410 HISTORY OF GREECE. he could narrate fables in his history better than Herodotus, 01 Ktesias, or Hellanicus. 1 The fragments which remain to us, exhibit some proof that this promise was performed as to quan- tity ; 2 though as to his style of narration, the judgment of Dio- nysius is unfavorable. Xenophon ennobled his favorite amuse- ment of the chase by numerous examples chosen from the heroic world, tracing their portraits with all the simplicity of an undi- minished faith. Kallisthenes, like Ephorus, professed to omit all mythes which referred to a time anterior to the return of the Hera kleids ; yet we know that he devoted a separate book or portion of his history to the Trojan war. 3 Philistus introduced some mythes in the earlier portions of his Sicilian history ; butTimaeus was dis- tinguished above all others for the copious and indiscriminate way in which he collected and repeated such legends. 4 Some of these ed- Marx.), the talcs of Kadmus and Harmonia (Fragm. 12), the banish- ment of JEtolus from Elis (Fragm. 15 ; Strabo, viii. p. 357) ; he drew in- ferences from the chronology of the Trojan and Theban wars (Fragm. 28) ; he related the coming of Daedalus to the Sikan king Kokalus, and the expe- dition of the Amazons {Fragm. 99-103). He was particularly copious in his information about Krtaeif, cnroiKiai and avyytvdai (Polyb. ix. 1). 1 Strabo, i. p. 74. 8 Dionys. Halic. De Vett. Scriptt. Judic. p. 428, Rcisk ; 2Elian, V. H. iii. 18, GcoTTo/ZTroc dcLvoq /zvtfoAoyoc. Theopompus affirmed, that the bodies of those who went into the forbid- den precinct (rb ujSarov) of Zeus, in Arcadia, gave no shadow (Polyb. xvi. 12). He recounted the story of Midas and Silenus (Fragm. 74, 75, 76, ed. Wichers) ; he said a good deal about the heroes of Troy ; and he seems to have assigned the misfortunes of the Noorot to an historical cause the rot- tenness of the Grecian ships, from the length of the siege, while the genuine epic ascribes it to the anger of Athene (Fragm. 112, 113, 114; Schol. Homer. Iliad, ii. 135) ; he narrated an alleged expulsion of Kinyras from Cyprus by Agamemnon ( Fragm. Ill); he gave the genealogy of the Mace donian queen Olympias up to Achilles and ./Eakus (Fragm. 232). 3 Cicero, Epist. ad Familiar, v. 12 ; Xenophon de Venation, c. 1. 4 Philistus, Fragm. 1 (Goller), Daedalus, and Kokalns; about Liber and Juno (Fragm. 57) ; about the migration of the Sikels into Sicily, eighty years after the Trojan war (ap. Dionys. Hal. i. 3). Timaeus Fragm. 50, 51, 52, 53, Goller) related many fables respecting Jason, Medea, and the Argonauts generally. The miscarriage of the Athe nian armament under Nikias, before Syracuse, is imputed to the anger of Rrakles against the Athenians because they came to assist the Egcstara
