Herodotus, the Greek historian, writing in the fifth century before the Christian era, says: “When these were subdued, and Crœsus had joined them to the Lydians, all the learned men at that time, especially those of Greece, resorted to Sardis, which had then reached a high degree of eminence. Among them was Solon, an Athenian, who, having made a code of laws for the Athenians at their request, absented himself for ten years, having sailed away under pretense of seeing the world, that he might not be compelled to abrogate any of the laws he had established: for the Athenians could not do it themselves, as they were bound by the most solemn oaths to preserve inviolate, for ten years, the institutions of Solon. Therefore, having gone abroad for these reasons, as well as to see the world, Solon had visited Amasis, in Egypt, and went from there to Crœsus, at Sardis.”—Herodotus: Clio xxix, xxx. [3] Plutarch, the Greek biographer, says that Psenophis, the Heliopolitan, and Senchis, the Saite, the most learned of the Egyptian priests, were the persons who gave Solon this information.—Parallel Lives: Solon. [4] “If Solon ... had not considered the writing of poetry a recreation, but had made it, as others do, an actual employment, and had completed the history which he had brought from Egypt; and had not been forced to relinquish it by seditions and many other troubles in which he found his country involved, I do not think that either Hesiod, Homer, or any other poet would have acquired more extensive fame.”—Plato: Timæus, or Concerning Nature. [5] Plato was born about the year B. C. 430 and died about the year B. C. 348. He traced his descent from Solon through his mother. [6] “These very writings, indeed, were in the possession of my grandfather, and are now in mine, having been made the subject of much study during my boyhood.”—Plato: Critias, or the Atlantic. [7] Plato: Critias, or the Atlantic. [8] The so-called Pillars of Hercules were the two mountains, Calpe and Abyla, on the opposite sides of the Strait of Gibraltar. “I wonder, therefore, at those,” says Herodotus, “who have described the limits of and divided Libya, Asia, and Europe, for the difference between them is trifling: for in length Europe extends along both of them, but respecting width, it is evidently not to be compared. Libya shows itself to be surrounded by water, except so much of it as borders Asia.”—Herodotus: Melpomene xlii. [9] Tyrrhenia or Umbria, in Italy, now Tuscany. [10] Plato: Timæus, or Concerning Nature. [11] Plato: Critias, or the Atlantic. [12] Genesis xvi. 7; xviii. 1-8, 16-33; xix. 1-22; xxxii. 1, 2. [13] Herodotus: Euterpe cxlii, cxliv. [14] Genesis vi. 1, 2, 4. “SOC. Do you know that heroes are half-gods? “HERM. What then? “SOC. All of them were doubtless begotten either from a god falling in love with a mortal woman, or from a mortal man [falling in love] with a goddess.” —Plato: Cratylus, or Concerning the Correct Use of Words.