116. The long series of his ancestors, as high as
Eurysthenes, the first Doric king of Sparta, and the fifth
in lineal descent from Hercules, was inscribed in the public
registers of Cyrene, a Lacedaemonian colony. (synes. Epist.
lvii. p. 197, edit. Petav.) Such a pure and illustrious
pedigree of seventeen hundred years, without adding the
royal ancestors of Hercules, cannot be equalled in the
history of mankind.