her; also in that when as David had twice spared his life in the territory of Ziph, and Saul twice sworn to do him no hurt, and confessed his errors, yet he sought still to destroy him by all the means he could. His impiety towards God he shewed, in that he sought counsel of the witch of Endor, which was the last preparative for his destruction. For whereas when he sought counsel from God he had been always victorious; from the oracle of the Devil this success followed, that both himself and his three sons, with his nearest and faithfullest servants, were all slaughtered by the Philistines; his body with the bodies of his sons (as a spectacle of shame and dishonour) were hung over the walls of Bethsan, and there had remained till they had found burial in the bowels of ravenous birds, had not the grateful Gileadites of Jabes stolen their carcasses thence and interred them. This was the end of Saul, after he had governed Israel, together with Samuel, forty years, and by himself after Samuel twenty years, according to i Cedrenus, Theophilus, and Josephus. But yet it seemeth to me that, after the death of Samuel, Saul did not rule very long. For in the beginning of the 25th chapter, it is written that Samuel died; and in the rest of the same chapter the passages are written of David, Nabal, and Abigail, after which the death of Saul quickly ensued.

i

An exceeding valiant man he was, and gave a fair entrance to all those victories which David afterwards obtained; for he had beaten the Ammonites with their neighbouring nations; crushed the Syrians and their adherents; broken the strength of the Amalekites, and greatly wasted the power and pride of the Philistines.

SECT. VI.

Of such as lived with Samuel and Saul; of Hellen and Hercules, and of their issues: upon occasion of the Dores, with the Heraclidæ, entering Peloponnesus about this time.

IN the second year of Samuel, according to Eusebius, was David born; after Codoman later, and in the ninth

Acts xiii. 31. Cedren. p. 69. Theop. 1. 3. p. 3. Joseph. 1. 28.

year; after Bunting in the tenth. For David, saith he, was thirty years old when he began to reign: whence it followeth, that he was born in the tenth of the forty years which are given to Samuel and Saul. About the eleventh of Samuel, Æneas Silvius, the son of Posthumus, began his reign over the Latins in Alba, who governed that state thirty-one years. There are who place before him Latinus Silvius, as brother to Posthumus, calling him the fifth from Æneas, and fourth king of Alba; whereof I will not stand to dispute. In the eleventh of Samuel, Dercilus sat in the throne of Assyria, being the one and thirtieth king; he ruled that empire forty years. In this age of Samuel, the Dores obtained Peloponnesus, and at once with the Heraclidæ, who then led and commanded the nation, possessed a great part thereof 328 years before the first olympiad, according to Diodorus and Eratosthenes. For all Greece was anciently possessed by three tribes or kindreds, viz. the Ionians, Dorians, and Æolians: at length it was called Hellas, and the people Hellenes, of Hellen, the son of Deucalion, lord of the country of Phthiotis in Thessaly. But before the time of this Hellen, yea and long after, Greece had no name common to all the inhabitants, neither were the people called Hellenes, till such time as partly by trading in all parts of the land, partly by the plantation of many colonies, and sundry great victories obtained, the issues of Hellen had reduced much of the country under their obedience, calling themselves generally by one name, and yet every several nation after some one of the posterity of Hellen, who had reigned over it. And because this is the furthest antiquity of Greece, it will not be amiss to recount the pedigree of her first planters.

Iapetus (as the poets fable) was the son of Heaven and Earth, so accounted, either because the names of his parents had in the Greek tongue such signification, or perhaps for his knowledge in astronomy and philosophy.

Iapetus begat Prometheus and Epimetheus; of whom all men have read that have read poets. Prometheus begat Deucalion; and Epimetheus, Pyrrha. Deucalion and his

wife Pyrrha reigned in Thessaly, which then was called Pyrrha, (as Cretensis Rhianus affirmeth,) of Pyrrha the queen. In Deucalion's time was that great flood of which we have spoken elsewhere. Deucalion begat Hellen: whose sons were Xuthus, Dorus, and Eolus; of Dorus and Æolus, the Dores and Eolians had name. The Eoles inhabited Boeotia. The Dores having first inhabited sundry parts of Thessaly, did afterwards seat themselves about Parnassus, and finally became lords of the countries about Lacedæmon: Xuthus, the eldest son of Hellen, being banished by his brethren for having diverted from them to his own use some part of their father's goods, came to Athens; where marrying the daughter of king Erechtheus, he begat on her two sons, Achæus and Ion. Of these two, Achæus, for a slaughter by him committed, fled into Peloponnesus; and seating himself in Laconia, gave name to that region: from whence (as some write) he afterwards departed; and, levying an army, recovered the kingdom of his grandfather in Thessaly.

