knowledge of Japhet's sons,) they must find him in some old poet; for Functius, a great Berosian, confesseth, & Quis hic Samothes fuerit incertum est; "Who this Samothes "was it is uncertain ;" neither is there any proof that he was that same Dis, whom Cæsar saith the Gauls suppose to be their ancestor; yea, and Vignier confesseth with Functius, Mais on ne sçait qui il estoit; "No man knows "who he was."

f

SECT. V.

Against the fabulous Berosus's fiction, that the Italian Janus was Noah.

BUT before I go on with Noah's sons, I think it necessary to disprove the fiction which Annius hath of Noah himself; an invention indeed very ridiculous, though warranted, as he hath wrested, by those authors of whom himself hath commented; as the fragment of Berosus, Fabius Pictor, Cato, Lavinius, and others. For & Annius seeks to persuade us that Noah, surnamed Janus, was the same which founded Genoa, with other cities in Italy, wherein he lived ninety-two years. This to disprove, by Moses's silence, is a sufficient argument to me, if there were nothing else to disprove it. For if he vouchsafed to remember the building of Babel, Erec, Achad, Chalne, and Nineveh, by Nimrod, Noah was a man of too great mark to be forgotten, with all the acts he did in ninety-two years. But it were a needless labour for me to disprove the authority of that Berosus, on whom Annius groundeth, seeing so many learned men have so demonstratively proved that fragment to be counterfeit. Besides that, Tatianus the Assyrian, in his oration against the Greeks, avoweth, that the ancient and true Berosus wrote only three books, dedicated to Antiochus the successor of Seleucus Nicanor; but hAnnius hath devised five books, wherewith he honoureth Berosus. And whereas Berosus handled only the estate of the ChalSæculo. Cato de Origin. Lavin. Illust. de Gal.

d In Chron.

e Cæsar. Comment. Vignier, pars 1. Chron.

Ann. de Hetrusc. Pict. de Aur.

h Joseph. 1. 1.

deans and Assyrians, Annius hath filled this fragment with the business of all the world. And if we may believe Eusebius better than Annius, then all the kings of the Latins (before Æneas) consumed but 150 years; whereas no man hath doubted, but that from Noah to Æneas's arrival into Italy, there passed 1126 (after the least rate of the Hebrew account) and (after Codoman) 1291. For Janus (who was the first of their kings) lived at once with Ruth, who married Booz, in the world's year (as some reckon) 2717, after the flood 1064, and Noah died 350 years after the flood; and so there passed between Janus of Italy, and Noah surnamed Janus, 704 years. For Saturnus succeeded Janus, Picus after Saturnus, Faunus after Picus, and Latinus followed Faunus; which Latinus lived at once with Tautanes the twenty-seventh king of Assyria; with Pelasgus of Peloponnesus; with Demophoon of Athens; and Sampson judge of Israel. Now all these five kings of the Latins having consumed but 150 years, and the last of them in the time of Sampson; then reckoning upwards for 150 years, and it reacheth Ruth, with whom Janus lived.

True it is that the Greeks had their Janus, but this was not Noah; so had they Ion the son of Xuthus, the son of Deucalion, from whom they draw the Iones, who were indeed the children of Javan, the fourth son of Japhet. For the vulgar translation (where the Hebrew word is i Javan) writes Greece, and the Septuagint Hellas, which is the same. So had they Medus the son of Medea, whom they make the parent of the Medes, though they were descended of a far more ancient father, to wit, Madai the third son of Japhet.

Lastly, we see by a true experience, that the British language hath remained among us above 2000 years, and the English speech ever since the invasion of the Angles; and the same continuance have all nations observed among themselves, though with some corruption and alteration. Therefore it is strange if either Noah (by them called Janus) had

i Ezek. xxvii. 13, 19. and so the place of Isai. lxvi. 19. for Javan, Hellada; and for the plural Javamin, Hellenæ.

1

left in Italy his grandchild Gomer after him, or Tubal in Spain, that no plain resemblance of the Hebrew, Syrian, or Scythian (which no time could have quite extinguished) should have been found in the languages of those countries. For which reasons we doubt not but these personal plantations of Janus, Gomer, Tubal, &c. in Italy, Spain, or France, are merely fabulous. Let the Italians therefore content themselves with the Grecian Janus, which commanded them and planted them, and who preceded the fall of Troy but one hundred and fifty years, saith Eusebius, which was in the time of Latinus the fifth king; which also St. Augustine and Justin confirm; and this agreeth with reason, time, and possibility. And if this be not sufficient to disprove this vanity, I may out of themselves add thus much: that whereas some of them make Vesta (others Camasena) the wife of this Janus, who instituted the holy fire of the vestal virgins in Rome, (the Latins and Romans taking from Janus all their idolatrous and heathenish ceremonies,) there is no man so impious as to believe that Noah himself (who is said by Moses to have walked with God, to be a just man, and whom God of all mankind made choice of) could be either ignorant of the true and only God, or so wicked and ungrateful to set up or devise any heathen, savage, or idolatrous adoration, or have instituted any ceremony contrary to that which he knew best pleasing to God himself.

