There is nothing absurd, therefore, in the supposi tion, that the author might have been requested by a public body, since a town council themselves could not be supposed competent for the task, to draw up a chro nology for the gratification of a very natural propensity of human nature. The Romans never conquered a country, but they ordered maps of it to be exhibited in the tri umph, to gratify the public curiosity ; and great num bers of these were always to be seen in the porch of Lucullus. Saxo Grammatieus informs us, that the an cient Danes inscribed their national history on stones and rocks : and a public chronology was actually ex hibited at Sicyon, in Greece. We cannot, therefore, be surprised, if the inhabitants of Paros, or wherever the marble was erected, would be gratified by a monument recording the xras of those poets, philosophers, legis lators, and renowned warriors, whose fame and exploits constituted the only theme of their songs, traditions, and popular learning. We grant, that in a great majority of the republican decrees, the beginning consists of cer tain solennia verba ; such as, HBOYAHKAIOAHM0)2, senate and the people ;" and Ei102ENTHIBOYAHIKAI Tf21AHMS21, "it hath seemed good to the senate and the people." But besides that something of this kind might have been originally intimated in the beginning of the chyonicon, there are many inscriptions undoubtedly pub lic, which have no such exordium. Of this kind are the following : the Sigean vote in favour of Antiochus ; the public survey of the temple of Minerva Polias at Athens ; the rkord of boundaries between the Samians and Prieneans ; and many more that might be cited from Chishull and Chandler.
It is indeed objected, with much acuteness, that the contents are not such as could have excited any peculiar interest in Paros, as having little or no reference to that island. Were we disposed to fight, tooth and nail, for the Parian marble, as 'Air Robertson does against it, we might tear off an entire limb of his argument, by denying the propriety of that designation ; there being no other ground for it, than the mention of an Astyanax, as archon E Ilapt ; a reading, for the accuracy of which we are entirely at the mercy of Selden. But allowing Paros to have been the seat of the marble, as conjecture and tradition have made it, we see no reason why there might not have been a separate chronicle for that island and other places ; nor why in this one, common to almost all Greece, Athens should not be made the principal sub ject. Besides the unrivalled celebrity of that illustrious city, had a strong claim upon the Parians for par ticular attention in their chronicle. They had been lung subject to her influence ; their laws, their constitution, their calculation of time, were similar to hers ; and, at the supposed date of the marble, they were under her special protection and authority.
4th, The Greek and Roman writers, as the objector truly remarks, complained, long after this period, that in the Grecian antiquities, there reigned the utmost con fusion and uncertainty. But, as far as we can recollect, they no where complain of a paucity of opinions on these subjects. Now, as the author of the Parian Chronicle
lay under no peculiar obligation, that we can see, to be infallible, to clear up disputed mysteries, or, in short, to put an end to all uncertainty ; all that he could be ex pected to do, in his circumstances, was to express, in as few words as possible, what he had discovered, and, like other writers, to supply the defects of better informa tion by his own conjectures, guided however by ancient documents and the opinions of others. That there ex isted at that time abundance of books, Mr Robertson himself admits, when he recounts the various libraries, and, consequently, chronological materials, collected long before ; such as those of Polycrates in Samos, Pisistratus and Euclides at Athens, Nicocrates in Cy prus, Euripides, Aristotle, Clearchus ; net to mention those unparalleled collections formed by Ptolemy • and Eumenes, containing together one million of volumes. Why then should the Parian chronologer be debarred from the use of ancient documents, particularly as we must allow that indulgence to other authors engaged in similar works, who lived before, and soon after, the same period : as for those who lived long after, we can not bring ourselves to the belief, but that their difficul ties, instead of diminishing, would be considerably in creased. To be short, the objection, if admitted, would operate, with cruel severity, against all the ancient sys tems of chronology ; for it would remove all possibility not only of a Parian chronicle, but of such chronologies as those of Eratosthenes, Castor, Apollodorus, Thra syllus, and many others ; whose information, if not spurious, must have been derived from writings previous to their own times, and therefore equally accessible to the chronologer of Paros.
5th, The silence of the ancient writers concerning' this marble is one of the most plausible objections. When examined thoroughly, it will be found of no great moment. Negative proof indeed, except where all the possibilities of the question may be completely exhaust ed, is in general extremely inconclusive. An attempt to invalidate a fact by one or two negative arguments, is like proving that the wind, on a particular day, did not blow from any one point of the compass, because it did not blow froin the south ! Acordingly this objection, founded on the silence of cotemporaries, if admitted to its full extent, would effect a most absurd revolution in the literary world : it would not only expunge from the list of antiquity the classic names of Ph2edrus, Quin tus Curtius, Velleius Paterculus, and others ; the works of some of whom were not quoted till so late as the fif teenth and sixteenth centuries ; but also destroy at one sweeping blow, almost all our ancient inscriptions. The marble in question, it is true, is not once mentioned by any ancient author now extant ; but for this silence many probable causes may be assigned, without our having recourse to the harsh and unreasonable supposition of its being a forgery.