30 The Rev. John Kenrick on the alleged 



outlet of the Vale of Tempe*; and it was not necessary to 

 have the eye or the imagination of a geologist, in looking at 

 this singular chasm, to perceive its use, and revert to the time 

 when no such opening existed, and the waters of the Peneius, 

 the Enipeus and the Apidanus must have discharged them- 

 selves into a lake covering the greater part of Thessaly. The 

 well-known passage in Herodotus (vii. 129.) shows how early 

 such an idea had been formed. It was then a Xoyog that all 

 Thessaly had been once a lake, and that Neptune, i. e. an 

 earthquake, had opened the passage by which the lake was 

 drained. That there was any real tradition of a time prior 

 to the opening of Tempe, I do not believe, for the very 

 first glimmerings of Grecian history show us Thessaly peo- 

 pled by various tribes, whose seats were on the banks of the 

 rivers; but if men speculated upon the condition of things 

 which must have preceded the opening of the outlet, and put 

 their speculations into the form of a \6yo^ why might they 

 not also speculate on the consequence of a sudden stoppage 

 of the outlet, or of a fall of rain so copious and long continued 

 that the narrow passage of the Peneius could not afford it 

 vent? Such a speculation, turned into a Xoyos, the form 

 which ancient hypothesis generally assumed, would include 

 all that belongs to the flood of Deucalion, separated from 

 foreign admixtures. I have already mentioned that, as re- 

 lated by Apollodorus, the story appears to contain portions 

 of two distinct mythi. Deucalion was probably at first only 

 the patriarch of the Hellenic tribe ; but as they had their ori- 

 ginal seat in Thessaly, and affected to consider the commence- 

 ment of their own history as the commencement of civilization, 

 the flood of Thessaly and the person of Deucalion would na- 

 turally be connected togetherf. 



Bceotia, like Thessaly, is exposed, from its physical struc- 

 ture, to suffer from inundations. Its principal river, the Ce- 

 phisus, terminates its course in the lake Copais, the waters of 

 which have no superficial outlet to the sea, and would soon 

 lay the whole country under water, were it not that they find 



* See Hawkins in Walpole's Memoirs of Greece, vol. i. p. 528. 



f Mr. Keightley in his Mythology, p. 268, derives Deucalion from fava 

 (whence favxng) to wet, and perhaps atAj the sea. But besides the difficulty 

 that ZtvKYx does not appear to mean wet, why should Deucalion, who rode 

 dry in his *«£*«£ and whose flood was one of rain water, be called by a 

 name which means dipped in the sea? What if AiVKn'Aiav and the cog- 

 nate form AiVKcthog (Heyne ad II. v . 307.) were derived from Asvs, the 

 old form of Z*yj, and Kuhia? The commencement of religion among the 

 Hellenes would naturally be ascribed to the patriarch of the race, and he 

 was not only reputed to have founded Dodona in Thesprotia and to have 

 sacrificed to Jupiter on his deliverance, but even to have founded altars to 

 the twelve great gods.— -Apollod. 1. 7. 2. Eudocia, p. 108. 127. 



