the Alexandrian 

 libraries. These we are able in a manner to recover from other sources. 



56 This is precisely in the manner of Apollodorus. Why Jacoby should 

 deny that this date comes from him I cannot comprehend. 



