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Suppose that some later polyhistor, as devoid of critical faculty as most of his tribe, had found the version of Berosus, as well as another much nearer the original story; that, having too much respect for his authorities to make up a tertium quid of his own, out of the materials offered, he followed a practice, common enough among ancient and, particularly, among Semitic historians, of dividing, both into fragments and piecing these together, without troubling himself very much about those resulting repetitions and inconsistencies; the product of such a primitive editorial operation would be a narrative analogous to that which treats of the Noachian deluge in the book of Genesis.
The evidence of Polyhistor and Abydenus as to the date of the foundation, representing, as it must, the testimony of Berosus upon the point, is to be preferred; and we may accept it as a fact, beyond all reasonable doubt, that the native city of St. Paul derived, if not its origin, yet, at any rate, its later splendor and magnificence, from the antagonist of Hezekiah.
Of these, again, only the two first-named, the Old Testament and Herodotus, can be termed direct sources; the rest simply reproduce extracts from other works, notably from Ctesias, the contemporary of Xenophon, from Berosus, a priest of the temple of Bel in Babylonia, who lived about the time of Alexander the Great, or shortly after, and from Apollodorus, Abydenus, Alexander Polyhistor, and Nicolas of Damascus, all of whom being subsequent to Berosus, either quote the latter or are dependent upon him.
He might have walked out of a Cruikshank etching. Polyhistor was beginning, "May I inquire " when the other took him up with a vehement frankness that he found engaging at once. "This is a great intrusion. Will you pardon me? I heard some remarks of yours last night that deeply interested me. I obtained your name and address of our hostess, and took the liberty of " "Oh! pray be seated.
Asshur-bani-pal ascended the throne in B.C. 668, or very early in B.C. 667; and his first act seems to have been to appoint as viceroy of Babylon his younger brother Saul-Mugina, who appears as Sam-mughes in Polyhistor, and as Saosduchinus in the Canon of Ptolemy. The first war in which Asshur-bani-pal engaged was most probably with Egypt.
But a restless eagerness for knowledge urged me farther: I lighted upon the history of ancient literature, and from that fell into an encyclopaedism, in which I hastily read Gessner's "Isagoge" and Morhov's "Polyhistor," and thus gained a general notion of how many strange things might have happened in learning and life.
And there may, of course, have been many others of whom no traces remain, or of whom none have been as yet found. On the other hand, it may be observed, that the number of the early Chaldaean kings reported by Polyhistor is preposterous.
But at this period to his cogitations Polyhistor's landlady entered with a card, which she presented to his consideration: All astonishment, Polyhistor bade his visitor up. He entered briskly, fur-collared, hat in hand, and bowed as he stood on the threshold. He was a very short man snub-nosed; rusty-whiskered; indubitably and unimpressively a cockney in appearance.
The admission af a double defeat makes it evident that the tale is not the invention of Greek national vanity. Abydenus and Polyhistor probably derive it from Berosus, who must also have made the statement that Tarsus was now founded by Sennacherib, and constructed, after the pattern of Babylon.
She affects his narrative only inasmuch as he happened to meet at her house a gentleman who for a time exerted a considerable influence over his fortunes. Here Polyhistor's narrative must give place to certain editorial marginalia by Miss Lucy , who "runs" the Family Magazine: "Polyhistor, indeed!" she writes. "The conceit of some people!
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