144 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



ance to any opinion whatever, regarding the 

 precise dates of Inachus * or Ogyges f ; but, if 

 any thing ought to surprise us, it is this, that an 

 infinitely more remote antiquity had not been as- 

 signed to those personages. It is impossible that 

 there has not been in this case some effect of the 

 influence of received traditions, from which the 

 inventors of fables were not able to free them- 

 selves. One of the dates assigned to the deluge 

 of Ogyges, even agrees so much with one of those 

 which have been attributed to the deluge of 

 Noah, that it is almost impossible it should not 

 have been derived from some source, where this 

 latter deluge had been the one intended to be 

 spoken of ^ 



* 1856 or 1823 years before Christ, or other dates still, 

 but always about 350 years before the principal Phenician 

 or Egyptian colonies. 



t The common date of Ogyges, according to Acusilaus, 

 followed by Eusebius, is 179$ years before Christ, conse- 

 quently several years after Inachus. 



Varro places the deluge of Ogyges, which he calls the 

 first deluge, 400 years before Inachus, and consequently 

 1600 years before the first Olympiad. This would refer it 

 to a period of 2376 years before Christ ; and the deluge of 

 Noah, according to the Hebrew text, is 2349, there being 

 only 27 years of difference. This testimony of Varro is 

 2 



