THE SURFACE OF THE GLOBE. 9l 



came from Phoenicia, and taught the Greeks the art of writing, and 

 all that relates to navigation and commerce*. 



Certainly we have not had a continuous and connected history since 

 that time, as we find, very long after these founders of colonies, a 

 multitude of mythological events and adventures, in which gods and 

 heroes are introduced ; and these chieftains are connected with real 

 history by genealogies evidently fictitious f ; but what is still more 

 certain is, that all which preceded their arrival could only have been 

 preserved in very confused traditions, and could have been only sup- 

 plied by unfounded inventions, similar to those of the monks of the 

 middle age concerning the origin of the nations of Europe f . 



Thus, not only we should not be astonished that, even in ancient 

 times, there should have existed many doubts and contradictions on 

 the epochs of Cecrops, Deucalion, Cadmus, and Danaiis ; not only 

 would it be childish to attach the least importance to any one opinion 

 concerning the precise dates of Inachusj or Ogyges§; but, if any- 

 thing could surprise us, it is that these personages have not been made 

 from remote antiquity. There must have been some weight in the 

 received traditions which the inventors of fables could not do away 

 with. One of the dates assigned to the deluge of Ogyges agrees so 

 accurately with one that had been mentioned as the period of the de- 

 luge of Noah, that it is almost impossible but that it must have been 

 derived from some source by which this latter deluge must have been 

 intended ||. 



* "We know that chronologists differ many years concerning each of these events ; 

 but these migrations do not the less form remarkable events, and give a peculiar cha- 

 racter to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries before Jesus Christ. 



In following the calculation of Usserius, Cecrops came from Egypt to Athens about 

 1556 before Christ ; Deucilion settled on Parnassus about 1548; Cadmus arrived 

 from PhcEnicia at Thebes about 1493 ; Danaiis arrived at Argos about 1485 ; Dar- 

 danus was established on the Hellespont about 1449. AH these founders of nations 

 must have been nearly contemporary v^ith Moses, whose migration occurred in 1491. 

 See, moreover, on the synchronysm of Moses, Danaus, and Cadmus, Diod. lib. xi, 

 and Photius, page 1152. 



t Every body knows the genealogies of Apollodorus, and the arguments on which 

 Clavier endeavoured to establish a kind of primitive history of Greece ; but when we 

 read of the genealogies of the Arabians and Tartars, and all that the monkish chro- 

 nologists have invented for the different European monarchs, and some in particular 

 — we easily comprehend that the Greek writers must have done for the early time of 

 their nation what has been done at all other epochs, when criticism had not given its 

 lights to history. 



I 1856 or 1823 before Christ, and other dates, have been fixed ; but always about 

 350 years before the principal Phoenician or Egyptian colonies. 



§ The common date of Ogyges, according to Acusilaus and Eusebius, is 1796 years 

 before Christ ; consequently many years after Inachus. 



II Varro placed the deluge of Ogyges, which he calls the first deluge, 400 years 

 before Inachus — (a priore cataclismo quern Ocjygium dicunt, ad Inachi recjnum) — and 



