2.  Growing  out  of,  and  interwoven  with,  the  Grecian  theogony,
and  still  authenticated  by  the  Greek  muse  alone,  we  next  meet  with
a  class  of  heroic  legends  and  genealogies,  furnishing  a     LEGEND8
series  of  names  and  personal  adventures,  through  which      OF  THK
the  Greek  looked  back  to  his  gods,  and  which  he  regard-  1IEROIC  AGK-
ed  as  the  primitive  history  of  his  race.     In  this  primitive  history,
extending  down  through  a  period  of  at  least  a  thousand  years  subse-
quent to  the  supposed  founding  of  Argos,  it  is  impossible  to  dis-
tinguish names  and  events,  real  and  historical,  from  fictitious  creations;
and  much  that  was  deeply  seated  in  the  national  faith  and  feelings
of  the  Greeks,  and  to  which  the  moderns  have  assigned  a  positive
chronology,  is  found  to  rest  on  no  firmer  basis  than  the  songs  and
traditionary  legends  of  bards  and  story-tellers.
3.  The  whole  of  Grecian  chronology  prior  to  the  year  776  B.  C.,
the  date  of  the  first  recorded   Olympiad,1  consists  of  calculations
founded  upon  the  fabulous  genealogies  of  kings,  heroes,

and  demi-gods,  in  the  supposed  line  of  descent  from  some  CH^ONOU)QT
remote  ancestor.     Thus,  Laconian  chronology,  which  is
generally  taken  as  the  basis  of  the  whole,  is  traced  back  through  the
Spartan  kings  to  Hercules — about  three  generations  being  reckoned
to  a  century — a  computation  altogether  illusory,  and  as  doubtful  as
the  reality  of  the  legendary  and  poetical  personages  thus  erected  into
definite  historical  land-marks.*

II.
