Nor is this impious enough; but moreover, deriving
the pedigree of Hercules from Perseus, he says that Perseus
was an Assyrian, as the Persians affirm. ‘But the leaders,’
says he, ‘of the Dorians may appear to be descended in a
right line from the Egyptians, reckoning their ancestors
from before Danae and Acrisius.’
1 Here he has wholly
passed by Epaphus, Io, Iasus, and Argus, being ambitious
not only to make the other Herculeses Egyptians and
Phoenicians, but to carry this also, whom himself affirms
to have been the third, out of Greece to the barbarians.
But of the ancient learned writers, neither Homer, nor
Hesiod, or Archilochus, nor Pisander, nor Stesichorus, nor
Alcman, nor Pindar, makes any mention of the Egyptian
or the Phoenician Hercules, but all acknowledge this our
own Boeotian and Argive Hercules.
1 Herod. VI. 53, 54.
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