54 



Lib. 8. V. 320, and there founded the golden age. The 

 Greeks extended it more universally ; but not knowing pre- 

 cisely when it took place, they supposed it must have been 

 in the earliest or primitive times; and I make no doubt but 

 it existed at two different periods, as wilt presently be seen ; 

 the first before the flood, as Ovid mentions, and the second 

 after it. 



The very learned Bochart has endeavoured to reconcile 

 both traditions in his Phaleg, a work which I could not pro- 

 cure, but am obliged to recur to extracts from it in Tooke's 

 Pantheon, translated from the French of Forney. 



But before I state the opinion of Bochart, I must remark, 

 that both the Phenicians and the Greeks believed most of the 

 antediluvians to be Gods, and particularly such of them as 

 owed their birth to Uranus and Gea. Thus Hesiod, in his 

 treatise De Operibus et Diebus, says, that the first race of men, 

 after their death, became Gods or Semi-Gods, v. 120, &c. 

 and in his Theogony, calls the Titans, and all the children 

 o( Saturn and Rhea, Gods, v. 631, though banished to the 

 extremities of the earth, the habitation of eternal darkness ; 

 and so does Homer in his Hymn to Apollo. So, according 

 to Sanchoniatho, Chrysor, the Vulcan of the Greeks, Elittn, 

 and many others, were deified after their death, Euseb. 35, 

 36, &e. 



According to Bochart, Noah was the Saturn of the Greeks, 

 though they misrepresented many of the circumstances that 

 relate to him. Of the truth of this opinion he gives the 

 following proofs : 



1st. 



