LXVI. on the Alleged Greek Traditions of the Deluge

Philosophical Magazine Series 3

ISSN: 1941-5966 (Print) 1941-5974 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tphm14

LXVI. On the alleged Greek traditions of the deluge

Rev. John Kenrick M.A.

To cite this article: Rev. John Kenrick M.A. (1834) LXVI. On the alleged Greek traditions of the deluge , Philosophical Magazine Series 3, 4:24, 414-420, DOI: 10.1080/14786443408648377

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Download by: [Tulane University] Date: 23 June 2016, At: 07:16 41~ The Rev. John Kenrick on the alleged I would also observe, that I have never in my life seen an anticlinal line of any extent which followed a direction mathe- matically straight. Those which have fallen under my own ob- servation, on the contrary, have been always more or less sinuous, although having on the whole a prevailing tendency in one direction for considerable distances; and when we speak of the general bearing of such lines, we intend, as I con- ceive, to express only this general and average tendency, on either side of which the partial flexures, however, often de- viate 20 ° , or more.

LXVI. On the alleged Greek Traditions of the Deluge. 139 the Rev. Joan KENRICK, M.A.* T is a very generally received opinion that tile same event, I the destruction of the human race by a flood, which is re- corded with so much minuteness of detail in the Book of Genesis, has been preserved in more vague traditions among all the principal nations of the earth, and especially among the Greeks. Not to mention a crowd of writers by whom this question has been treated in connexion with the evi- dences of Revelation, the sanction given to the opinion by Cuvier is sufficient to show that it belongs to science as well as to religion. Some of his readers may have thought his arguments less°conclusive upon this subject than upon those which lay more immediately within his province, but the ma- .]ority no doubt have considered his authority decisive. I propose to arrange, chronologically the testimonies of Greek authors to the emstence of such traditions of a De- luge: without this we can arrive at no certain conclusion. The coincidences which we may find between Pagan fables and the narratives of Scripture in the second or third century after the Christian ~era, can never warrant our inferring their

Downloaded by [Tulane University] at 07:16 23 June 2016 existence a thousand years before it. I confine the inquiry to the Greeks, because the chronology of literature among other ancient nations is very uncertain, and modern accounts of the traditions of barbarous tribes come to us generally through channels not free fi'om suspicion. Cuvier has given such a chronological view ( Discours sur les ]~volutions du Globe, Edit. 1826, pp. 8S--87); but as his enumeration is not complete, and the infi~rence which he draws seems the opposite to that to which his authorities point, it is the more necessary to reexamine them. It is important to fix accurate]y what it is that we are to * Communicated by the Mlthor. Greek Traditions of the Deluge. 415 inquire about under the name of a tradition. From the ety- mology of the word, we can scarcely divest ourselves, ill using it, of some idea of a fact the knowledge of which has been preserved from a preceding age, and that too without the intervention of a written record. Yet even those who speak of traditions have sometimes themselves no belief in the historical reality of the events to which they relate. " The oldest historians," says Mr. Lyell*, " mention a celebrated tradition in Cornwall of the submersion of the Lionnesse, a country which formerly stretched from the Land's End to the Stilly Islands. Although there is no evidence for this ro- mantic tale, it probably originated in some catastrophe occa- sioned by former inroads of the Atlantic upon this exposed coast." Here tradition is evidently used for a statement ficti- tious in its circumstances, although, perhaps, having some ground in analogy. Cuvier uses the word withthe same want of precision. " L'ile de Samothrace, l'une de celles off il s'dtait le plus anciennement formd une succession de pr6tresun, culte rdgu]ier et des traditions suivies, avait aussi un ddluge qui pas- salt pour le plus ancien de tous, et que l'on y attribuait ~. la rupture du Bosphore et del'HellespontJ-." Yet in a preceding page he has given convincing physical reasons from Oli- • ier and Andreossy, why such a discharge of the Euxine, had it ever taken place, could not have caused a deluge in the Archipelago. Notwithstanding the "traditions suivies," therefore, the rupture of the Euxine, though contemporaneous with the supposed deluge, was a fiction. We want some word which, like the German sage, should express simply the f'mt that certain things are said, without implying either, like tradition, that it is reported on the authority of a preceding age, or, like legend, that it is without any authority. In the fol- lowing inquiry whenever tradition is spoken of, without any epithet, all that is meant is a popular belief, existing at a certain time and place. The existence of this belief is itselfa Downloaded by [Tulane University] at 07:16 23 June 2016 t~tct; but whether it has been derived from a fact or not, is a distinct question, to answer which we must have recourse to other considerations. Tile only two floods respecting which it is worth while to collect the traditions of the Greeks are those of Deucalion and of Ogyges. The others are mentioned so slightly, and by authors so recent, that no stress can be laid upon them. It is admitted that in the works of Homer, the Hymns as well as the Iliad and the Odyssey, there occurs no mention of Deucalion, nor any allusion to a deluge. Considering the subjects of these poems, however, it would be unfair to argue,

