and Nabuchodonosor, found out by Torniellus, are the children of mere fantasy, it is so plain, that it needs no proof at all. Wherefore we may truly say, that they which have contended about the time of this history, being well furnished of matter wherewith to confute each other, but wanting wherewith to defend themselves, (like naked men in a stony field,) have chased Holofernes out of all parts of time, and left him and his great expedition extra anni solisque vias, in an age that never was, and in places that were never known.

Surely to find out y the borders of Japheth, which were towards the south, and over against Arabia, or the countries of Phud and Lud, that lay in Holofernes's way, I think it would as much trouble cosmographers as the former question hath done chronologers. But I will not busy myself herewith; having already so far digressed, in shewing who lived not with Manasses, that I think it high time to return unto mine own work, and rehearse what others I find to have had their part in the long time of his reign.

SECT. VI.

Of other princes and actions that were in these times. THE first year of Manasses was the last of Romulus; after whose death, one year the Romans wanted a king. Then was Numa Pompilius, a Sabine, chosen; a peaceable man, and seeming very religious in his kind. He brought the rude people, which Romulus had employed only in wars, to some good civility, and a more orderly fashion of life. This he effected by filling their heads with superstition; as, persuading them that he had familiarity with a nymph called Egeria, who taught him a many of ceremonies, which he delivered unto the Romans as things of great importance. But all these devices of Numa were, in his own judgment, no better than mere delusions, that served only as rudiments to bring the savage multitude of thieves and outlaws, gathered into one body by Romulus, to some form of milder discipline than their boisterous and wild

y Judith ii. 23, 25.

nature was otherwise apt to entertain. This appeared by the books that were found in his grave almost six hundred years after his death, wherein the superstition taught by himself was condemned as vain. His grave was opened by chance, in digging a piece of ground that belonged to one L. Petilius, a scribe. Two coffins or chests of stone were in it, with an inscription in Greek and Latin letters, which said that Numa Pompilius the son of Pompo, king of the Romans, lay there. In the one coffin was nothing found, his body being utterly consumed. In the other were his books, wrapped up in two bundles of wax; of his own constitutions seven, and other seven of philosophy. They were not only uncorrupted, but in a manner fresh and new. The prætor of the city desiring to have a sight of these books, when he perceived whereunto they tended, refused to deliver them back to the owner, and offered to take a solemn oath, that they were against the religion then in use. Hereupon the senate, without more ado, commanded them to be openly burnt. It seems that Numa did mean to acquit himself unto wiser ages, which he thought would follow, as one that had not been so foolish as to believe the doctrine wherein he instructed his own barbarous times. But the poison, wherewith he had infected Rome when he sat in his throne, had not left working, when he ministered the antidote out of his grave. Had these books not come to light until the days of Tully and Cæsar, when the mist of ignorance was somewhat better discussed, likely it is, that they had not only escaped the fire, but wrought some good (and peradventure general) effect. Being as it was, they served as a confutation, without remedy, of idolatry that was inveterate.

Numa reigned three and forty years in continual peace. After him Tullus Hostilius, the third king, was chosen in the six and fortieth of Manasses, and reigned two and thirty years, busied for the most part in war. He quarrelled with the Albans, who met him in the field; but regard of the danger, which both parts had cause to fear, that might grow unto them from the Thuscanes, caused

them to bethink themselves of a course, whereby, without effusion of so much blood as might make them too weak for a common enemy, it might be decided who should command, and who obey.

There were in each camp three brethren, twins born at one birth, (Dionysius says that they were cousin-germans,) of equal years and strength, who were appointed to fight for their several countries. The end was, that the Horatii, champions for the Romans, got the victory, though two of them first lost their lives. The three Curatii that fought for Alba (as Livy tells it) were all alive, and able to fight, yet wounded, when two of their opposites were slain; but the third, Horatius, pretending fear, did run away, and thereby drew the others, who by reason of their hurts could not follow him with equal speed, to follow him at such distance one from another, that returning upon them he slew them, as it had been in single fight, man after man, ere they could join together, and set upon him all at once. Dionysius reports it somewhat otherwise, telling very particularly what wounds were given and taken, and saying, that first one of the Horatii was slain, then one of the Curatii, then a second Horatius, and lastly the two Curatii, whom the third Horatius did cunningly sever one from the other, as is shewed before.

