/ • • ■ ■ 



[ 44 ] 



It mull: not however be concealed that Paufanias, a great 

 authority, favours the former interpretation, vide Boeotica, 

 page 766. But the authority of Herodotus, who, as he probably 

 had read Homer, would furely never have hazarded his afl'er- 

 tion had he fuppofed that the bard himfelf had mentioned a 

 poet previous to his time, is, in a difputed pafTage, flill greater 

 than that of Paufanias. I wonder the Dodor did not chufe 

 to quote Herodotus againfl himfelf, who, in his fecond book, 

 page 140, mentions a fong fung by the Egyptians, which, 

 though they term it Maneros, is in efFedl the fame with that 

 which the Greeks call Linus. But the fong of Linus, * which 

 was probably no other than a lamentation for the death of that 

 perfonage, may have exifted and been fung in the days of 

 Herodotus both in Egypt and in Greece, and yet Linus, the 

 fubjedl of that fong, may not have lived before the time of 

 Homer. 



But even though we Ihould follow Paufanias in his inter- 

 pretation, flill I mufl aflert that the ignorance of Herodotus 

 would not be thereby proved, fmce that elegant traveller mofl 

 oertalnly mentions Linus as a mufician, and by no means as 

 a poet; an evident proof, by the way, that, though the two 



vocations 



* The Xiiof among the Greeks was a dirge or fong of lamentation, but I do not think it 

 at all clear that the denth of Linus was therein commemorated and lamented. Perhaps this 

 fpecies of mufic was fuppofed to have been invented by Linus, and may have taken its name from 

 kirn. This earlieft of muficians is faid by fome to have been flain by his father Apollo for 

 teaching the life of gut inflead of flaxen ftrings, while others report that his brains were knocked 

 cut with his own lyr: by Hercules, the rufticity of whofe muGcal performance be had derided. 



