Greeks used their letters
at that time; and the most prevailing opinion, and that nearest the
truth, is, that their present way of using those letters was unknown at
that time. However, there is not any writing which the Greeks agree to
be genuine among them ancienter than Homer's Poems, who must plainly he
confessed later than the siege of Troy; nay, the report goes, that
even he did not leave his poems in writing, but that their memory was
preserved in songs, and they were put together afterward, and that this
is the reason of such a number of variations as are found in them. [3]
As for those who set themselves about writing their histories, I mean
such as Cadmus of Miletus, and Acusilaus of Argos, and any others that
may be mentioned as succeeding Acusilaus, they lived but a little while
before the Persian expedition into Greece. But then for those that first
introduced philosophy, and the consideration of things celestial and
divine among them, such as Pherceydes the Syrian, and Pythagoras, and
Thales, all with one consent agree, that they learned what they knew
of the Egyptians and Chaldeans, and wrote but little And these are the
things which are supposed to be the oldest of all among the Greeks; and
they have much ado to believe that the writings ascribed to those men
are genuine.

3. How can it then be other than an absurd thing, for the Greeks to
be so proud, and to vaunt themselves to be the only people that are
acquainted with antiquity, and that have delivered the true accounts
of those early times after an accurate manner? Nay, who is there that
cannot easily gather from the Greek writers themselves, that they knew
but little on any good foundation when they set to write, but rather
wrote their histories from their own conjectures? Accordingly, they
confute one another in their own books to purpose, and are not ashamed.
to give us the most contradictory accounts of the same things; and I
should spend my time to little purpose, if I should pretend to teach
the Greeks that which they know better than I already, what a great
disagreement there is between Hellanicus and Acusilaus about their
genealogies; in how many eases Acusilaus corrects Hesiod: or after what
manner Ephorus demonstrates Hellanicus to have told lies in the greatest
part of his history; as does Timeus in like manner as to Ephorus, and
the succeeding writers do to Timeus, and all the later writers do to
Herodotus nor could Timeus agree with Ant