On the alleged Greek Traditions of the Deluge. 25 



however, by an exactly similar result in regarding the phe- 

 nomena of our own and other sea cliffs, acted on by the sea, 

 which will form the subject of another paper, all doubt on 

 this head that may have existed must surely be for ever re- 

 moved. 



III. On the alleged Greek Traditions of the Deluge. 

 By the Rev. John Kenrick, M.A. 



[Continued from vol. iv. p. 420 ; and concluded.] 



T^TE have now reached the time when the Greeks, having 

 " been brought into much more extensive and leisurely in- 

 tercourse with Asia than they had enjoyed before the time of 

 Alexander, had the opportunity of comparing their own fables 

 with those of the Asiatics, and of remodelling or adding to their 

 own, in order to give them a more imposing appearance, or to 

 maintain the claim of originality in everything, to which in 

 earlier times they were far from pretending, and which is, in- 

 deed, without any foundation in history. We cannot, there- 

 fore, appeal with confidence to what we find in Greek authors 

 from this time forward, even as proving the existence of a 

 Greek tradition ; still less can Ovid's version of the story be 

 appealed to. " A mesure," says Cuvier, " que l'on avance 

 vers des auteurs plus recens, il s'y ajoute des circonstances de 

 detail qui ressemblent davantage a celles que rapporte Moise. 

 Ainsi Apollodore donne a Deucalion un coffre pour moyen de 

 salut; Plutarque* parle des colombes par lesquelles il cher- 

 chait a savoir si les eaux s'etaient retirees, et Lucienf des 

 animaux de toute espece qu'il avait embarques avec lui," etc. 

 Yet he had written in a preceding page, " Pour peu que l'on 

 suive la maniere dont le deluge de Deucalion a ete introduit 

 dans les poemes des Grecs et les divers details dont il s'est 

 trouve successivement enrichi, il devient sensible que ce n'etait 

 qu'une tradition du grand cataclisme, alteree et placee par les 

 Hellenes a Pepoque oii ils placaient aussi Deucalion." If we 

 find ingredients in the stream at a distance from the source, 

 which it has not when examined nearer to the spring, the 

 natural conclusion would seem to be that it has acquired 

 them on its way, not that they were there from the first, in 

 some mysterious state of delitescence. 



* Pint. TLoTi^tc ray tuuv (pQovip.. § 13. viii. 930, ed. Wyttenb. 



-f It is doubtful whether Lucian were the author of the treatise De Ded 

 Syra, in which this mention of the flood occurs: what is more important 

 to our purpose is that the writer, whoever he was, probably was an Asiatic 

 Greek. 



Third Series. Vol. 5. No. 25. July 1834. E 