SECT. VI.

That Gomer also and his son Togorma, of the posterity of Japhet, were first seated about Asia the Less: and that from thence they spread westward into Europe; and northward into Sarmatia.

TO turn now to the sons of Noah, and the world's plantation after the flood: therein I observe, that as both reason and necessity taught them, so, when they multiplied in great numbers, and dispersed themselves into the next countries bordering to their first habitations, and from thence sent forth colonies elsewhere, it was in such a manner as that they might repair to each other, and keep intelligence by river; because the land was yet desert and overpressed

with woods, reeds, bogs, and rotten marshes. As when Nimrod seated in Babylonia, Chus took the south part of Chaldea, down the river of Gehon, by which he might pass to and fro from Babylon to his own plantation; those also, which were of the race of Shem, inhabiting at Ur, or Orchoa, near the lakes of Chaldea, might by the same river get up to Babylon, and receive succour from thence. All which tract of land upon Gehon southward, Moses, in the description of paradise, calleth the land of Cush; because the dominion and empire was then in the hands of Nimrod a Cushite, by whom the children of Shem (which came into that valley, and stayed not in the east) were for a while oppressed, till God afterward, by the seed of Abraham, made them his own nation and victorious. Havilah, the brother of Nimrod, and son of Cush, took both banks of Tigris, especially on the east side of the river; by which river his people might also pass to and fro to Babel.

The imperial seat of which region of Havilah, or Susian, was anciently called Chusian, or Chusan, afterwards Susa. Cush himself took the banks of Gehon, and planted those countries westward, and south-westward towards Arabia the stony, and the desert, where k Ptolemy placeth the city of Chusidia, first Chusia.

Seba, and Sheba, with the rest that planted Arabia Felix, had Tigris to convey them into the Persian gulf, which washeth the banks of Arabia Felix on the east side; so as those sons of Cush might take land down the river as they pleased. Also the city of Nineveh was by Nimrod founded on the said river of Tigris; and from thence a colony passed to Charran, standing also upon a navigable branch of Euphrates. In like manner did Japhet's sons settle themselves together, and took their seats in Asia the Less, from whence they might indifferently stretch themselves northward and westward, into the next parts of Europe, called the Isles of the Gentiles. And it seemeth very agreeable to reason, that both Gomer, Magog, and Tubal, sat down first of all in that part of Syria, to the north of Palestina and Phoenicia; k Ptol. Asiæ Tab. 4.

and from thence Gomer or his children passed on into Asia the Less, as those of Magog and Tubal did; from whence the Tubalines spread themselves into Iberia; and the Magogians more northerly into Sarmatia. The first Gomerians, and first planters in Asia the Less, held the country of the Cymmerians (witness Herodot. lib. 4.) the same region which was afterwards by the Gallogreeks called Galatia, to whom St. Paul wrote his epistle, so entitled. This nation of the Cymmerians (whom the invincible Scythians afterwards dispersed, and forced from their first plantations) gave names to divers places; as to the mountains above Albania, called Cymmerini, and to the city of Cymmeris in Phrygia; also Bosphorus Cymmerius took appellation from this nation, in the outlet whereof was also a city of that name called Cymmerian; which Pliny saith, mistaking the place, had some time the name of Cerberion; but Cerberion was a town in Campania, so called of the unhealthful waters, savouring of brimstone; which Augustus caused to be cleansed by letting in the water of the lake Lucrinus.

The children of Tubal ranged as far Iberia, to whom the Moschici were neighbours, which others write Meshech. The prophet Ezekiel (coupling them together) calleth Gog the prince of Meschech and Tubal. For these Meschi, which Ptolemy calleth Moschi, inhabit Syracena, a province of Armenia, directly south from the mountains Moschici, in the valley between the mountains Moschici and the mountains Paryardes; out of whose north part springeth the river Phasis; from the east part Araxis; and from the west Euphrates and of this Meschech are descended also the Moscovians, saith Melancthon, and it may be, that in process of time some of them inhabited those regions also; for Meshech, saith Melancthon, signifieth extendens, enlarging or stretching forth. Togorma also at first did inhabit amongst his parents and kindred. The Togormians were also called Giblei, a people neighbouring the Sydonians in Gabala, a tetrarchy of Phoenicia, the same which Pliny calleth Gaben; from whence 1 Solomon had his most excel11 Kings v. 18.