380 On Scriptural and profane Accounts 
Asia Minor. Speaking of the Lydian kings he says, 1.—7. 
«“ Candaules, whom the Greeks name Myrsilus, the king 
of Sardes, was a descendent of Alczus, the son of Her- 
cules. For Agron, the son of Ninus, the son of Belus, 
the son of Alexus, was the first of the Heraclide who 
reigned over Sardes.” Now if a son of Ninus reigned 
over Sardes, it may be said Ninus must have conquered 
Sardes. But this whole chain of genealogies wants an 
historical basis, and is an example of that propensity of 
ancient historians to turn mythology into history, of 
which we shall have numerous examples before the close 
of this inquiry. Belus was a divinity of the Assyrians, 
and must therefore have been a king deified after his death, 
or a god converted by historians into aking. If the latter 
be the case, the genealogy which gives him a father and 
grandmother is evidently false; if the former, how should 
aking of Assyria be the grandson of a petty chieftain of 
Greece ; and if three steps of the genealogy be evidently 
false, what security have we for the other two? The fact 
is, that Ninus, Belus and Hercules were all the same divi- 
nity, and that the Assyrian and Lydian mythologies are 
here entangled. Plato (de Legg. iii.) makes Priam a tri- 
butary of the kings of Assyria; and Ctesias says, that 
his name was Teutemus, and that he sent Memnon to 
Troy : but the history of Memnon is palpably mytholo- 
gical. 
(°) “This vast chasm of inaction in the Assyrian 
monarchs, from Ninyas to Sardanapallus, a vacancy as we 
may call it of at least 1200 years, is as strong a proof that 
the profane accounts are fabulous, as any of the many 
which we have offered to prove them so. Is it probable 
that in so long a succession of princes, there should have 
been one only that did any thing worth the recording ? or 
is it possible, that in so very long a succession of years, 
there should have arisen no man at all who had ambition 
