19.

In proportion as an earnest desire is excited to ascertain the truth about remarkable places and events, and in proportion as writers, on these subjects, are more numerous, so much the more is an author exposed to censure, who does not make himself master of what has been written. For example, in “the Collection of the Rivers,” Callimachus says, that he should laugh at the person, who would venture to describe the Athenian virgins as

[Pg 88]

[CAS. 397]

“drinking of the pure waters of the Eridanus,”

from which even the herds would turn away. There are indeed fountains of water, pure and fit for drinking, it is said, without the gate called Diochares, near the Lyceium; formerly also a fountain was erected near it, which afforded a large supply of excellent water; but if it is not so at present, is it at all strange, that a fountain supplying abundance of pure and potable water at one period of time, should afterwards have the property of its waters altered?

In subjects, however, which are so numerous, we cannot enter into detail; yet they are not so entirely to be passed over in silence as to abstain from giving a condensed account of some of them.