258 HEIDEL. 



the Catalogue of Ships. He it was, we recall, who somewhere met with 

 Anaximander's book, from which he must have derived the informa- 

 tion enabling him to date the old Milesian with such singular precision. 

 The character of that information, as we have pointed out, was pre- 

 sumably historical and geographical. The datum regarding the 

 origin of the Greek alphabet, being of the same character, naturally 

 found its way into a work belonging to the same line of tradition. 

 But the date of Anaximander was, as we have seen, properly given in 

 Apollodorus' Chronicles. Since he was especially interested in chronol- 

 ogy, we should expect Apollodorus to give the names in chronological 

 order.*^ In the versified Chronicles he might for metrical reasons 

 depart from this natural order, but not in his prose treatise On the 

 Catalogue of Ships. He observed, therefore, the order — right or 

 wrong — in which these writers appeared in liis Chronicles, barring 

 metrical difficulties not likely to occur except in the event that they 

 had to be mentioned in the same clause. 



Now it happens that the names Anaximander, Dionysius, Hecataeus 

 actually follow one another in alphabetical order. In the case of 

 Anaximander, acknowledged to be older than the other members of 

 the group, nobody would deny that chronological considerations 

 might nevertheless have determined his position at the head of the 

 list; but in regard to the other two question will at once arise, because 

 Dionysius is commonly considered junior to Hecataeus. We have 

 then to canvass the question of their chronology, especially in so far 

 as Apollodorus may be supposed to have been concerned in fixing it. 

 The datum unquestionably from liis treatise On the Catalogue of Ships 

 we have seen, as well as the reasons for regarding his list as arranged 

 in chronological order. Aside from this we have several other state- 

 ments. Heraclitus, as we have observed, names his polymaths in 

 the following seciuence: Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Hecataeus. 

 That this order is roughly chronological will not be denied, though a 

 question might arise regarding the relative ages of Pythagoras and 

 Xenophanes. They were in any case roughly contemporary, and 

 Xenophanes referred to Pythagoras.*^ Hence we may disregard this 



48 In careful prose writers this was the common practice; cf. Hecataeus /r. 

 143 and 365; but it was of course not invariable. Sometimes, as e.g. in 

 schoUa carelessly composed or resulting from the abbreviation of longer dis- 

 cussions, the rule is not observed, cf. Hecataeus fr. 334. In the case of 

 Apollodorus it is almost a foregone conclusion that he followed this practice, 

 natural to one who was so deeply interested in determining the chronology of 

 authors. 



49 Fr. 7 Diels. This does not, of course, prove that Pythagoras was the 

 older; but it might be so taken by Heraclitus. 



