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 such corruptions they have exceedingly perplexed Ancient History. And as for the Chronology of the _Latines_, that is still more uncertain. _Plutarch_ represents great uncertainties in the Originals of _Rome_: and so doth _Servius_. The old records of the _Latines_ were burnt by the _Gauls_, sixty and four years before the death of _Alexander_ the great; and _Quintus Fabius Pictor_, the oldest historian of the _Latines_, lived an hundred years later than that King.