174 THEORY OF THE EARTH: 



It would lead to no result were we now to exa- 

 mine the different accounts respecting Sardana- 

 palus, in which a celebrated writer imagined he 

 had found proofs of the existence of three princes 

 of that name, who were all victims of similar mis- 

 fortunes * ; much in the same way as another 

 writer found in the Indian Vicramaditjia, at least 

 three princes, who were equally the heroes of si- 

 milar adventures. 



It is apparently from the want of agreement 

 in all these accounts, that Strabo thought him- 

 self justified in saying, that the authority of He- 

 rodotus and Ctesias was not equal to that of Ho- 

 mer or Hesiod f. Nor has Ctesias been more 

 happy in transcribers than Manetho ; and it is very 

 difficult, at the present day, to harmonize the 

 extracts made from his writings by Diodorus, 

 Eusebius, and the Syncelle. 



Since there existed such a state of uncertainty 

 in the fifth century before the Christian era, how 

 should it be imagined that Berosus had been able 

 to clear it up in the third century before that era ; 

 or how should we repose more confidence in the 

 430,000 years which he puts before the deluge, or 



* See in the Memoirs of the Academy of Belles Let- 

 tres, vol. v. the memoir of Freret on the History of the 

 Assyrians. 



t Strabo, lib. xi. p. 507* 



