CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

How Greek History Was Corrupted

It is not generally admitted. But Homer, the famous epic poet of Greece, was mad. His "Iliad" and "Odyssey" -- recording the events surrounding the Greek struggles with Troy -- were written while Homer was demented.
Homer was not merely an insane poet. He was also a mad historian. Through Homer Greek history was altered, with diabolical cleverness. Homer telescoped three Greek wars with Troy into one. Men and events five centuries apart are artificially joined together as if contemporary. Recent archaeological investigation at Troy reveals Homer's lie. There are three wars layers -- the first and last separated by about five centuries' (See C. W. Blegen's "Troy," in the revised edition of the "Cambridge Ancient History".)
Little wonder Paul the apostle wrote of Homer -- and of Hesiod and the other demented poets: "Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying ..." (I Timothy 1:4).

Greeks Admit Homer Was Demented

No poet in ancient Greece was ever considered worthy of special honor unless he was demented. Democritus "denies that any one can be a great poet, unless he is mad," wrote Cicero (Cicero, "Divin"., i, 80). Homer was therefore mad.
Plato described the unusual kind of insanity that clutched the minds of Greece's great poet-historians and philosophers. In the "Phaedrus" Plato characterizes "poetic inspiration" as the "state of being possessed by the Muses" -- a kind of "madness, which, on entering a delicate and virgin soul, arouses and excites it to frenzy in odes and other kinds of poetry .... But he that is without the Muses' madness when he knocks at the doors of Poesy, fancying that art alone will make him a competent poet, -- he and his poetry, the poetry of sober sense, will never attain perfection, but will be eclipsed by the poetry of inspired madmen" (245 A). Again, in the "Laws" Plato wrote that "whenever a poet is enthroned on the tripod of the Muse, he is not in his right mind" (719 C). In "Ion" the Greek theory of "inspiration" is most thoroughly expressed: "It is not by art, but by being inspired and possessed, that all good epic poets produce their beautiful poems they are dancing, even so the melic poets are not in their right mind when they are composing their beautiful strains. On the contrary, when they have fallen under the spell of melody and metre, they are like inspired revellers, and on becoming possessed, -- even as the Maenads are possessed and not in their right senses ... the soul of the melic poets acts in like manner, as they themselves admit .... And what they say is true; for the poet ... cannot compose until he becomes inspired and out of his senses, with his mind no longer in him; but, so long as he is in possession of his senses, not one of them is capable of composing, or of uttering his oracular sayings" (533 E-534 D).
In Biblical terms, Homer and all the famous Greek poet-historians were possessed of demons. It was not really the poets or philosophers who uttered the sayings, but the demon, masquerading as God, "who is the speaker, and it is THROUGH them that he is speaking to us," concluded the author of "Ion".
The conclusion is absolutely clear. History has purposely been perverted by the diabolical influence of fallen spirits who seized the minds of poet-historians, such as Homer and Hesiod, and through them twisted the events of antiquity. Jesus Himself declared that Satan, the prince of demons, "deceiveth the whole world" (Revelation 12:9). One of Satan's clever artifices is manifest in the form of corrupted history! This diabolical plot to make God and His Word appear untrue has deceived the whole world.

The Plot Centers on Troy

The final fall of Troy in 677 occurred at the close of the reign of Thuoris (694-677) of Egypt. Eusebius confused this Thuoris with the later queen Twosre and placed the event in her last year of reign. (See the restoration of Egyptian history in this Compendium.) The year 677 marked the rise of Media (according to Herodotus) to power in Asia Minor east of the Halys river.
The third fall of Troy in 677 climaxed a ten-year siege of the city. A Greek victory had once before occurred -- about 504 years before, in 1181. Another war, ending in 1149 -- and to be discussed later -- is generally unreported in Greek annals, for it was a Greek defeat!
Archaeology finds evidence of all three wars. Homer's epics deliberately associate the leaders and events of the third war with those of the first war. By so doing half of the history of ancient Greece was made to appear over five centuries too early. Events that transpired between 1181 and 677 were pushed back to the period 1685-1181.
The same diabolical conspiracy that worked through Homer in Greece also worked through the priesthood of Egypt. Its dynasties were deliberately placed successively so that sections of Egyptian history appeared five centuries earlier. Similar diabolic manipulations occurred in Mesopotamia. When later Greek, Roman, and now modern critics and historians found Homer in apparent agreement with the altered Egyptian and Mesopotamian data, they never thought to question Homer or the Egyptian records. The conspiracy -- the deception -- was so thorough, so far superior to human ingenuity that the whole world has been deceived by it.

Homer and the Lydian Kings

To perpetuate this deception -- for the critics and historians cannot admit they have been deceived -- we are told that Homer lived several centuries before 677, in fact, near the time of the first Greek war with Troy.
If Homer lived at that early period, counter the critics, how could Homer have been responsible for a clever twisting of historical events that occurred long after he was dead?
The answer is, Homer's own writings date his life to the time of Gyges, king of Lydia. Homer mentions "'the Gygaean lake,' so called from Gyges, king of Lydia" (J. S. Watson's footnote to Alexander Pope's translation).
Before proceeding further, it is important to inset the kings of Lydia, from which the date of Homer may be determined. Herodotus is absolutely correct in his list of late Lydian kings. Modern historians attempt arbitrarily to shorten the reigns of the Lydian monarchs. Following is a list of the last royal family -- the Mermnadae -- to rule Lydia to the time of Cyrus, king of Persia.

