362 



themselves to the plains of Senaar, which iu former times was a region 

 of Assyria, where they undertook the luilding of the Tower of Bahel, where 

 the dispersion took place, and those who quitted that region for Europe and 

 Asia began to he called Scythians.''^ . . . 



God divided them into people of different languages, making of one 

 tongue seventy-two dialects, conformably to the number of captains or 

 leaders of the nations, from which circumstance they were called Me- 

 ropes, on account of the division of languages. 



Prom the Ionian stock, says Annius, sprung Alcides, the Grecian 

 Hercules, and the kings of Arcadia, a branch of which was the kings of 

 ^tolia. But Ionia was never called a kingdom, as Annius makes his 

 Eerosus describe it, ''as the fifth kingdom in Europe." Eut Annius 

 never informs his readers what took the old Chaldean priest into these 

 European countries, or what had their history to do with that of As- 

 syria. 



In the second book of the Eerosus of Annius, the genealogies of 

 Noah {alias Eather Janus, alias Ogyges) and his descendants are treated 

 of, and in this portion of his work the Sacred Scriptures are profaned, 

 and very largely added to. 



It would be needless to make further reference to the abundant 

 proofs of the literary frauds of Annius of Yiterbo, brought forward in 

 the admirable work of Don Joseph Pellicer.-'- 



There can now be no doubt of the imposture ; but unfortunately the 

 fraud was entirely successful for a long time, not only in Italy, but in 

 Spain, and in the latter country especially, and the evidences of that suc- 

 cess we have in nearly all the Spanish chronicles and histories of the 

 sixteenth and part of the seventeenth centuries. 



What is most worthy of observation in this performance of Annius 

 of Yiterbo is the extraordinary success of a literary imposture, the 

 most singular on record — one that required more erudition and industry 

 to accomplish than would have sufficed to make a man famous in any 

 honest literary pursuit. 



EXTENSIVE LITEEAUT FRAUDS AND E0EGERIE8 OF DOCUMENTS PUEPOETING TO 

 BE ETEUSCAN. BY CUEZIO INGHIEAMIO. 



Curzia Inghiramio, an antiquary of some erudition and great enthu- 

 siasm in all matters connected with Etruscan remains and historical no- 

 tices of that ancient country, was born at Yolterra, in 1614, and died in 

 1655. His unenviable fame rests on a work of extraordinary labour and 

 extensive reading, entitled '' Ethruscarum Antiquarum Fragmenta^ 

 quihus urhis Romm aliorumque gentium primordia mores et res gestce indi- 

 cantur:'^ Erancofurti, 1637, in folio. 



This work must have cost the author enormous labour, and an enor- 

 mous outlay. 



* " Beroso de Babilonio in Chaldea distinguido del Beroso de Annio de Viterbo in 

 Italia. Par Don Josefo de Pellicer." 



