Author Description

Excerpt from The Grecian History From the Earliest State, Vol. 1 of 2: To the Death of Alexander the Great The first notices we have, of every country, are fabulous and uncertain. Among an unenlightened people, every imposture is likely to be practiced; for ignorance is the parent of credulity. Nothing, therefore, which the Greeks have transmitted to us, concerning their earliest state, can be relied on. Poets were the first who began to record the actions of their countrymen; and it is a part of their art to strike the imagination, even at the expense of probability. For this reason, in the earliest accounts of Greece, we are presented with the machinations of gods and demi-gods, the adventures of heroes and giants, the ravages of monsters and dragons, and all the potency of charms and enchantments. Man, plain historical man, seems to have no share in the picture; and, while the reader wanders through the most delightful scenes the imagination can offer, he is scarcely once presented with the actions of such a being as himself. It would be vain, therefore, and beside the present purpose, to give an historical air to accounts, which were never meant to be transmitted as true. Some writers, indeed, have laboriously undertaken to separate the truth from the fable, and to give us an unbroken narrative, from the first dawning of tradition, to the display of undoubted history. They have leveled down all mythology to their own apprehensions: every fable is made to look with an air of probability. In stead of a golden fleece, Jason goes in pursuit of a-great treasure; instill;, of destroying a chimera, Propeller reclaims a mountain; instead of a hydra, Hercules overcomes a robber. Thus, the fanciful pictures of a strong imagination, are aught to assume a serious severity; and tend to deceive the reader still more, by offering, in the garb of truth, what had been meant only to delight and allure him. About the Publisher Forgotten Bo