the Kings of the _Lacedæmonians_, or Archons of _Athens_. _Hippias_ the
_Elean_, about thirty years before the fall of the _Persian_ Empire,
published a breviary or list of the Olympic Victors; and about ten years
before the fall thereof, _Ephorus_ the disciple of _Isocrates_ formed a
Chronological History of _Greece_, beginning with the return of the
_Heraclides_ into _Peloponnesus_, and ending with the siege of _Perinthus_,
in the twentieth year of _Philip_ the father of _Alexander_ the great: But
he digested things by Generations, and the reckoning by Olympiads was not
yet in use, nor doth it appear that the Reigns of Kings were yet set down
by numbers of years. The _Arundelian_ marbles were composed sixty years
after the death of _Alexander_ the great (_An._ 4. _Olymp._ 128.) and yet
mention not the Olympiads: But in the next Olympiad, _Timæus Siculus_
published an history in several books down to his own times, according to
the Olympiads, comparing the Ephori, the Kings of _Sparta_, the Archons of
_Athens_, and the Priestesses of _Argos_, with the Olympic Victors, so as
to make the Olympiads, and the Genealogies and Successions of Kings,
Archons, and Priestesses, and poetical histories suit with one another,
according to the best of his judgment. And where he left off, _Polybius_
began and carried on the history.

So then a little after the death of _Alexander_ the great, they began to
set down the Generations, Reigns and Successions, in numbers of years, and
by putting Reigns and Successions equipollent to Generations, and three
Generations to an hundred or an hundred and twenty years (as appears by
their Chronology) they have made the Antiquities of _Greece_ three or four
hundred years older than the truth. And this was the original of the
Technical Chronology of the _Greeks_. _Eratosthenes_ wrote about an hundred
years after the death of _Alexander_ the great: He was followed by
_Apollodorus_, and these two have been followed ever since by Chronologers.