Greek Traditions of the Deluge. 415 



inquire about under the name of a tradition. From the ety- 

 mology of the word, we can scarcely divest ourselves, in usino- 

 it, of some idea of a fact the knowledge of which has been 

 preserved from a preceding age, and that too without the 

 intervention of a written record. Yet even those who speak 

 of traditions have sometimes themselves no belief in the hi- 

 storical reality of the events to which thev relate. " The 

 oldest historians," says Mr. Lyell*, " mention a celebrated 

 tradition in Cornwall of the submersion of the Lionnesse, a 

 country which formerly stretched from the Land's End to the 

 Scilly Islands. Although there is no evidence for this ro- 

 mantic tale, it probably originated in some catastrophe occa- 

 sioned by former inroads of the Atlantic upon this exposed 

 coast." Here tradition is evidently used for a statement ficti- 

 tious in its circumstances, although, perhaps, having some 

 ground in analogy. Cuvier uses the word with the same want of 

 precision. " L'ile de Samothrace, l'une de celles ou if s'etait 

 le plus anciennement forme une succession de pretresun, culte 

 regulier et des traditions suivics, avait aussi un deluge qui pas- 

 sait pour le plus ancien de tous, et que l'on y attribuait a la 

 rupture du Bosphore et del'Hellespontf." Yet in a preced- 

 ing page he has given convincing physical reasons from Oli- 

 vier and Andreossy, why such a discharge of the Euxine, had 

 it ever taken place, could not have caused a deluge in the 

 Archipelago. Notwithstanding the " traditions suivies," there- 

 fore, the rupture of the Euxine, though contemporaneous with 

 the supposed deluge, was a fiction. We want some word 

 which, like the German sage, should express simply the fact 

 that certain things are said, without implying either, like tra- 

 dition, that it is reported on the authority of a preceding age, 

 or, like legend, that it is without any authority. In the fol- 

 lowing inquiry whenever tradition is spoken of, without any 

 epithet, all that is meant is a popular belief, existing at a cer- 

 tain time and place. The existence of this belief is itself a 

 iact; but whether it has been derived from a fact or not, is 

 a distinct question, to answer which we must have recourse to 

 other considerations. 



The only two floods respecting which it is worth while to 

 collect the traditions of the Greeks are those of Deucalion 

 and of Ogyges. The others are mentioned so slightly, and 

 by authors so recent, that no stress can be laid upon them. 



It is admitted that in the works of Homer, the Hymns as 

 well as the Iliad and the Odyssey, there occurs no mention 

 of Deucalion, nor any allusion to a deluge. Considering the 

 subjects of these poems, however, it would be unfair to argue, 



* Principles of Geology, vol. i. 9. 282. f Discours, p. 87. 



