This view and these attempts are based upon an ascertained truth in the psychology of all human societies. Just as people will accommodate a small number of distinct words to their perpetually increasing wants, and will rather torture an old root in fifty ways than simply invent a new combination of sounds for a new idea; so in popular legends the human race will always attach itself to what it knows, to what has gone before, rather than set to work and invent a new series of facts. Pure invention is so very rare and artificial that we may almost lay it aside as a likely source for _old_ legends[31:1]; and we may assume either a loose record of real facts, or the adoption and adaptation of the legends of a previous age, as our real, though treacherous, materials for guessing pre-historic truth. This is the reason why we later students have not adhered without hesitation to the sceptical theory that plausible fiction _may_ account for all the Greek myths, and we look for some stronger reason to reject them altogether. [Sidenote: Cases of deliberate invention,] [Sidenote: at Pergamum,] [Sidenote: which breed general suspicion of marvellous stories.] § 16. There are cases, for example, where we can see distinct reasons why people in a historic age should have invented links to attach themselves to some splendid ancestry. Just as the heralds of our own day are often convicted of forging the generations which connect some wealthy upstart with an ancient house, so it is in Greek history. No larger and more signal instances of this can be found than the barefaced genealogies made by the learned in the days of Alexander's successors[32:1], when any of the new foundations,--Antioch, Seleucia, &c.,--wanted to prove themselves ancient Hellenic cities, re-settled upon a mythical foundation. Not different in spirit were the Pergamene fabrications, which not only invented a mythical history for Pergamum, but adopted and enlarged the Sicilian fables which connected a Pergamene hero, Æneas, with the foundation of Rome[33:1]. What capital both the Ilians and the people of Pergamum made out of these bold mendacities, is well known. I shall return in due course to another remarkable instance, which I have set before the world already, where a great record of Olympic games was made up at a late date by a learned man in honour of Elis and Messene. Later Greek history does show us some of these deliberate inventors,--Lobo the Argive, Euhemerus the Messenian, and a few more; a list which the Greeks themselves augmented by adding the travellers who told wonderful tales of distant lands which conflicted with Hellenic climate and experience. But here too the Greeks were over-sceptical, and rejected, as we know, many real truths only because they found them marvellous. In the same way, modern inquirers who come to estimate the doubtful and varying evidence for older history must be expected to differ according to the peculiar temper of their minds.