Gibbon's The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire

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276 - 333.) But the laws of Zaleucus and Charondas, which imposed on Diodorus and Stobaeus, are the spurious composition of a Pythagorean sophist, whose fraud has been detected by the critical sagacity of Bentley, p. 335 - 377.]

[Footnote 18: I seize the opportunity of tracing the progress of this national intercourse 1. Herodotus and Thucydides (A. U. C. 300 - 350) appear ignorant of the name and existence of Rome, (Joseph. contra Appion tom. ii. l. i. c. 12, p. 444, edit. Havercamp.) 2. Theopompus (A. U. C. 400, Plin. iii. 9) mentions the invasion of the Gauls, which is noticed in looser terms by Heraclides Ponticus, (Plutarch in Camillo, p. 292, edit. H. Stephan.) 3. The real or fabulous embassy of the Romans to Alexander (A. U. C. 430) is attested by Clitarchus, (Plin. iii. 9,) by Aristus and Asclepiades, (Arrian. l. vii. p. 294, 295,) and by Memnon of Heraclea, (apud Photium, cod. ccxxiv. p. 725,) though tacitly denied by Livy. 4. Theophrastus (A. U. C. 440) primus externorum aliqua de Romanis diligentius scripsit, (Plin.

  1. 9.) 5. Lycophron (A. U. C. 480 - 500) scattered the first seed of a Trojan colony and the fable of the Aeneid, (Cassandra, 1226 - 1280.)

A bold prediction before the end of the first Punic war!

Note: Compare Niebuhr throughout. Niebuhr has written a

dissertation (Kleine Schriften, i. p. 438,) arguing from this prediction, and on the other conclusive grounds, that the Lycophron, the author of the Cassandra, is not the Alexandrian poet. He had been anticipated in this sagacious criticism, as he afterwards discovered, by a writer of no less distinction than Charles James Fox. - Letters to Wakefield. And likewise by the author of the extraordinary translation of this poem, that most promising scholar, Lord Royston. See the Remains of Lord Royston, by the Rev. Henry Pepys, London, 1838.]

[Footnote 19: The tenth table, de modo sepulturae, was borrowed from Solon, (Cicero de Legibus, ii. 23 - 26:) the furtem per lancem et licium conceptum, is derived by Heineccius from the manners of Athens, (Antiquitat. Rom. tom. ii. p. 167 - 175.) The right of killing a nocturnal thief was declared by Moses, Solon, and the Decemvirs, (Exodus xxii. 3. Demosthenes contra Timocratem, tom. i. p. 736, edit. Reiske. Macrob. Saturnalia, l.

  1. c. 4. Collatio Legum Mosaicarum et Romanatum, tit, vii. No. i.
  1. 218, edit. Cannegieter.)

Note: Are not the same points of similarity discovered in

the legislation of all actions in the infancy of their civilization? - W.]



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