Of the greater part of the authors of these fragments little more than the country in which they lived is known. But of Charondas, and Zaleucus, those celebrated legislators, Seneca in his 90th Epistle informs us that they learnt their laws in the silent and sacred recess of Pythagoras. Though Seneca, however, Diodorus Siculus, Diogenes Laertius, Porphyry, and Iamblichus make both Charondas and Zaleucus to be the disciples of Pythagoras; yet Dr. Bentley, in his Dissertation on Phalaris, seems more disposed to think that they were not Pythagoreans than that they were. At the conclusion, however, of his discussion of this subject he says, “I do not assert any thing positively on either side of this whole debate about the two lawgivers [Charondas and Zaleucus]. I rather desire to stand a neuter, till the matter shall be decided by some abler hand[1].” But the man of intellect who reads this concession of the doctor, will doubtless laugh when he finds him also asserting, “Thus much I am sure may be safely concluded, that if Zaleucus was really Pythagoras’ disciple, the learned Mr. Dodwell’s calculation must be wrong [respecting the age of Pythagoras]. For which is more probable, that a Mr. Dodwell was mistaken in this particular, or that Diodorus Siculus, Laertius, Porphyry, and Iamblichus were wrong, who lived so many centuries prior to him, and who were able to derive information so much more decisive respecting Zaleucus, through books which were then extant, but which have long since utterly perished? By Vossius[2], however, who, though he was not perhaps so great a verbal critic as Bentley, was certainly a man of more intellect[3], the whole of these fragments were considered as precious monuments; and he wonders, and is at the same time indignant, at their not being more frequently perused.