THEORY OP THE EARTH. 151 



himself of any of these observations, though made 

 in the country where he wrote ? 



There was no great empire as yet established 

 in Asia at the time of Moses. Even the Greeks, 

 notwithstanding their ingenuity in inventing fa- 

 bles, did not pretend even to invent an antiquity 

 for their own nation ; for the most ancient colo- 

 nies from Egypt and Phoenicia, by which they were 

 reclaimed from a state of barbarism, are not car- 

 ried back more than four thousand years from the 

 present era; and the most ancient authors in 

 which these colonies are mentioned, are a thou- 

 sand years posterior to the events. The Phoeni^ 

 eians themselves had only been recently establish- 

 ed in Syria, when they began to form establish- 

 ments in Greece. 



The astronomical observations of the Chal- 

 deans, sent by Calisthenes to Aristotle, are said, 

 to have gone back for a period of four thousand 

 years, if Simplicius is to be credited, who reports 

 the story six hundred years after Aristotle. But 

 the authenticity of this is exceedingly doubtful, 

 as the Chaldean observations of eclipses actually 

 preserved and cited by Ptolemy, do not go back 

 more than two thousand five hundred years.* At 



* It is not quite obvious, from the language of the author, whether 

 these are meant as pointing backwards from the respective epoch of 

 Aristotle and Ptolemy, or only from the present day: the latter mtfsti 

 kewerer, be the case. TrtuisL 



