taught us in 1066 and All Thatthat history “is what you can remember,” and that is
certainly true; but history is also what you can date.^61
On the question of the datability of myth, the historiographical tradition must
be distinguished from other traditions, especially those of the chronographers,
mythographers, antiquarians, and local historians.^62 The first mythographers in the
fifth century left their mythical genealogies floating, unmeasured, without any
time hooks to the present.^63 But soon enough the task began of weaving a contin-
uous mesh, one that would ultimately tie the present into a matrix that reached
back beyond the measured time of Herodotus to before the Trojan War and the
foundation of the first Greek cities, to link up with the genealogies of myth.^64 The
Marmor Parium, for example, from the middle of the third century b.c.e., counts
the years from “264 b.c.e.” back to the time when Cecrops ruled Athens (“1581/0
b.c.e.”), when Ares and Poseidon squabbled over the Areopagus (“1531/0”),
when Demeter came to Athens and taught Triptolemus agriculture (“1409/8”), or
when Theseus fought the Amazons (“1256/5”).^65 It remains significant that even
this document does not purport to go back farther than the foundation of the city
of Athens. Deep cosmogonic time still remains beyond the pale.
This urge for chronological comprehensiveness is rather like what the geogra-
phers were aiming at throughout the Hellenistic period. When Polybius, for exam-
ple, talks about the increasing success in mapping space, he says that in the old days
authors could be forgiven for peddling fabulous yarns about the far reaches of the
earth, since no one knew any better; but now that virtually all the world is acces-
sible there is no excuse for not gaining a better and truer knowledge (3.58 – 59).^66
For the far reaches of time, as well, many felt the need to fill in the vacuum that
inspired such horror, and to create the nets of connections between the present and
the past that could mean so much to cities and to monarchs.^67 Not all chronogra-
phers succumbed to this compulsion to fill in the blanks. The great Hellenistic
scholars, Eratosthenes and Apollodorus, as we shall see shortly, were reluctant to
pin very much on dates before the first Olympiad, and certainly before the Trojan
War. But especially after Castor of Rhodes published his chronography lining up
Greek affairs with the deep reaches of Eastern time, the pressure to fill in the gaps
systematically grew ever stronger. The issue comes clearly into focus when the
Christian chronographers, especially Julius Africanus (c. 160 – 240 c.e.), get to
work. They do not want any “uncertain” periods at all, as Adler explains; they
want to fill it allin, to connect every dot, all the way back to creation.^68 Even
among the Christian chronographers, however, there was room for dissension on
the question of when knowledge gave out: Eusebius aroused the rage of George
- Myth into History I: Foundations of the City