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Ancus Martius; another between A. Mar

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tius and L. Tarquinius. Each of these interregna might, perhaps, take up some years. The historians allot no space of time to these interregna; but we know it is no unusual thing for writers to begin the reign of a succeeding king from the death of his predecessor; though he did not immediately succeed to his crown. Numa was not elected king, until the people found by experience, that the interregal government was full of inconveniences, and some years administration might make them sufficiently sensible of it. When Tullus Hostilius was called

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to the crown, the poorer citizens were in a state of want; which could no way be relieved but by electing some very wealthy person to be king, who could afford to divide the crown-lands among them.' Ancus Martius was made king, at a time when the Roman affairs were in a very bad state,

Lib. 3. c. 36.

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Dionys. Halic. 1. 2. c. 57.

'Id. l. 3. c. 1.

Id. ibid. c. 46.

through the neglect of the public religion, and of agriculture." And L. Tarquinius was elected upon the necessity of the war with the Apiolani. Thus these kings appear not to be called to the crown until some public exigencies made it necessary to have a king. They seem to have succeeded one another, like the judges of Israel; the successor did not come to the crown immediately upon the demise of his predecessor; but when a king died, the Interreges took the government, and administered the public affairs, until some crisis demanded. a new king. If this was the fact, there can be no appearance of an objection against the length of the reigns of these kings; for the reigns of the kings were not really so long, but the reigns, and the intervening Interregna, put together. Now the more I consider the state of the Roman affairs as represented by Dionysius, the more I am inclined to suspect that their kings succeeded in this manner.

• Id. 1. 3. c. 36.

h Id. ibid. c. 49.

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III. Sir Isaac Newton contends, that there were no such kings of Assyria, as all the ancient writers have recorded to have reigned there from Ninus to Sardanapalus, and and to have governed a great part of Asia for about one thousand three hundred years. Our great and learned author follows Sir John Marsham, in this particular; for Sir John Marsham first raised doubts about these kings; and indeed that learned gentleman hinted a great part of what is now offered upon this subject. I have formerly endeavoured to answer Sir John Marsham's objections, as far as I could then apprehend it necessary to reply to them; but since Sir Isaac Newton has thought fit to make use of some of them, and has added others of his own; it will be proper for me to mention all the several arguments which are now offered against these Assyrian kings, and to lay before the

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i Newton's Chron. chap. 2.

* See Marsham's Can. Chron. p. 485.

1 Pref. to vol. i,

reader, what I apprehend may be replied to them.

1. And it is remarked," that "the names of these pretended kings of Assyria, except two or three, have no affinity with the Assyrian names." To this I answer; Ctesias, from whom it is thought we have had the names of these kings, was not an Assyrian. He was of Cnidus, a city of Caria in the Lesser Asia; and wrote his Persian or Assyrian history (I think) in the Greek tongue." The royal records of Persia supplied him with materials, and it is most reasonable to think, that the Assyrian kings were not registered by their Assyrian names, in the Persian Chronicles; or if they were, that Ctesias, in his history, did not use those names which he found there, but made others, which he thought equivalent to them. Diodorus Siculus did not give the Egyptian heroes, whom he mentioned, their true

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Egyptian names; but invented for them such as he thought were synonymous, if duly explained." The true name of Mitradates' fellow-servant was Spaco; but the Greeks called her Cyno, apprehending Cyno in Greek, to be of the same import as Spaco in the Median' tongue. This was the common practice of the ancient writers, and some moderns have imitated it; of which instances might be given in several of the names in Thuanus' history of his own times; but certainly I need not go on farther in my reply to this objection. If Ctesias named these kings according to his own fancy, and really misnamed them; it can in no wise prove that the persons so misnamed never were in being.

2. It is argued, that Herodotus did not think Semiramis so ancient as the writers who follow Ctesias imagined. I answer; by Herodotus' accounts, the Assyrian empire

P See Diodor. hist. lib. 1. p. 8.
9 Herodot. hist. lib. 1. c. 110.
Newton's Chron. p. 266. 278.

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