5. This Chronicle is not once mentioned by any writer of antiquity.
6. Some of the facts seem to be taken from authors of a later date.
7. Parachronisms appear in some of the epochas, which we can hardly suppose a Greek chronologer in the 129th Olympiad would be likely to commit, &c.
The objections of Robertson were replied to by Mr. Hewlett, in a work entitled A Vindication of the Authenticity of the Parian Chronicle,' London, 1789: by Mr. Gough, in the ninth volume of the Archwologia ; ' and by Person, in the ' Monthly Review,' in 1789.
His objections have been more recently noticed in the first volume of Hales's Chronology ; ' and the whole subject has been investigated with great accuracy by Bockb, in the second volume of his Corpus Inacriptioninn: The authenticity of the Chronicle has been also vindicated by Wagner, GOtt., 1790, Svo. The result of these inquiries can leave little doubt respecting the authenticity and antiquity of the Chronicle ; and the subsequent silence of classical writers respecting it, which is perhaps the strongest argument against its antiquity, may be accounted for, as Dr. hales has remarked, by the retired and insular situation of Pares. It is written in pure and classical Greek ; the characters bear several marks of antiquity; and none of the passages adduced by Robertson to prove that parts of it were taken from writers of a later date are sufficient to establish the fact.
The marble on which the Chronicle was engraved was five inches thick, and measured, when Selden viewed it, 3 feet 7 inches by 2 feet 7 inches; but one corner had been broken off. It contained at that time 93 lines, reckoning the imperfect ones, and might originally perhaps have contained a hundred. Upon an average the lines consist of 130 letters, all capitals, in close continuation, and unbroken into words. The events which it records are not so much those which relate to the history of the different states of Greece, but rather such as serve to illustrate the history of the civilisation and literature of Greece. Thus we do not find one event in the Peloponnesian war either mentioned or alluded to, but we have an account of the esta blishment of the principal religious festivals, of the introduction of the different kinds of music into those festivals, of the origin of tragedy and comedy, and of the time in which the most eminent poets and philosophers lived.
Fur an examination of the dates which are assigned to the different events it records, the render is referred to the first volume of Halea's Analysis of Chronology.'