anaximander's book. 257 



to assign this datum to Anaximander the Younger. Diels alone, 

 apparently, has latterly had misgivings; for after ignoring this passage 

 in the first two editions of his invaluable Vorsokratikcr he included it 

 in the third, but marked it as dubious under the heading of the elder 

 Anaximander.'*^ 



Intrinsically there can be no valid objection to the assumption that 

 the early Milesians Anaximander, Dionysius and Hecataeus con- 

 cerned themselves with the cjuestion regarding the source of the Greek 

 alphabet. The absurd notions regarding the late beginnings of 

 literature in Greece, based on a few ignorant utterances of late Greeks 

 and fostered by the incomprehensible influence of Wolf's Prolegomena 

 might account for the hesitation of some modern scholars to credit 

 such a report, which obviously implies that to the lonians of the time 

 of Pisistratus writing was so familiar a fact that they must seek its 

 origins in the distant mythical past; but, apart from such preconcep- 

 tions, there is no ground for calling it in question. It is rather just 

 what the intelligent student should have expected, not only from a 

 reading of the Homeric poems, whose literary perfection and contents 

 are incomprehensible except on the supposition of long literary prac- 

 tice, but also from a critical reading of the extant remains of early 

 Greek historical writings. Herodotus, whose dependence on early 

 Ionian, especially Milesian, writers is unquestionable, has no doubt 

 of the derivation of all higher elements of Greek civilization from 

 Egypt, and constantly presupposes two lines of transmission, one 

 direct, mediated by Danaus, from Egypt to Argos, the other indirect, 

 in which the Phoenicians play the role of intermediaries.*^ In the 

 latter line Cadmus, who is supposed to have come from Tyre to Thebes, 

 is not the only link. It is not necessary here to go into details. 

 Suffice it to say that on the ground of intrinsic probability no objec- 

 tion can be urged against the assumption that Anaximander, the 

 contemporary of Croesus, held the opinion that Danaus brought the 

 alphabet direct from Egypt. 



Nor can there be a reasonable doubt that the elder, and not the 

 younger, Anaximander is intended. The datum furnished by the 

 scholiast is referred to ApoUodorus of Athens, who had cited 'the 

 Milesian historians Anaximander, Dionysius and Hecataeus' for 

 the opinion in cpestion, in his great historico-geographical treatise On 



46 V^ I. 21, 21. 



47 See Hdt. 5. 58; 2. 37, 44, 49, 54, 79. For the views of Hecataeus in 

 regard to the derivation of Greek civilization from the Orient, see Jacoby, col. 

 2678, 2697, 2741. 



