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Herodotus, the first profane historian whose works have been transmitted to us, has not a greater antiquity than 2300 years[113]. The historians, prior to him, whom he may have consulted, do not date a century before him[114]. We may even judge of what they were by the extravagances handed down to us, extracted from the works of Aristæus of Proconnesus, and some others. Before them we have only poets; and Homer, the most ancient that we possess, Homer the immortal master and model of all the West, flourished only twenty-seven or twenty-eight centuries before the present time.

When these first historians speak of ancient events, whether occurring in their own nation, or in neighbouring countries, they only cite oral traditions, and not public works. It was not until a long time after them, that pretended extracts were given from the Egyptian, Phenician, and Babylonian annals. Berosus wrote only in the reign of Seleucus Nicanor; Hieronymus in that of Antiochus Soter, and Manetho under Ptolemy Philadelphia; the whole three having flourished only in the third century before the Christian era. That Sanconiatho was an author real or supposed, was not known till Philo of Byblos had published a translation of his work in the reign of Adrian, in the second century before Christ; and, when he did become known, there was nothing found in his account of the early ages, as in those of all the authors of this kind, but a puerile theogony, or metaphysical doctrines, so disguised under the form of allegory as to be unintelligible.