Greek Traditions of the Deluge. SI 



a vent by a subterraneous passage in the cavernous limestone, 

 and discharge themselves into the Euripus at Larymna. 

 This subterraneous channel was liable to be stopped, especially 

 by earthquakes, which were frequent in Bceotia, and the con- 

 sequence was, an inundation of the country around the lake. 

 In the time of Alexander the Great, an engineer, Crates of 

 Chalcis, was employed to open the obstructed passage, and the 

 shafts which he sunk down upon it may still be traced along 

 its course*. In a report addressed to Alexander, preserved 

 by Strabo, he says that many districts had already become 

 dry, and the sites of ancient towns had reappeared. Accord- 

 ing to some, Eleusis and Athens had stood here in the time 

 of Cecrops, who was king of Bceotia, then called Ogygia. 

 Pausanias again (ix. 38.) relates that Hercules had stopped 

 the subterraneous passage, in order to flood the fields of the 

 Orchomenians. The singular condition of this lake, and the 

 variations to which it was subject in winter and summer, to 

 say nothing of extraordinary rains and accidental stoppages 

 of the outlet, invited the fancy to frame wonderful tales re- 

 specting it, and we may surely account for the flood of Ogyges 

 without having recourse to that of Noah. The wonderful 

 coincidence in time, which made Cuvier (p. 85.) conclude 

 that the former one must have been derived from the latter, 

 really depends on a date arbitrarily fixed by the chronolo- 



s ers t-. 



I will mention one other opinion^, which connects the 

 stories of destruction by water and fire together, and supposes 

 them to have originated in the observation, that at the dif- 

 ferent seasons of the year, more strongly discriminated in 

 southern climates than in our own, the principles of moisture 

 and heat alternately predominate, whence arose the notion 

 that the annus magnus, which comprehended a vast cycle of 

 celestial phenomena and terrestrial changes, included both 

 a xuroix.\v<rp6$ and an ex7r6pco<Ti$ \\ . This may have been the 

 origin of the Egyptian doctrine and of that of Heraclitus and 

 the Stoics; it may have had a share in producing the story 

 of Phaethon; but the deluge and the conflagration do not ap- 

 pear to me to have had any connexion with each other in the 

 popular conceptions of the Greeks, which alone it has been 

 my object to examine. 



The result of this examination will not, I hope, appear al- 

 together unimportant. It is not difficult to foresee that the 



* Walpole, i. p. 303. seq. 



t Cuvier quotes Varro as placing the deluge of Ogyges 400 years before 

 Inachus; but it does not appear from the passage in Censorinus (21.) that 

 Varro mentioned the name of Ogyges. 



I Bohlen, Altes Indien. i. p. 21S). || Censorinus 18. 



