Historical Disputation on Abaris

as uncertain, it should not seem a wonder to us that such a great debate about the time of our philosopher exists among learned men. Yet I judge it worthy of the greatest admiration that not one or another Olympiad provides the cause for debate for learned men, but that they dissent from one another by a space of more than twenty Olympiads. For if faith must be placed in Harpocration (ρ), Hippostratus believed that Abaris came into Greece in the 3rd Olympiad. Suidas (σ) also assents to this, who copied all these things, as he is very often accustomed to do, from Harpocration, without changing even a word. Although the most learned Ludolphus Kusterus noted on this passage of Suidas in the very recent, most splendid, and most accurate edition of this lexicographer, that he found this written in one Parisian Manuscript, that it had happened during the 53rd Olympiad, that is, in the 53rd Olympiad. Those who defend with great effort that Abaris was among the living in the 11th Olympiad recede very far from the opinion of Hippostratus, and those who hand down that he lived in the 82nd Olympiad even further. Among whom Eusebius (τ) seems to rightfully claim the first place for himself, when he says that Abaris was recognized as a diviner in the 82nd Olympiad. However, most learned men have long since observed in various places that Eusebius does not always carry great authority and very often errs in a wonderful manner. Indeed, I detect him contradicting himself in this very matter. For in this place he affirms that Abaris lived in the 82nd Olympiad, when yet a little before he asserted that he came from Scythia into Greece in the second year of the 54th Olympiad. For I can hardly persuade myself to believe that Abaris lived both in the 54th Olympiad and in the 82nd Olympiad and thus passed his life beyond one hundred years. Joannes Funccius (υ), not receding so far from Eusebius, refers his life to the third year of the 52nd Olympiad. Those who refer Abaris to the times of Phalaris and Pythagoras, among whose number is also Porphyrius (φ), Iamblichus (χ), and Heinricus Dodwellus (ψ), think they walk the safest path. There is, however, a new and no less controversy among learned men concerning the time when Phalaris and when Pythagoras lived. The Most Reverend [Bishop] of Worcester