such corruptions they have exceedingly perplexed Ancient History.

And as for the Chronology of the _Latines_, that is still more uncertain.
_Plutarch_ represents great uncertainties in the Originals of _Rome_: and
so doth _Servius_. The old records of the _Latines_ were burnt by the
_Gauls_, sixty and four years before the death of _Alexander_ the great;
and _Quintus Fabius Pictor_, the oldest historian of the _Latines_, lived
an hundred years later than that King.

In Sacred History, the _Assyrian_ Empire began with _Pul_ and
_Tiglathpilaser_, and lasted about 170 years. And accordingly _Herodotus_
hath made _Semiramis_ only five generations, or about 166 years older than
_Nitocris_, the mother of the last King of _Babylon_. But _Ctesias_ hath
made _Semiramis_ 1500 years older than _Nitocris_, and feigned a long
series of Kings of _Assyria_, whose names are not _Assyrian_, nor have any
affinity with the _Assyrian_ names in Scripture.

The Priests of _Egypt_ told _Herodotus_, that _Menes_ built _Memphis_ and
the sumptuous temple of _Vulcan_, in that City: and that _Rhampsinitus_,
_Mœris_, _Asychis_ and _Psammiticus_ added magnificent porticos to that
temple. And it is not likely that _Memphis_ could be famous, before
_Homer_'s days who doth not mention it, or that a temple could be above two
or three hundred years in building. The Reign of _Psammiticus_ began about
655 years before Christ, and I place the founding of this temple by _Menes_
about 257 years earlier: but the Priests of _Egypt_ had so magnified their
Antiquities before the days of _Herodotus_, as to tell him that from
_Menes_ to _Mœris_ (who reigned 200 years before _Psammiticus_) there were
330 Kings, whose Reigns took up as many Ages, that is eleven thousand
years, and had filled up the interval with feigned Kings, who had done
nothing. And before the days of _Diodorus Siculus_ they had raised their