10. Cosmas must here be quoting the Timaeus of Plato from memory, for he misrepresents what is there stated----namely, that the charge advanced against the Greeks of being always children was made to Solon by an Egyptian priest. It is well known that Solon, after his legislation had been adopted, withdrew from Athens for ten years, and that one of the countries which he visited during that time was Egypt, where he conversed with two learned priests, Psenophis of Heliopolis and Sonchis of Sais. It seems singular that Cosmas should have converted a name so well known as that of Solon into Solomon. Had he only a hearsay knowledge of the dialogue?
11. Gr. no&moj . The laws of Solon were called no&moi , those of Draco qesmoi/ .
12. One of the earliest known Greek inscriptions is that which is to be seen in Nubia near Abu Simnel. It was made in the reign of Psamatik II, King of Egypt, by his generals Apollonius and Amasis, and its date is about 595 B.C. Kadmos, according to Mr Sayce, is certainly Phoenician. The question has been settled by a cuneiform tablet, which informs us that Qadmu was the name of the "god". See The Academy, 22nd September, 1894, p. 217.
13. Isai. xl, 23.
14. Not more but less by about 70 years.
15. This story is now discredited, as is also that which immediately follows concerning the Septuagint, of the origin of which little or nothing is known for certain. Both stories are taken from Josephus's Antiquities of the Jews.
16. Tryphon is evidently a slip of memory on Cosmas's part for Demetrius,
17. Physcôn (so called from his obesity) was the seventh sovereign of the Ptolemaic dynasty, and reigned from B.c. 170 to B.C. 117. Cosmas has copied the story here related of him from Josephus, Contra Apion . 11, 5.
18. The last leaf of the Florentine MS. is wanting. Hence the abrupt breaking off in the middle of a sentence.
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