418 The Rev. John Kenrick on the alleged 



of the brazen age, which Jupiter determined to destroy. Fic- 

 tion preserves a certain consistency with itself, however it 

 may make free with the laws of nature ; and we may safely 

 pronounce that the account in Apollodorus as it now stands 

 was put together from fables which had no original unity. 

 Leaving out the part relating to the flood, the parts which 

 precede and follow it correspond with what appears to have 

 been the primary purpose of the mythic history of Deucalion, 

 to assign the origin of the Hellenes. 



The few fragments of Greek poetry which have escaped the 

 ravages of time, between the age of Hesiod and the 5th cen- 

 tury before Christ, appear to contain nothing relating to Deu- 

 calion. The first definite mention of the circumstances of the 

 flood is in a passage of Hellanicus, (if correctly quoted by 

 the Scholiast on Pindar, 01. 9. 60. seq. ed. Bbckh,) who speaks 

 of the ark in which he saved himself as resting on Mount 

 Othrys in Thessaly*. Pindar himself in this Ode, in honour 

 of Epharmostus of Opus, calls his native place the town of 

 Protogenia, where Pyrrha and Deucalion, descending from 

 Parnassus, made their first abode. 



UTzQ 8* 



ivvuc, bpotictiAOV 



XT7]a«(5"(3av Ai'fiivov yovov. 



Asyovri ju.«v 



XPova. fj.lv xxT/xxXvcroa fx.eXtxwa.v 



v6uto§ crflevoj «AA« 



Zrjvoj Tsp^vflttj otvctTTWTtv !£«i<fcvaj 



awrXw ekelv. 1. 60—68. ed. Bbckh. 

 The remains of the dramatic writers contain nothing to our 

 purpose. Plato more than once alludes to the story of Deu- 

 calion. In the Tima?us\ he relates that when Solon was in 

 Egypt, and in conversation with the priests of Sai's, mention- 

 ing Phoroneus and Niobe, and the flood in the time of Deu- 

 calion and Pyrrha, one of them ridiculed the novelty and im- 

 perfection of the Greek traditions, alleging that there had 

 been and would be many destructions of the human race, the 

 most extensive by fire and water, others of less magnitude by 

 other causes. In consequence of the destruction of all hi- 

 storical records among the Greeks, they were always children, 

 and had to begin their history again after each catastrophe; 

 and thus the Athenians had lost the knowledge of the great 

 exploits which their ancestors had performed when the At- 

 lantians invaded Europe. Notwithstanding the solemnity with 



* It must be observed, however, that there is much uncertainty in quo- 

 tations by the Scholiasts from authors who are lost, when they do not 

 give their ipsmima verba, as they are very apt to mix their own words 

 with what they quote. t iii. 21. seq. 



