BOOK III. symbols of Thoth or Hermes, prevailed in its neighbourhood. The votaries of Seth called themselves, as was usual, after the name of their god, Sethim, Satim, Settim, or Shittim: and they are those children of Sheth, for the worshippers of the great father rightly claimed to be his descendants, whom the star of Jacob was destined to destroy or spiritually eradicate, when it should smite the corners of Moab.' 'Numb. xxiv. 17. 1 CHAPTER VI. Pagan accounts of the deluge, as erroneously confined by local appropriation to particular regions. MANY, as we have seen, are the traditions of an universal deluge: but, in addition to these, the ancient pagans have preserved several of an apparently more limited description. By an act of local appropriation not difficult to be accounted for, they have frequently confined the flood to a particular region, and have represented Noah as a very ancient prince of that. particular region. But, when we find in various parts of the world tales of a local flood which at once closely resemble each other and bear a strong general similitude to the flood of Noah, it appears to me more reasonable to conclude, that they are for the most part corrupted narratives of the same event, than that they really speak of local deluges posterior in point of time. to the universal deluge. Yet it is not impossible, that in some cases the two may have been blended together, and that the history of the general flood may have been ingrafted upon a partial flood. It is not impossible, that the Euxine sea, once a lake, may have burst its bounds and poured its redundant waters through the cleft of the Bosphorus: it is not impossible,; that the Mediterranean sea may, in a similar manner, perhaps in the way of cause and effect, have broken for itself a passage into the ocean, and have thus discharged the streams which it had previously received from the BOOK III. Euxine.' But, however this may be, the narratives of such events have usually been decorated with circumstances peculiar to the general deluge: which indeed was the natural and almost inevitable consequence of an ancient method of symbolizing the Noëtic flood. In perhaps every region of the world from Hindostan in the east to Britain in the west, sacred lakes, sacred tumuli, and sacred islands, were eminently venerated. The lake typified the deluge: the tumulus represented mount Ararat: and the navicular island, sometimes deemed a floating one and often (I believe) no other than a large wooden raft covered with turf, which reposed on the bosom of the lake, was considered as a fit symbol of the Ark. But each of these, agreeably to the complex nature of old mythology, had a yet further reference. The lake shadowed out the pristine lake of Paradise, from which issued the four holy rivers. The tumulus exhibited the mountain of Paradise, which geographically coincided with the land of Ararat. And the island was not more a type of the Ark, than of the Earth. The former was the Microcosm, the latter the Megacosm, of the ancient pagans: and these two Worlds, the smaller and the greater, were in idea perpetually blended together, and were ever represented by the same hieroglyphics. The Earth, like the Ark, was a ship floating on the ocean; and the mysterious vessel Argo or Argha or Theba indifferently symbolized each: the Ark, like the Earth, was a floating world, though a world in miniature; and the two were alike typified by the mundane egg, the sacred circle or rotiform inclosure, the aquatic lotos, and the navicular island. From such ideas we may deduce the form, which several of the diluvian legends were made to assume. Instead of saying, that the waters rushed from the central abyss and overflowed the shell of the earth; the hierophant taught, in the established phraseology of the Mysteries, that the lake broke down its mounds, and that the island was submerged beneath the waves. Now it is obvious, that these speculations would naturally cause the history of the Noëtic deluge to be attached to any flood which may have been Some such convulsion appears to be indicated, in the case of the Euxine, by present na tural phenomena. See Clarke's Travels. vol. i. produced by the bursting of the Euxine lake, if indeed such an event ever CHAP. VI. really happened; more especially when we recollect the generally prevalent doctrine of periodical inundations and successive similar worlds. Perhaps however it may be thought, that the very converse of this is the truth: that the actual bursting of the Euxine lake may have been the cause, why lakes became symbols of the deluge; not that the circumstance of lakes being symbols of the deluge caused the history of that event to be attached to the bursting of the Euxine. This conjecture, though specious, is certainly untenable. We find lakes employed to typify the flood in every quarter of the globe. The notion therefore is too general to have been borrowed from a particular local event. In other words, the existence of the notion must have been coeval with the rise of pagan mythology, and must have preceded any supposed disruption of the southern bank of the Euxine: consequently, it could not have originated from the bursting of that once vast lake. In accordance then with the mystic phraseology of the hierophant, we are told in various ancient legends, sometimes that an island sank beneath the sea: sometimes that a lake broke through its mounds, and overflowed the neighbouring country; and sometimes, by an union of the two ideas, that the bursting of the lake was the cause of the submersion of the island. Occasionally the deluge is represented as being itself universal, though its waters flow from a lake situated in some particular country and it may be added, that the Greeks have various stories of partial floods not marked by any of these characteristics. I. Since the Ark and the Earth were equally typified by an island, and since (as we learn from Theopompus) it was an ancient sacred article of faith that Europe and Asia and Africa were each an island;1 we may naturally expect, that the submersion of an island would be employed to describe the submersion of the Earth at the time of the flood. • This matter is said to have been revealed to the Phrygian Midas by Silenus. Theopom. apud Ælian. Hist. rer. var. lib. iii. c. 18. Virgil, with strict propriety, exhibits Silenus in the character of a mystagogue, discoursing learnedly on the wonders of the creation and the deluge. Eclog. vi, BOOK III 1. Of these legends one of the most curious is that of the island Atlantis. : According to Plato, when Solon was in Egypt, a learned priest of that country informed him, that there was once, at the entrance of the main ocean beyond the pillars of Hercules, an island larger than all Asia and Africa. The gods dividing the earth among them, this vast island, which was called Atlantis, fell to the lot of Neptune. In it that deity found a single man and woman, Euenor and his wife Leucippè, who sprang from the dust of the earth: and he espoused their only daughter Clito, who bore to him ten sons. Among these ten children Neptune divided his dominions. Atlas was the eldest of them, and gave his name to the island and he, and his posterity after him, long reigned there with much glory and felicity. As for the country itself, it was a most delightful region; and its fertility and opulence were never equalled. The inhabitants were remarkable for their wisdom and virtue: and the ten princes of its ten provinces, anxious to promote the interests of religion, were wont to assemble in each fifth and sixth year alternately, to deliberate on the common weal and to offer sacrifices to the gods. But this original purity of manners was gradually corrupted; the Atlantians became men of blood and rapine; and a lawless ambition instigated them to acts of violence and aggression. Not satisfied with possessing a rich and beautiful country, and inflated with the pride of unbounded prosperity, they began to attempt the conquest of their neighbours. First they subdued Africa and all Europe as far as Tyrrhenia; and next they invaded Egypt and Greece. The Athenians alone resisted, and in the end triumphed over them: for Jupiter, enraged at their degeneracy, resolved upon their destruction. A tremendous earthquake took place, and a vast inundation followed it. In one night, both the warriors who were engaged in the conquest of Greece, and the island Atlantis itself, were swallowed up by the waters. The particular manner of the island's submersion was as follows. The Mediterranean sea, at that time a large lake without any inlet into the ocean, was swelled above its usual level by an extraordinary influx of the great rivers which disembogue themselves into it. The weight of the waters, as |