33 



selves ill a plurality of wives : the Greeks were not per- 

 mitted to have more than one, Diodorus, Lib. 1. § 80. p. 91 ; 

 and of this law, Cecrops, the pretended Egyptian, was the 

 author.* Nay, the Egyptians had. an utter aversion to 

 the Greek usages, Herod. Lib. 2. §91 ; and even for those 

 of all other nations, ibid, which is a sufficient proof that they 

 sent out no colonies, for these at least would have retained 

 the customs of the parent state. The Greeks descended 

 from lavan, the son of Japhet, the Egyptians from Misraim, 

 the son of Cham. The only historian that ascribed to the 

 Athenians an Egyptian origin, is Tlieopompus, who lived in 

 the time of Philip of Macedon, whom Josephus, in his first 

 book against Appion, cap. 24, stigmatizes as unworthy of 

 credit, as he wrote with an express view of humbling the 

 Athenians. Cornelius Nepos, also,-)- and Dionysius of Halicar- 

 nassus treat him as a calumniator. Moreover, he has been 

 contradicted, as to what regards the Athenians, as Wesseling 

 observes in his note on this passage of Diodorus. The only 

 reasons assigned by the Egyptian priests as the ground of their 

 assertion are, first, tliat tlie Athenians alone called their city 

 Astu, as did also the Egyptians, which is fiilse, as Wesseling 

 shews ; and if trtte, were a feeble reason indeed ; secondly, 

 that the Athenian citizens were divided into three classes, as 

 VOL. XI. V were 



* See Potter's Antiquities, vol. I. p. 8, and vol. 270, L'Arcber's Herodot. 

 vol. 2. p. 3C7 : these, and many otlier cusitoms, entirely opposite to eacli other, are 

 stated by thb liearned Doctor Musgrave, in liis Treatise on tlm Greek Mythology, 

 p. 5, 6, and 7. - 



t In Alcibiade. 



