This, however, is common with the various manuscripts. It is interesting to speculate on this. Perhaps, when they sang, or wrote, they knew well who they were, and it did not occur to them that their names might be lost, blown away in the winds of time. Perhaps they thought their names would stand forever. Indeed, how many founders of cities and nations, occupants of thrones, commanders of armies, wielders of scepters, discoverers and claimers of worlds, have not subscribed to a similar delusion. In most cases, we do not even know who named the planets in our own system. How many immortals have died, how many imperishable gods, and peoples, have perished! But one suspects that the reasons lay elsewhere, that the investment of the time, and toil, the pain and love, was not to procure the glory of their own names, but to make a thing of meaning, of beauty and significance. These are not the men to whom “I made this” is all-important; rather they are the men to whom “This has been made” is all that matters. It is not even clear whether the chronicler, or historian, here is a single person, or more than one person, nor whether the manuscript was written rather at the same time, or has been added to, and glossed, at different times. Clearly the chronicler, or chroniclers, had at their disposal various manuscripts, and documents, which, as far as we know, are no longer extant. Some scholars, and commentators, from various details, have speculated that the narrator’s relationship to the story may be more intimate than appears upon the surface. This seems to me unlikely, but much is obscure.

2. The manuscripts:

We have known of the existence of the Telnarian histories for several hundred years, but, initially, only in virtue of some references, which seemed quite clear, and several seeming allusions, less clear, more disputable, in certain classical