Ion being general for the Athenians, when Eumolpus the Thracian invaded Attica, did obtain a great victory, and thereby such love and honour of the people, that they committed the ordering of their state into his hands. He divided the citizens into tribes, appointing every one to some occupation or good course of life. When the people multiplied, he planted colonies in Sycionia, then called Ægialos, or Ægialia: in which country Solinus then reigning, thought it safer to give his daughter Helice in marriage to Ion, and make him his heir, than to contend with him. So Ion married Helice, and built a town called by his wife's name in Ægialia, where he and his posterity reigned long, and (though not obliterating the old name) gave to that land the denomination. But in after-times the Dores, assisting the nephews of Hercules, invaded Peloponnesus, and overcoming the Achæans possessed Laconia, and all those parts which the Achæi had formerly occupied. Hereupon the Achæi, driven to seek a new seat, came unto the Iones, desiring to inhabit Egialia with them, and alleging in vain

that Ion and Achæus had been brethren.

When this re

quest could not be obtained, they sought by force to expel the Ionians, which they performed; but they lost their king Tisamenes, the son of Orestes, in that war.

Thus were the Iones driven out of Peloponnesus, and compelled to remove into Attica, from whence after a while they sailed into Asia, and peopled the western coast thereof, on which they built twelve cities, inhabited by them even to this day, at the least, without any universal or memorable transmigration. This expedition of the Iones into Asiahath been mentioned of all which have written of that age, and is commonly placed 140 years after the war of Troy, and sixty years after the descent of the Heraclidæ into Peloponnesus. These Heraclide were they of whom the kings of Sparta issued; which race held that kingdom about 700 years. Of their father Hercules many strange things are delivered unto us by the poets, of which some are like to have been true, others perhaps must be allegorically understood. But the most approved writers think that there were many called Hercules, all whose exploits were by the Greeks ascribed to the son of Alcmena, who is said to have performed these twelve great labours.

First, he slew the Nemean lion; secondly, he slew the serpent Hydra, which had nine heads, whereof one being cut off, two grew in the place; the third was the overtaking a very swift hart; the fourth was the taking of a wild boar alive, which haunted mount Erymanthus in Arcady; the fifth was the cleansing of Augeas's ox-stall in one day, which he performed by turning the river Alpheus into it; the sixth was the chasing away of the birds from the lake Stymphalis; the seventh was the fetching a bull from Crete; the eighth was the taking of the mares which Diomedes king of Thrace fed with human flesh; the ninth was to fetch a girdle of the queen of the Amazons; the three last were, to fetch Geryon's beeves from Gades, the golden apples of the Hesperides, and Cerberus from hell. The mythological interpretation of these I purposely omit, as both overlong to be here set down, and no less perplexed than the labours them

selves. For some by Hercules understand fortitude, prudence, and constancy, interpreting the monsters, vices. Others make Hercules the sun, and his travels to be the twelve signs of the zodiac. There are others who apply his works historically to their own conceits; as well assured, that the exposition cannot have more unlikelihood than the fables, that he took Elis, Pylus, Echalia, and other towns, being assisted by such as either admired his virtues, or were beholden unto him. Also that he slew many thieves and tyrants I take to be truly written, without addition of poetical vanity. His travels through most parts of the world are, or may seem, borrowed from Hercules Libycus. But sure it is that many cities in Greece were greatly bound to him; for that he (bending all his endeavours to the common good) delivered the land from much oppression. But after his death no city of Greece (Athens excepted) requited the virtue and deserts of Hercules with constant protection of his children, persecuted by the king Eurystheus. This Eurystheus was son of Sthenelus, and grandchild of Perseus; he reigned in Mycenæ, the mightiest city then in Greece. He it was that imposed those hard tasks upon Hercules, who was bound to obey him (as poets report) for expiation of that murder which in his madness he had committed upon his own children; but, as others say, because he was his subject and servant: wherefore there are who commend Eurystheus for employing the strength of Hercules to so good a purpose. But it is generally agreed by the best writers, that Hercules was also of the stock of Perseus, and holden in great jealousy by Eurystheus, because of his virtue, which appeared more and more in the dangerous services wherein he was employed, so that he grew great in reputation and power through all Greece, and had by many wives and concubines above threescore children. These children Eurystheus would fain have got into his power, when Hercules was dead; but they fled unto Ceyx, king of Trachinia, and from him (for he durst not withstand Eurystheus) to Athens. The Athenians not only gave them entertainment, but lent them aid, wherewith they en