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DISCOVERY 



been specially warned by the Apostle Paul against the 

 worship of angels was on that occasion saved by the 

 archangel Michael, who hacked out the gorge west 

 of the city, and allowed the water to escape. The 

 gorge is there for all to see ; for the Christians it repre- 

 sented the beneficent act of Michael, just as by the 

 pagans it had no doubt been attributed to the trident 

 of Poseidon or the harpe of Perseus. 



It is, however, with the Iconian version of the flood 

 legend that we are mainly concerned. The Byzantine 

 chroniclers preserve the story of a King Nannakos who 

 ruled at Iconium for 300 years, and foretold a flood 

 which was to overwhelm his people. The flood took 

 place, and the new race was created by Prometheus and 

 Athena out of mud — the eikones of mud thus formed 

 giving its name to the city (Eikonion in the Greek 

 version). This is a familiar type of foundation-legend, 

 turning on the name of a city. The evidence for this 

 story is late ; but the recently discovered mimes of 

 Herondas ^ show that the story of Nannakos had become 

 proverbial on the coast of Asia Minor in the third 

 century B.C., and the story in itself has all the marks 

 of great antiquity. 



But we are not dependent on the Byzantine chroni- 

 clers, or even on Herondas, for proof that the story of 

 the flood had an Iconian version. The myth of a 

 local deluge lingers on in the folk-lore of Iconium till 

 the present day. The Moslems relate that the city 

 was once threatened by a flood from a mountain valley 

 lying to the west, but that Plato (the Arabian counter- 

 part of Virgil the magician) stopped up the hole through 

 wliich the water passed. And if you visit this valley, 

 you win find a fine fountain issuing from beneath a 

 Hittite monument, and locally known as the " spring 

 of Plato." Plato is simply the Moslem counterpart 

 of the Christian Michael and of the older Perseus, a 

 god who looms large in the early history of this neigh- 

 bourhood, and who is known elsewhere as a drainer 

 of marshes and a reclaimer of agricultural land. 



Iconium lies on the western edge of an arid desert, 

 formed of one of the richest tracts of soil in the 

 Mediterranean area. All the elements of fertility are 

 present in this Lycaonian plain, except water. The 

 district immediately around Iconium is a belt of 

 surpassing fertility — which it owes mainly to a river 

 running down from the Isaurian hills and losing itself 

 in many channels in the plain. An old Arab geo- 

 grapher calls this the River of Underground Waters, 

 and with this description in mind we may ascend 

 the river valley to its source. Here we are confronted 

 by a strange situation. 



The water which feeds this river comes mainly from 

 the Taurus range, far to the south. But it is said to 



1 Mime III, 1. 10 (Nairn's or Headlam's edition). See also 

 Ramsay, Cities of St. Paul, p. 319. 



be fed at times also from a lake of peculiar behaviour. 

 This lake, called in ancient times Lake Trogitis, Ues 

 at the bottom of a large catchment area, and is 

 separated by a low rim from a canyon which runs down 

 to the River of Underground Waters. Sometimes 

 Lake Trogitis, which is continuously fed by a large 

 stream coming from the larger Lake Caralis, rises 

 sufficiently in height to run over this rim and dis- 

 charge into the plain of Iconium ; normally it runs off 

 through an underground passage to the south, and 

 occasionally, at long intervals, say the natives, it dries 

 up completely. The engineers of the Baghdad Rail- 

 way Company diverted the stream which feeds Lake 

 Trogitis into the plain of Iconium, and had actually 

 contracted to drain the greater part of the area covered 

 by the lake. But the lake refused to be drained, and 

 remained obstinately at its old level. Such a body of 

 water as this, behaving capriciously, draining off at will 

 into the plain of Iconium or into the southern sea, 

 rising in level and disappearing as if at the bidding of 

 some unseen power, naturally becomes the focus of 

 strange tales. The few archaeologists and other 

 travellers who have visited this lake all record the story 

 told by the natives on its shores, that when at rare 

 intervals the lake dries up completely, an ancient 

 town appears at the bottom. 



Here indeed is a lake which might well give rise to 

 such a legend as that told by Ovid — a lake lying in a 

 region from which Iconium folklore brought the Iconian 

 flood, appearing and disappearing mysteriously, cover- 

 ing rich agricultural land, and, according to the local 

 myth, with an ancient town lying in its depths. But 

 is it only a fancy of mine that Ovid's story came from 

 this lake ? It lies in a remote nook in the mountains, 

 far from the great routes of trade and administration 

 which crossed Asia Minor in Ovid's day. Can we 

 claim it as even probable that Ovid had so much as 

 heard of it ? 



I have already described in Discovery- what was 

 happening in this region a few years before Ovid wrote 

 the Metamorphoses, and while he was collecting the 

 material for his book. Ouirinius, the Governor of Syria 

 mentioned by Luke in the passage in which he dates the 

 birth of Christ, was engaged between 11 and 6 B.C. in 

 a war for the pacification of Pisidia, which, from the 

 name of the tribe which was the principal enemy 

 and gave most trouble to the Roman army, was called 

 the Homanadensian War. The war was a success 

 for the Roman arms. Only two facts concerning it 

 need be repeated here. It was over in 6 B.C., and the 

 principal scene of operations was the country round 

 Lake Trogitis, the home of the Homanadeis. 

 Quirinius, as Strabo and Pliny inform us, reduced their 

 fastnesses one by one, took 6,000 men alive, and 

 ' April 1920, pp. 100 S. 



