HKB
the sixteenth year of David's Reign: and the Argonautic Expedition being later by about three Generations, will be about three hundred years later than where the Greeks have placed it.
After Navigation in long ships with sails, and one order of oars, had been propagated from Egypt to Phoenicia and Greece, and thereby the Zidonians had extended their trade to Greece, and carried it on about an hundred and fifty years; and then the Tyrians being driven from the Red Sea by the Edomites, had begun a new trade on the Mediterranean with Spain, Afric, Britain, and other remote nations; they carried it on about an hundred and sixty years; and then the Corinthians began to improve Navigation, by building bigger ships with three orders of oars, called Triremes. For [118] Thucydides tells us that the Corinthians were the first of the Greeks who built such ships, and that a ship-carpenter of Corinth went thence to Samos, about 300 years before the end of the Peloponnesian war, and built also four ships for the Samians; and that 260 years before the end of that war, that is, about the 29th Olympiad, there was a fight at sea between the Corinthians and the Corcyreans which was the oldest sea-fight mentioned in history. Thucydides tells us further, that the first colony which the Greeks sent into Sicily, came from Chalcis in Euboea, under the conduct of Thucles, and built Naxus; and the next year Archias came from Corinth with a colony, and built Syracuse; and that Lamis came about the same time into Sicily, with a colony from Megara in Achaia, and lived first at Trotilum, and then at Leontini, and died at Thapsus near Syracuse; and that after his death, this colony was invited by Hyblo to Megara in Sicily, and lived there 245 years, and was then expelled by Gelo King of Sicily. Now Gelo flourished about 78 years before the end of the Peloponnesian war: count backwards the 78 and the 245 years, and about 12 years more for the Reign of Lamis in Sicily, and the reckoning will place the building of Syracuse about 335 years before the end of the Peloponnesian war, or in the tenth Olympiad; and about that time Eusebius and others place it: but it might be twenty or thirty years later, the antiquities of those days having been raised more or less by the Greeks. From the colonies henceforward sent into Italy and Sicily came the name of Græcia magna.
Thucydides [119] tells us further, that the Greeks began to come into Sicily almost three hundred years after the Siculi had invaded that Island with an army out of Italy: suppose it 280 years after, and the building of Syracuse 310 years before the end of the Peloponnesian war; and that invasion of Sicily by the Siculi will be 590 years before the end of that war, that is, in the 27th year of Solomon's Reign, or thereabout. Hellanicus [120] tells us, that it was in the third Generation before the Trojan war; and in the 26th year of the Priesthood of Alcinoe, Priestess of Juno Argiva: and Philistius of Syracuse, that it was 80 years before the Trojan war: whence it follows that the Trojan war and Argonautic Expedition were later than the days of Solomon and Rehoboam, and could not be much earlier than where we have placed them.