The second point on the question of historical truth that I wish here to emphasize is concerned more directly with the evidence collected in this book. As already admitted, the collection contains many items of doubtful value: it could not be otherwise if it was to be at all complete. The cumulative effect of so much dubious evidence upon some mental temperaments is to discredit the mass of evidence as a whole. It is important therefore to bear in mind the character of our material. It is a heap, not a chain. Its strength is to be measured by its strongest items rather than by its weakest. Weak or irrelevant items do not invalidate any that are relevant and cogent. On the contrary, points of evidence that are individually unconvincing may have a powerful cumulative effect if they are found all pointing, however dimly, in one definite direction, and all suggesting a single explanation arrived at on independent grounds. When dealing with the dawn of history it is uncritical to reject a whole body of evidence merely because it is made up of details scarcely any of which are capable of proof. The evidence of history, or at any rate of Greek history, in its childhood is like that of many an individual child. The child’s idea of truth is often more fluid than that of the adult. It may be harder in any given case to be sure of the exact facts. But it may all the same be certain that facts more or less accurately recorded form a large element of the information. That, it may be fairly claimed, is how the evidence that has been presented in this volume ought to be regarded. Its cumulative value is really considerable. It should be remembered how independent our witnesses are. Livy on the Tarquins of Rome is corroborated by Diodorus on Psammetichus of Egypt: Herodotus on early tyrants generally is borne out by his critic Thucydides: the later writers who have been quoted so frequently and in such numbers drew upon a great variety of sources: literary evidence is confirmed by archaeological, as for instance when a conjecture as to the “hill men” of Peisistratus that I put forward in 1906 is corroborated by an inscription that was first published just after the publication of my conjecture. When witnesses are so many and they speak on such a variety of topics and under such a variety of circumstances and to all appearances without the possibility of any common cue, the chances of collusion become remote in the extreme. (c) _Conclusions_