Now I think it fitting for me to demonstrate that our philosophy is older than the pursuits among the Greeks. And let Moses and Homer be set as our boundary-markers, since each of them is most ancient, and the latter is older than the poets and historians, while the former is the founder of all barbarian wisdom. And let them now be taken by us for comparison; for we shall find that our writings are higher not only than the education of the Greeks, but even than the invention of letters. And I will not summon as witnesses those of our own household, but rather I will use Greeks as helpers; for the former course is unreasonable, since it is not to be accepted even by you, but the latter, should it be demonstrated, is admirable, when, contending against you with your own weapons, I obtain refutations unsuspected from you. For concerning the poetry of Homer, and his lineage, and the time at which he flourished, the most ancient men investigated beforehand: Theagenes of Rhegium, who lived in the time of Cambyses, and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, and Antimachus of Colophon, and Herodotus of Halicarnassus, and Dionysius of Olynthus; after them Ephorus of Cyme and Philochorus the Athenian, and Megacleides and Chamaeleon the Peripatetics; then the grammarians Zenodotus, Aristophanes, Callimachus, Crates, Eratosthenes, Aristarchus, and Apollodorus. Of these, the school of Crates says he flourished before the return of the Heraclidae, within eighty years after the Trojan events; the school of Eratosthenes, after the hundredth year from the capture of Ilium; the school of Aristarchus, at the time of the Ionian colonization, which is one hundred and forty years after the Trojan events; Philochorus says, after the Ionian colonization, in the archonship of Archippus at Athens, one hundred and eighty years after the Trojan events; the school of Apollodorus, one hundred years after the Ionian colonization, which would be two hundred and forty years after the Trojan events. Some said he lived ninety years before the Olympiads, that is, three hundred and seventeen years after the capture of Ilium; others brought the time down lower, saying that Homer lived together with Archilochus; and Archilochus flourished around the twenty-third Olympiad, in the time of Gyges the Lydian, five hundred years after the Trojan events. And concerning the time of the aforesaid poet—I mean Homer—and his composition, and the disagreement of those who have spoken about him, let this suffice to have been stated by us, as in a summary, for those able to examine the matter accurately. For it is possible to show that even the opinions concerning the discourses are false. For among those whose record of times is incoherent, neither can the matters of history be true. For what is the cause of error in writing, except the composing of things that are not true?