Mermnadae Kings of Lydia	Lengths of Reign	Dates
Gyges	38	716-678
Ardys	49	678-629
Sadyattes	12	629-617
Alyattes	57	617-560
Croesus	14	560-546

In 546 Sardis, the capital of Lydia, was overthrown.
Prior to the Mermnadae, another line of kings governed Lydia -- the Heraclidae. Their rule lasted 22 generations during 505 years -- 1221-716 (Herodotus, I, 7).
The history of the kingdom of Lydia, settled heavily by the children of Lud, son of Shem, has been lost. All that has been preserved are a few fragments of Xanthus' history of his nation.

Restoring Greek History

The modern interpretation of ancient Grecian civilization is a paradox. Strange though it may seem, historians today reject the valid history of Greece as error and take for granted the Homeric fable of the Trojan War!
It is time history students were told why the traditional histories of Athens, of Sparta, Sicyon and Corinth have been rejected -- and why confusion rules the dates of the Trojan War. This kind of twisted thinking took its rise in the German literary criticism of the eighteenth century. In the German schools all antiquity was rejected in total as fabulous. None of the ancients knew how to write, the critics assumed. And oral tradition was at best a weak link. Within a century the historians, trained in this literary atmosphere, began to assume the same rationalist explanations of the past. With no history left by which their speculations could be judged, the historians were free -- so they thought -- to reconstruct the Aegean world. Even the Trojan War was called into question as fabulous. It barely passed muster.
But what the historians never thought to query was the general date of the last Trojan War. The literary critics wanted to believe in the early dating of the war with Troy to make it appear as folklore. Historians, newly entering the critical field, accepted as valid the literary critics' supposition of one early Trojan War. It never occurred to them that the period of the last war over Troy had been confused with the first war and the contemporary kings of Argos and Mycenae. Once the dates of the three major Trojan Wars are determined. the problems in Greek history vanish.

Kings of Corinth

The chronological history of Greece commences later than the Tower of Babel. Hence it is necessary to begin with more recent times and build up the history of early Greece to its beginning. The starting point will be the city-state Corinth, whose dates will be immediately confirmed by those of Athens. The kings of Corinth ruled for 323 years. They were followed by a constitutional oligarchy for 90 years, then by the Tyranny of the Cypselidae. The dates of the Cypselidae are determined from nearly contemporary sources.
It should be noted that late traditional dating in the Greek world was made to conform to the Olympiads, which began at the summer solstice. The following lists may therefore generally be considered June-to-June calendar years.
The rule of the Cypselidae Tyranny lasted 73 and 1/2 years, according to Aristotle ("Politics", 1315b). It dates from 656 (June) to 583 (December). The founder of the tyranny, Cypselus, reigned altogether 30 years -- 656-626. According to Eusebius, however, he associated his son Periander with him in the government in 628, after 28 years. Periander, according to Aristotle, ruled altogether 44 years until his death in 584. The date of the death of the tyrant Periander is given by Diogenes Laertius in "Periandros". Laertius, quoting Sosikrates, places it at the end of Olympiad 48, 4, immediately before Olymplad 49, 1. As the Olympiads commenced in 776, the 48th Olympiad ended at the summer solstice in 584. (Each Olympiad consists of 4 years.)
The last of the Corinthian tyrants was Psammetichus, the brother or nephew of Periander. He ruled three years according to Aristotle -- 586-583 (December to December). Psammetichus came to the government SIX MONTHS AFTER Periander had completed his 40th year (reckoned from the death of Cypselus in 626), or his 42nd year (reckoned from the beginning of his reign in 628). The Armenian version of Eusebius assigns to Periander 43 years, including the calendar year in which Psammetichus came to the government.
The commencement of the Corinthian Tyranny by Cypselus in 656 marked the overthrow of the Constitutional Oligarchy. The Constitution lasted altogether 90 years -- 746-656. In the year 746 the last of the early kings of Corinth was overthrown. The revolt ended 323 years of kingship. The following chart lists the kings of Corinth from the beginning of their rule in 1069 to the revolt of 746. The significance of the year 1069 will be discussed under the history of Athens.

Kings of Corinth	Lengths of Reign	Dates
Aletes	35	1069-1034
Ixion	37	1034- 997
Agelaus	37	997- 960
Prymnus	34	960- 926
	(or 35)	(960- 925)
Bacchis	36	926- 890
	(or 35)	(925- 890)
Agelas	30	890- 860
Eudemus	25	860- 835
Aristomedes	35	835- 800
Agemon	16	800- 784
Alexander	25	784- 759
Telestes	12	759- 747
Automenes	1	747- 746
The Constitution	90	746- 656
The Tyranny	73 1/2	656- 583

The History of Athens

Athens was for centuries, as it is today, the chief city of Greece. Its early history focuses on the year 1069 when an Athenian victory combined with a great earthquake to rekindle the myth of the "fall of Atlantis."
Modern writers reject Athens' early history altogether of course, they have never disproved it. Their only argument is the falacious assumption that the Greeks could not have known their own history!