• Principles of Geology, vol. i. p. ~8~. -1" Discours, p. 87. 4.16 The Rev. John Kenriek on the alleged from the absence of such allusions, that the story of Deuca- lion and his flood was unknown to Homer. He might have introduced them without incongruity, for example, in the account ofThessaly in the Catalogue; but there was no necessity that he should do so. The silence of Hesiod is more important. In his Works and Days, the only one of the poems ascribed to him of which the genuineness is unquestioned*, he gives a history of the different races of mankind which had preceded the race of iron, among whom it was his own misfortune to live t. In such a deduction it appears impossi- ble that he could have passed over such an event as the destruction of the human race by a flood, if it had been in his age an article of popular belief. The only thing which even appears like the destruction of a wicked generation is what is said, 1. 136, of the silver age: TO0~• p~ Y ~IrE~T~ Z~v~ Kpow~ ~rpv~, X0X0vp~v0~, 0vy~r~tT~pa~ O6x ~i~ovv par~p~o'¢J ~o7~, ol ~O~.vp~rov ~Zov~v. "Yet the poet goes on to describe their death in the same words as that of all the other races,

~'~'~l g~6 TOUTO 7~YOg ~ " • and they become a race of }~rJX~0'vJ01t~hxat~g, though inferior to their predecessors, who enjoyed the rank of ~aIpo~. There is here no trace of the fate of the contemporaries of Noah. There is a passage quoted by Strabo, lib. vii. p. 466., from some lost work of Hesiod, in which the name of Deucalion occurs. Speaking of the Leleges, he says,

