Greek Traditions of the Deluge. 29 



the event, though within the laws of nature, were beyond 

 men's knowledge and experience of them, the more likely it 

 was to happen, the more easy it was to suppose it happening, 

 to adorn it with circumstances, and to fix it to time and place. 

 The vulgar, too, draw much more liberally on extraordinary 

 causes to explain appearances, than a philosopher allows him- 

 self to do. 



If we are to receive the account of Deucalion's flood as the 

 tradition of a real occurrence, it will be difficult to say why 

 we should not do the same with regard to other Greek fables. 

 But of what real occurrence is the combustion of the world 

 by Phaethon, a tradition ; or the submersion of the island 

 Atlantis; or the splitting of the continent Lyctonia into the 

 islands of the Mediterranean # l Although Sicily was to the 

 Greeks " the Threepointed Island f," from the earliest time 

 in which it is named by them, and Scylla and Charybdis 

 appear in the voyage of Ulysses, must we suppose that there 

 was a real tradition of its having been a part of Italy, sepa- 

 rated from it at Rhegium % by an earthquake ? 



We seem, therefore, to be brought to the third supposi- 

 tion, that there is nothing historical in the flood ofDeucalion, 

 and that all the circumstances which we find in Greek authors 

 respecting it, previously to the time when they may have mix- 

 ed their own accounts with those of foreigners, are fictitious. 

 But fictions must have a determining cause, and those which 

 relate to physical events generally have this cause in physical 

 appearances, popularly interpreted. Thessaly, the scene of 

 Deucalion's flood, and Bceotia, to which some, though fainter, 

 traditions of a similar event may have been attached, were both 

 countries which, from their structure, were peculiarly liable to 

 inundations. We are so accustomed to associate ideas derived 

 from Scripture with the words Jlood, deluge, cataclysm, that we 

 transfer them to other ancient history, and suppose that they 

 imply events of equal magnitude. But any overflowing of a 

 river which swept away what was upon its banks, was to the 

 Greeks a xaTaxAua-juo'f. The floods of Morayshire, and many of 

 much inferior extent, would have been called so by them. 

 The physical structure of Thessaly rendered it, of all parts of 

 Greece, the most natural scene of an inundation which should 

 dislodge mankind from their customary abodes. The whole 

 drainage of the valley which is inclosed by Pelion, Ossa, and 

 Olympus, Pindus and Othrys, takes place through the single 



* Orph. Argon. 1283 seq. 



f At least if the 0^**/>j of Homer (Od. *', 106. ^', 127.) be the Tri- 

 nacria of later geography, which can hardly be doubted. See Uckert, I. i. 

 p.21. 



% Strabo, i. p. 88. ed. Oxon. 



