ILLUSTRATIONS (8). SAMOTHRACTAN TRADITIONS. 263 



historical recollections of individual inundations.* According 

 to Diodorus, the Samothracians related that the Black Sea 

 had been an inland lake, which, swelled by the influx of rivers 

 (long prior to the inundations which had occurred among 

 other nations) had burst, first through the straits of the 

 Bosphorus, and subsequently through those of the Hellespont.! 

 These ancient revolutions of nature have been considered in a 

 special treatise, by Bureau de la Malle, and all the facts 

 known regarding them collected by Carl von Hoff, in an im- 

 portant work on the subject.^: The Samothracian traditions 

 seem reflected as it were in the Sluice-theory of Strato of 

 Lampsacus, according to which the swelling of the waters in 

 the Euxine first formed the passage of the Dardanelles, and 

 next the opening through the Pillars of Hercules. Strabo, 

 in the first book of his Geography, has preserved among the 

 critical extracts from the works of Eratosthenes, a remarkable 

 fragment of the lost work of Strato, which presents views that 

 embrace almost the whole circumference of the Mediterranean. 

 "Strato of Lampsacus," says Strabo, "enters more fully 

 than the Lydian Xanthus (who has described the impressions 

 of shells far from the sea) into a consideration of the causes 

 of these phenomena, He maintains, that the Euxine had 

 formerly no outlet at Byzantium, but that the pressure of 

 the swollen mass of waters caused by the influx of rivers 

 had opened a passage, whereupon the water rushed into the 

 Propontis and the Hellespont. The same thing also happened 

 to our sea (the Mediterranean), for here too a passage was 

 opened through the isthmus at the Pillars of Hercules, in 

 consequence of the filling of the sea by currents, which in 

 flowing off" left the former swampy banks uncovered and dry. 

 In proof of this, Strato affirms, first, that the outer and inner 

 bottoms of the sea are different; then that there is still a 

 bank running under the sea from Europe to Lybia, which 

 shows that the inner and outer sea were formerly not united ; 

 \next that the Euxine is extremely shallow, while the Cretan, 



* Otfr. Miiller, Geschichten Hellenischer Stamme und Stadte, bd. i. 

 e. 65, 119. 



t Diodor. Sicul. lib. v. cap. 47, p. 369. Wesseling. 



J Geschichte der naturalichen Veranderungen der Erdoberflache, 

 Th. i. 1822, s. 105162, and Creuzer's Symbolik, 2te Aufl. tb. ii. 

 s. 285, 318, 361. 



Lib. i. p. 49, 50. Casaub. 



