606, as we have seen from the united testimonies of the Scripture and Herodotus, _by the Medes and Babylonians_.”) Construing fairly the text of Herodotus, it will appear that he conceived the relations of these Oriental kingdoms between 800 and 560 B. C. differently on many material points from Ktêsias, or Berosus, or Josephus: and he himself expressly tells us, that he heard “four different tales” even respecting Cyrus (i, 95); much more, respecting events anterior to Cyrus by more than a century. The chronology of the Medes, Babylonians, Lydians, and Greeks in Asia, when we come to the seventh century B. C., acquires some fixed points which give us assurance of correctness within certain limits; but above the year 700 B. C. no such fixed points can be detected. We cannot discriminate the historical from the mythical in our authorities,—we cannot reconcile them with each other, except by violent changes and conjectures,—nor can we determine which of them ought to be set aside in favor of the other. The names and dates of the Babylonian kings down from Nabonassar, in the Canon of Ptolemy, are doubtless authentic, but they are names and dates only: when we come to apply them to illustrate real or supposed matters of fact, drawn from other sources, they only create a new embarrassment, for even the _names_ of the kings as reported by different authors do not agree and Mr. Clinton informs us (p. 277): “In tracing the identity of Eastern kings, the times and the transactions are better guides than the names; for these, from many well-known causes (as the changes which they undergo in passing through the Greek language, and the substitution of a title or an epithet for the name), are variously reported, so that _the same king frequently appears under many different appellations_.” Here, then, is a new problem: we are to employ “the times and transactions” to identify the kings: but unfortunately the _times_ are marked only by the succession of kings, and the _transactions_ are known only by statements always scanty and often irreconcilable with each other. So that our means of identifying the kings are altogether insufficient, and whoever will examine the process of identification as it appears in Mr. Clinton’s chapters, will see that it is in a high degree arbitrary; more arbitrary still are the processes which he employs for bringing about a forced harmony between discrepant authorities. Nor is Volney (Chronologie d’Hérodote, vol. i, pp. 383-429) more satisfactory in his chronological results.