255 
the Hebrew tradition through the dispersion from Babel, 
nothing would be more natural than that they should have 
blindly mingled the two stories, just as we had reason to sup- 
pose the Chaldeans did in the account they did of Xisithrus, 
and as the Mexicans did in the account of Coxcox. 
54. As another Greek testimony on this point, I may men- 
tion that the Apameans living in Armenia possessed coins in 
honour of the Emperor Septimius Severus, having on the 
reverse the figure of a chest, with a man and woman standing 
before it, and two doves above it, one of which is flying with 
a branch of a tree in its mouth. Which money, though it 
was coined long after the birth of Christ, yet being the work 
of a heathen empire, plainly shows that the same tradition as 
that just narrated was well known and believed. * 
(3.) Scandinavia and Britain. 
55. That the great Keltic and Teutonic races came originally 
from the East, is a fact so abundantly proved, and now so 
universally acknowledged, that I need not do more than allude 
to it. Under such circumstances we may naturally expect 
to find their mythology and traditional beliefs, though moulded 
differently in various places, by means of climatic or other 
influences, to be yet substantially primeval. And so we 
do. Like the Persian system (of which I have not had 
time to speak) the Scandinavians believed in the existence 
both of an evil and a good principle acting in perpetual 
antagonism. The former, named Bold, is called in the Prose 
Bdda of Iceland, “ calumniator of the gods, the grand con- 
triver of deceit and frauds, the reproach of gods and men/’ 
One of his children was Midgard , the Serpent, whom the All- 
Father threw to the bottom of the ocean ; and who, having 
grown to an enormous size, wound himself round the earth/ ; t 
This evil was symbolized by the old dragon or serpent power, 
which first came from the primitive recollections of paradise. 
The latter (called Alfadir, “ All-Father ”) is the subject of the 
following interesting discourse in the first part of the Icelandic 
Prose Edda : — 
“ Gangler began — ‘ Who is the first or oldest of the gods V ‘In our 
language,’ replied Har, ‘ he is called Alfadir ; but in the old Asgard he had 
twelve names.’ ‘ Where is this God ? ’ said Gangler. ‘ What is his power, 
and what hath he done to display his glory ? ’ ‘ He liveth,’ replied Har, ‘ from 
* See Kay’s Physico-theological Discourses , who gives a copy of this 
interesting coin from Octav. Falcon., De Nummo Apam. Deuced. Diluv, 
f Mallet’s Northern Antiq c. v. 