This is one of the most memorable things in the old Roman history, both in regard of the action itself, wherein Rome was laid, as it were, in wager against Alba, and in respect of the great increase which thereby the Roman state obtained. For the city of Alba did immediately become subject unto her own colony, and was shortly after, upon some treacherous dealing of their governor, utterly razed, the people being removed unto Rome, where they were made citizens. The strong nation of the Latins, whereof Alba, as the mother city, had been chief, became ere long dependent upon Rome, though not subject unto it, and divers petty states adjacent were by little and little taken in : which additions, that were small, yet many, I will forbear to rehearse, (as being the works of sundry ages, and few of

them remarkable considered apart by themselves,) until such time as this fourth empire, that is now in the infancy, shall grow to be the main subject of this history.

The seventh year of Hippomenes in Athens was current with the first of Manasses. Also the three last governors for ten years, who followed Hippomenes, were in the same king's time. Of these I find only the names Leocrates, Apsander, and Erixias. After Erixias yearly rulers were elected.

These governors for ten years were also of the race of Medon and Codrus; but their time of rule was shortened, and from term of life reduced unto ten years; it being thought likely that they would govern the better, when they knew that they were afterwards to live private men under the command of others. I follow z Dionysius of Halicarnassus in applying their times unto those years of the Olympiads wherein the chronological table following this work doth set them. For he not only professeth himself to have taken great care in ordering the reckoning of times, but hath noted always the years of the Greeks, how they did answer unto the things of Rome, throughout all the continuance of his history. Whereas therefore he placeth the building of Rome in the first year of the seventh Olympiad, and affirms that the same was the first year of Charops's government in Athens; I hope I shall not need excuse for varying from Pausanias, who sets the beginning of these Athenians somewhat sooner.

In the reign of Manasses it was, that Midas, whom the poets feigned to have had ass's ears, held the kingdom of Phrygia. Many fables were devised of him, especially that he obtained of Bacchus, as a great gift, that all things which he should touch might immediately be changed into gold; by which means he had like to have been starved, (his meat and drink being subject to the same transformation,) had not Bacchus delivered him from this miserable faculty, by causing him to wash himself in the river Pactolus, the stream whereof hath ever since forsooth abounded in that

Dion. Halic. 1. 1. fol. 43. and 45.

precious metal. Finally it is said, he died by drinking bull's blood, being invaded by the Scythians.

In this age flourished that Antimachus who (saith Plutarch in the life of Romulus) observed the moon's eclipse at the foundation of Rome.

The Milesians, or (as Eusebius hath it) the Athenians, having obtained some power by sea, founded Macicratis, a city on the east of Egypt. Psammiticus herein seems to have assisted them, who used all means of drawing the Greeks into Egypt, accounting them his surest strength. For neither Miletus nor Athens were now of power sufficient to plant a colony in Egypt by force.

About this time Archias, with his companion Miscellus and other Corinthians, founded a Syracuse in Sicily; a city in after-times exceeding famous.

The city of Nicomedia, sometime b Astacus, was enlarged and beautified in this age by Zipartes, native of Thrace. Sibylla of Samus, according to Pausanias, lived about this time.

About these times also was Croton founded upon the bay of Tarentum by Miscellus, the companion of Archias that built Syracuse; Strabo makes it somewhat more ancient, and so doth Pausanias.

About the same time the Parthenians, being of age, and banished Lacedæmon, were conducted by Phalantus into Italy, where it is said they founded Tarentum; but © Justin and Pausanias find it built before, and by them conquered and amplified. And about the same time, Manasses yet living, the city Phaselis was founded in Pamphylia, Gela in Sicily, Interamne in the region of the Umbri, now Urbin in Italy. About which time also Chalcedon in Asia, over-against Byzantium, (now Constantinople,) was founded by the Megarenses; who therefore were upbraided as blind, because they chose not the other side of Bosphorus. It were long work to rehearse all that is said to have been done

a Plut. et Euseb.

b Whence in Strabo there is Sinus Astacenus, a part of Propontis, where

this city standeth. Paus. 1. 5. Hal. 1. 3. Strabo, 1. 6.

Justin. 1. 3. Paus. 1. 10.