145 



was thought the son of a mnse; and the latter, of Apollo, 

 Museus Avrote a poem, called The Rape of Proserpine^ 

 1400 years before Christ, according to the Parian Mar- 

 bles.* Tatian, who floin-ished in the second century, men- 

 tions many other poets, Avho preceded Homer.-f- Nor were 

 there barely poets, but also many historians, before Homer; 

 as Corinnus, Dictys Cretensis, &c. who wrote immediately 

 after the Trojan war; and, consequently, nearly 1200 3'ears 

 before Christ.J But, if we attend to the state of society, 

 at the times of Linus and Orpheus, we shall find it highly 

 ' barbarous, by the avowal of the most credible Greek his- 

 torians themselves; and scarcely improved, in the age that 

 immediately preceded the siege of Troy, and called the 

 Heroic. 



Thucydides, who wrote about 410 years before Christ, 

 tells us,l| that, in the earliest times, Greece enjoyed little 

 or no repose. The various tribes, that inhabited it, had 

 no intercourse with each other: the stronger continually 

 expelled the weaker from the more fertile parts; these 

 sought refuge in the territory of Attica, which, being the 

 most barren, was, at first, thinly inhabited; but, from these 

 new accessions, became very populous. Yet, its inhabi- 

 tants did not form a political union with each other, nor 

 had any common laws, before the reign of Cecrops, about 



VOL. X. T the 



* See the Appendix to Playiair's Chronology, 

 t Euseb. Prepart. Evang. Lib. X. cap. ii. 

 X Voss. de Hist. Grfecis, Lib. IV. cap. i. p. 428, 

 II Lib. 1. cap. ii. Apollodor. Lib. IlL 



