have found out the use of iron; but Genesis hath taught us the contrary, and that "Tubal-Cain long before wrought cunningly both in iron and brass. Not long after this time, Amphion and Zethus governed Thebes; whom divers chronologers find in Ehud's time. But St. Augustine making a repetition of these fables, which were devised among the Grecians and other nations during the government of the judges, begins with Triptolemus, of whose parentage there is a little agreement. Vives, upon the 13th chapter of St. Augustine de Civitate Dei, and the 18th book, hath gathered all the opinions of this man's progeny, where he that desires his pedigree may find it. Lactantius and Eusebius make him native of Attica, and the son of Eleusius king of Eleusina: which Eleusius, by careful industry, had fed the people of that territory in the time of a great famine. This, when upon the like occasion Triptolemus could not perform, fearing the fury of the people, he fled thence by sea in a kind of galley or long boat, which carried in her prow a graven or carved serpent; who because he made exceeding great speed to return, and to relieve his people with corn from some neighbour nation, it was feigned by the poets that his coach was carried by serpents through the air.

Whether the times of these kings, which lived together with Othoniel, and after him with the rest of the judges and kings of Israel and Juda, be precisely set down, I cannot avow; for the chronologers, both of the former and latter times, differ in many particulars; to examine all which would require the whole time of a long life; and therefore I desire to be excused, if in these comparisons I err with others of better judgment. For whether Eusebius and all that follow him, or his opposites (who make themselves so conversant with these ancient kings, and with the very year when they began to rule) have hit the mark of time, of all other the farthest off and most defaced, I cannot but greatly doubt. First, because the authors themselves, from whom the ancientest chronologers have borrowed light, had no

"Gen. iv. 22. whence came the name of Vulcan by apheresis of the two first letters.

thing for the warrant of their own works but conjecture: secondly, because their own disagreement and contention in those elder days, with that of our own age among the labourers in times, is such, as no man among them hath yet so edified any man's understanding, save his own, but that he is greatly distracted after what pattern to erect his buildings.

This disagreement is found, not only in the reigns of heathen kings and princes, but even in computation of those times which the indisputable authority of holy scripture hath summed up; as in that of Abraham's birth; and after, in the times of the judges, and the oppressions of Israel; in the times from the egression to the building of Solomon's temple, in the Persian empire, the seventy weeks; and in what not? Wheresoever the account of times may suffer examination, the arguments are opposite, and contentions are such, as, for ought that I see, men have sought by so many ways to uncover the sun, that the days thereby are made more dark, and the clouds more condensed, than before: I can therefore give no other warrant than other men have done in these computations; and therefore that such and such kings and kingdoms took beginning in this or that year, I avow it no otherwise than as a borrowed knowledge, or at least as a private opinion, which I submit to better judgments: Nam in priscis rebus veritas non ad unguem quærenda; "In ancient things we are not to require an "exact narration of the truth," says Diodore.

SECT. III.

Of Ehud's time, and of Proserpina, Orithya, Tereus, Tantalus, Tityus, Admetus, and others that lived about these times AFTER the death of Othoniel, when Israel fell back to their former idolatry, God encouraged Moab to invade and suppress them; to perform which he joined the forces of Ammon and Amalek unto his own, and so (as all kind of misery readily findeth out those whom God hath abandoned, or for a time withdrawn his help from, thereby to make them feel the difference between his grace and his displeasure) these heathen neighbouring nations had an easy

conquest over Israel; whom God himself exposed to those perils, within which they were so speedily folded up. In this miserable estate they continued full eighteen years, under Eglon, king of the Moabites, and his confederates. Yet, as the mercies of God are infinite, he turned not his ears from their crying repentance, but raised up Ehud, the son of Gera, to deliver them; by which weak man, though maimed in his right hand, yet confident in the justness of his quarrel, and fearing that the Israelites were too few in numbers to contend with the head of those valiant nations, he resolved to attempt upon the person of Eglon, whom if he could but extinguish, he assured himself of the following victory; especially giving his nation no time to reestablish their government, or to choose a king to command and direct them in the wars. According to which resolution, Ehud went on as an ambassador to Eglon, loaden with presents from the Israelites, as to appease him; and obtaining private access upon the pretence of some secret to be revealed, he pierced his body with a poniard, made of purpose, with a double edge, and shutting the doors of his closet upon him, escaped.

