Moses, then, is shown to have preceded the deification of Dionysus six hundred and four years, if he was deified in the thirty-second year of the reign of Perseus, as Apollodorus says in his Chronology. From Bacchus to Hercules and the chiefs that sailed with Jason in the ship Argo, are comprised sixty-three years. Aesculapius and the Dioscuri sailed with them, as Apollonius Rhodius testifies in his Argonautics. And from the reign of Hercules, in Argos, to the deification of Hercules and of Aesculapius, are comprised thirty-eight years, according to Apollodorus the chronologist; from this to the deification of Castor and Pollux, fifty-three years. And at this time Troy was taken. And if we may believe the poet Hesiod, let us hear him:--
"Then to Jove, Maia, Atlas' daughter, bore renowned Hermes,
Herald of the immortals, having ascended the sacred couch.
And Semele, the daughter of Cadmus, too, bore an illustrious son,
Dionysus, the joy-inspiring, when she mingled with him in love." [2035]
Cadmus, the father of Semele, came to Thebes in the time of Lynceus, and was the inventor of the Greek letters. Triopas was a contemporary of Isis, in the seventh generation from Inachus.
[2035] [Theog., 938.]