But how uncertain their Chronology is, and how doubtful it was reputed by
the _Greeks_ of those times, may be understood by these passages of
_Plutarch_. _Some reckon_, saith he, [1] Lycurgus _contemporary to
_Iphitus_, and to have been his companion in ordering the Olympic
festivals: amongst whom was _Aristotle_ the Philosopher, arguing from the
Olympic Disc, which had the name of _Lycurgus_ upon it. Others supputing
the times by the succession of the Kings of the _Lacedæmonians_, as
_Eratosthenes_ and _Apollodorus_, affirm that he was not a few years older
than the first Olympiad._ First _Aristotle_ and some others made him as old
as the first Olympiad; then _Eratosthenes_, _Apollodorus_, and some others
made him above an hundred years older: and in another place _Plutarch_ [2]
tells us: _The congress of _Solon_ with _Croesus_, some think they can
confute by Chronology. But an history so illustrious, and verified by so
many witnesses, and (which is more) so agreeable to the manners of _Solon_,
and so worthy of the greatness of his mind and of his wisdom, I cannot
persuade my self to reject because of some Chronological Canons, as they
call them: which hundreds of authors correcting, have not yet been able to
constitute any thing certain, in which they could agree among themselves,
about repugnancies_. It seems the Chronologers had made the Legislature of
_Solon_ too ancient to consist with that Congress.

For reconciling such repugnancies, Chronologers have sometimes doubled the
persons of men. So when the Poets had changed _Io_ the daughter of
_Inachus_ into the _Egyptian Isis_, Chronologers made her husband _Osiris_
or _Bacchus_ and his mistress _Ariadne_ as old as _Io_, and so feigned that
there were two _Ariadnes_, one the mistress of _Bacchus_, and the other the
mistress of _Theseus_, and two _Minos's_ their fathers, and a younger _Io_
the daughter of _Jasus_, writing _Jasus_ corruptly for _Inachus_. And so
they have made two _Pandions_, and two _Erechtheus's_, giving the name of
_Erechthonius_ to the first; _Homer_ calls the first, _Erechtheus_: and by