It may seem that being confident of his good success, he had prepared the strength of Israel in readiness. For suddenly after his return, he did repass Jordan, and invading the territory of Moab, overthrew their army, consisting of 10,000 able and strong men; whereof not any one escaped. After which victory, and that Samgar his successor had miraculously slain 600 Philistines with an ox goad, the land and people of Israel lived in peace, unto the end of fourscore years from the death of Othoniel; which term expired in the world's year 2691.

In the days of Ehud, Naomi, with Elimelech her husband, and with her two sons, travelled into Moab; and so the story of Ruth is to be referred to this time. About the beginning of the fourscore years which are given to Ehud it was that Orcus, king of the Molossians, otherwise Pluto, stale Proserpina, as she walked to gather flowers in the fields of Hipponium in Sicilia; or (according to Pausanias in Att.)

by the river Cephisus, which elsewhere he calleth Chemer, if he mean not two distinct rivers. This stealth being made known to Pirithous, with whom Hercules and Theseus joined themselves, they agreed together to recover her; but Pluto or Orcus (whom others call Aidoneus) had, as they say, a very huge dog, which fastened on Pirithous, and tare him in pieces, and had also worried Theseus, but that Hercules speedily rescued him, and by strength took and mastered the dog Cerberus; whereof grew the fable of Hercules's delivering of Theseus out of hell. But Tzetzes, as I take it, hath written this story somewhat more according to the truth. For Theseus and Pirithous, saith he, attempted to steal Proserpina, daughter to Aidoneus, king of the Molossians, who had Ceres to wife, the mother of Proserpina; Proserpina being a general name also for all fair women. This purpose of theirs being known to Aidoneus, Theseus and Pirithous were both taken; and because Pirithous was the principal in this conspiracy, and Theseus drawn on by a kind of affection or inforcement, the one was given for food to Aidoneus's great dog Cerberus, the other held prisoner; till Hercules, by the instigation of Eurystheus, delivered him by strong hand. The Molossi, which Stephanus writes with a single s, were a people of Epirus, inhabiting near the mountains of Pindus; of which mountains Eta is one of the most famous, where Hercules burnt himself. The river of Acheron (which the poets describe to be in hell) riseth out of the same hills. There is another nation of the Molossi in Thessaly; but these are neighbours to the Cassiopæi, saith Plutarch in his Greek Questions.

The rape of Orithyia, the daughter of Erichtheus, king of Athens, taken away by Boreas of Thrace, is referred to the time of Ehud. The poets ascribe this rape to the north wind, because Thrace is situate north from Athens. In his time also Tereus ravished Philomela, of which the fable was devised of her conversion into a nightingale. For Tereus, having married her sister Progne, conducting Philomela from Athens to see her sister, forced her in the pas

sage,

and withal cut out her tongue, that she might not complain; persuading Progne his wife that Philomela died in the midway: all which her brother-in-law's merciless behaviour towards her, Philomela expressed by her needle upon cloth, and sent it to Progne. In revenge whereof, Progne caused her only son Itys to be cut in pieces, and set before Tereus her husband, so dressed, as it appeared to be some other ordinary food; of which when he had eaten his fill, she caused his head, hands, and feet to be presented unto him; and then fled away with such speed towards Athens, where her father Pandion yet lived, as the poets feigned that she was turned into a swallow. The place where it was performed Strabo finds to be Daulis in Phocis; and the tomb of Tereus, *Pausanias hath built near the rocks Mergi, in the territory of Athens. By which, as also by the name Daulis, where these things are supposed to have been done, (whence also Philomela is called Daulias ales,) it appears that it is true which Thucydides notes by way of digression in his y Peloponnesian war, that this Tereus was not king in that which is now called Thracia, or in Odrysæ, (as the poets call him Odrysius,) but that Phocis, a country in Greece not far from Attica, a city whereof is called Daulia, was in Pandion's time inhabited by Thracians, of which this Tereus was king; whence Pandion, to have amity with his neighbours, made him his son-in-law; as it is good to believe, saith Thucydides, that Pandion, king of Athens, made that alliance with a neighbour king, from whom he might have succour, rather than with any Tereus that should have held the kingdom of Odrysæ, which was greatly distant from thence. The occasion that the poets chose a swallow for Progne to be turned into, may seem to have been partly because, as Pausanias says, Daulide nec nidificant, nec habitant in tota circum regione hirundines; "as "if a swallow, remembering the wrong that was there done "to her and to her sister, did for ever hate that place."

Near this time Melampus (who is said to have understood the voices of birds and beasts) flourished, being also

* Lib. 9. Pau. in Att.

y Thuc. 1. 2.