146 THEORY OF THE EARTH. 



Each of the different colonies of Greece, that 

 had preserved isolated traditions, commenced 



lion as landing upon Parnassus, establishing himself in the 

 city of Protogene (first growth or birth), and re-creating 

 his people from stones; in a word, he relates, but con- 

 fining it to a single nation only, the fable afterwards gene- 

 ralized by Ovid, and applied to the whole human race. 

 The first historians who wrote after Pindar, namely, Hero- 

 dotus, Thucydides, and Xenophon, make no mention of 

 any deluge, whether of the time of Ogyges, or that of Deu- 

 ealion, although they speak of the latter as one of the first 

 kings of the Hellenes. 



Plato, in his Timaeus, says only a few words of the de- 

 luge, as well as of Deucalion and Pyrrha, in order to com- 

 mence the recital of the great catastrophe, which, according 

 to the priests of Sais, destroyed the Atlantis ; but, in these 

 few words, he speaks of the deluge in the singular number, 

 as if it had been the only one. He even expressly men- 

 tions farther on, that the Greeks knew only one. He places 

 the name of Deucalion immediately after that of Phoro- 

 neus, the first of the human race, without making mention 

 of Ogyges. Thus, with him, it is still a general event, a 

 true universal deluge, and the only one which had hap- 

 pened. He regards it, therefore, as identical with that of 

 Ogyges. 



Aristotle (Meteor, i. 14.) seems to be the first who con- 

 sidered this deluge only as a local inundation, which 

 he places near Dodona and the river Achelous, but near 

 the Achelous and Dodona of Thessaly. Apollodorus 

 (Bibl. i. 7-) restores to the deluge of Deucalion all its 

 grandeur and mythological character. According to him, 

 it took place at the period when the age of brass was pass- 

 ing into the age of iron. Deucalion is the son of Titan 



