3. There were also at Lacedæmon public registers, in which Plutarch found mention of the daughters of Agesilaus;(537) and in those of the earliest times the same author discovered the Pythian oracle concerning Lycurgus,(538) the same that Herodotus refers to in his first book. These doubtless contained the names of all the kings, and probably also the years of their reigns, as far back as Procles, who, according to a statement noticed above, died one year before his brother Eurysthenes.(539) This fact could hardly have been derived from any other source than some national annals, though it is not impossible that it was first transferred to them from oral narrative; in which case, however, it is difficult to understand how tradition, contrary to its general character, preserved dates. It was without doubt from these registers that Charon of Lampsacus, before the time of Herodotus, composed his work entitled, “_The Prytanes, or Rulers, of Lacedæmon_;”(540) in which he also noticed the sacred offerings and monuments of ancient times.(541) With respect to the chronological labours of Timæus, Polybius(542) says that “this writer compared the ephors with the kings of Lacedæmon from the beginning, and the archons at Athens and priestesses at Argos with the conquerors at the Olympic games, and noted the errors which the cities had made in the registration, even when they only differed by three months.” Eratosthenes and Apollodorus founded their chronology, especially before the Olympiads, upon the same list of the kings;(543) they both nearly agreed in reckoning 327 or 328 years from the expedition of the Heraclidæ to the first Olympiad (776 B.C.),(544) which calculation would have been impossible if the duration of each king’s reign had not been known; for if this computation is made by generations, reckoning about three to a century, quite a different number comes out.(545) Lycurgus, however, was placed by Eratosthenes 108 years before the first Olympiad;(546) in which computation he certainly went on the authority of the Quoit of Iphitus; which agrees with the statement of Apollodorus, that Homer, who according to this chronologist flourished 148 years before the first Olympiad, was a contemporary of Lycurgus when the latter was a young man.(547)—It appears, however, that the name of Lycurgus was not preserved in any register of the kings, since in that case it would have been impossible that he should have been called by Herodotus the guardian of his nephew Labotas the Eurysthenid,(548) by Simonides (who lived in great intimacy with king Pausanias)(549) the son of Prytanis and brother of Eunomus the Proclid, and by others the son of Eunomus and guardian of his nephew Charilaus,(550) had there existed any genealogy of him which was sufficiently accredited. Hence we must infer that these catalogues only contained the names of the kings, and not even of the royal guardians or protectors, such as Lycurgus. On the other hand, the variations in the