I reject the computation of Eratosthenês, or any other computation, to determine the supposed date of the Trojan war; but, if I admitted it, I could have no hesitation in admitting also the space which he defines between the Ionic migration and the first Olympiad. Eusebius (Præp. Ev. x. 9, p. 485) reckons upwards from the birth of Christ, making various halts, but never breaking off, to the initial phenomena of Grecian antiquity,—the deluge of Deukalion and the conflagration of Phaëtôn. The whole question, as to the value of the reckoning from the Olympiads up to Phorôneus, does in truth turn upon this point: Are those genealogies, which profess to cover the space between the two, authentic and trustworthy, or not? Mr. Clinton appears to feel that they are not so, when he admits the essential difference in the character of the evidence and the necessity of altering the method of computation, before and after the first recorded Olympiad; yet, in his Preface, he labors to prove that they possess historical worth and are in the main correctly set forth: moreover, that the fictitious persons, wherever any such are intermingled, may be detected and eliminated. The evidences upon which he relies, are: 1. Inscriptions; 2. The early poets. 1. An inscription, being nothing but a piece of writing on marble, carries evidentiary value under the same conditions as a published writing on paper. If the inscriber reports a contemporary fact which he had the means of knowing, and if there be no reason to suspect misrepresentation, we believe his assertion: if, on the other hand, he records facts belonging to a long period before his own time, his authority counts for little, except in so far as we can verify and appreciate his means of knowledge.