Tob~ ~ ~ro'r~ Kgo~[~ Z~b~; ~O~r~ I~ ". ~1~

The last line is evidently corrupt, and Mr. Bryant, Myth. iii. p. 389, pressed it into the service of his argument, by reading Downloaded by [Tulane University] at 07:16 23 June 2016 d~J~ ~r0'~ A~ura~.l~, " to Deucalion the man of the sea." Villebrun conjectures d~.-'a~ ~rdg~ A~uxah[wv,, which suits well enough with the connexion ; for the poet appears to represent them as a scattered tribe before, who were collected together to serve under Deucalion. Dionysius of Halicarnassus speaks of Deucalion as leading an army of Curetes and Leleges and others who dwelt around Parnassus into Thessaly, and ex- pelling the Pelasgi $; and Hesiod probably refers to the same event. From the Scholiast on Apollonius Rhodius, iv. 266, it appears that both Hesiod and Hecata~us represented the descendants of Deucalion as reigning over Thessaly. Accord, * Pausauias, ix. 3l. t "E~,~ ~'H,,. 107--17~. I Ant. Rom. i. 17" Greek Traditions olethe Deluge. 4117 ing to other accounts he belonged properly to Thessaly; but tiffs variation is notsurprising, as Herodotus* describes the Dorians as dwelling under Deucalion in Phthiotis in Thessaly, in later times in Dryopis, which was near Parnassus. Ari- stotle, again, regarding Epirus as the original seat of the Hel- lenes, refers Deucalion to that eountryt. In another passage of Hesiod, preserved by Constantine Porphyrogenitus, (Gaisf. Poet. Grcec. i. p. 201.) Macedonia is spoken of as deriving its name from Maeedo, the son of Thya the daughter of Deuca- lion:I:. There is therefore sufficient evidence that the name of Deucalion was in very ancient times connected with Thes- saly and with the incunabula of the Hellenic nation, Hellen being made his son; but there is no evidence whatever that at this time the story of a deluge was connected with his natne. And it is in this capacity only, as a patriarch of the Hellenes, that Herodotus and Thucydides in later times make mention of him. When we examine the account of Deucalion given by Apollodorus (i. 7. 2.) we can easily detect portions of two distinct t~ables, which have been incongruously combined, but which can never originally have been one. At the beginning of the 7th chapter of the first book, he relates, " that Prometheus having thshioned men out of earth and water, and stolen fire from Jupiter to give them, was con- demned by him to be exposed to an eagle on MountCaucasus. Of Prometheus was born Deucalion, who reigned in the country about Phthia, and married Pyrrha, the daughter of Epi- metheus and Pandora, the first woman created by the gods. But when Jupiter determined to destroy the brazen race, Deucalion, at the suggestion of Prometheus, built an ark (h~pw~), and having put provisions on board of it, embarked in it with Pyrrha; and Jupiter, sending down a great quantity of rain from heaven, deluged Greece, so that all men except a few were destroyed, who took refuge on the adjacent lligh Downloaded by [Tulane University] at 07:16 23 June 2016 mountains." He then goes on to. relate the .resting of the ark. on Parnassus, and the regenerauon of mankind by Dencahon and Pyrrha throwing stones behind them; but immediately after this,• § 7., he ' resumes-- the genealogy,r of " Deucalion," ~ s famd." y by natural descent, Hellen, Amphtetyon, &e; q hat two storms of different origin have been united here, is evident from the circumstance that the human race having originated with their creation tD, Prometheus, there was no time between him and his son Deucalion for their passing through those succes- sive stages of degeneracy by which they reached the depravity • i. 56. t Meteorol. i. 14. K~r~d~,~ ~nM. 8ehoL Apoll. Rhod. iii. 1086. Third Series. Vol. 4. No. 2,/,. dune 1854. $ H 408 The Rev. John Kenrick on the alleged of the brazen age, which Jupiter determined to destroy. Fic- tion preserves a certain consistency with itself, however it may make free with the laws of natnre; and we: may safely pronounce that the account in Apollodorus as it now stands was put together from fables which had no original unity. Leaving out the part relating to the flood, the parts which precede and follow it correspond with what appears to have been the primary purpose of the mythic history of Deucalion, to assign the origin of the Hellenes. The few fra_~ments of Greek poetry which have escaped the ravages of time, between the age of Hesiod and the 5th century before Christ, appear to contain nothing relating to Deu- calion. The first definite mention of the circumstances of the flood is in a passage of Hellanicus, (if correctly quoted by the Scholiast on Pindar, OL 9. 60. seq. ed: BSekh,) who speaks of the ark in which he saved himself as resting on Mount Othrys in Thessaly*. Pindar himself in this Ode, in honour of Epharmostus of Opfis, calls his native place the town of Protogenia, where Pyrrha and Deucalion, descending from Parnassus, made their first abode.

...... ~'-:7owrJ ~&~

Z~g .... ~aJe~a~' ~xov ~.~. 1. 60~68. ed. B~ckh. The remains of the dramatic writers contain nothing to our purpose. Plato more than once alludes to the story of Deu- calion. In the Timveust he relates that when Solon was in Egypt, and in conversation with the priests of Sa~s, mention- ing Phoroneus and Niobe, and the flood in the time of Deu- calion and Pyrrha, one of them ridiculed the novelty and im- Downloaded by [Tulane University] at 07:16 23 June 2016 perfection of the Greek traditions, alleging that there had been and would be many destructions of the human race, the most extensive by fire and water, others of less magnitude by other causes. In consequence of the destruction of all historical records among the Greeks, they were always children, and had to begin their history again after each catastrophe; and thus the Athenians had lost the knowledge of the great exploits which their ancestors had performed when the At- ]antians invaded Europe. Notwithstanding the solemnity with

It must be observed, however, that there is much uncertainty in quo- tations by the Scholiasts from authors who are lost, when they do not give their ipsi~sima verba, a~ they are very apt to mix their own words with ~hat they quote. ~" iii. ~l. SeP/r. Greek Traditions of the Deluge. 419 which this account is introduced by Critias, as a ~.0'y~ y.&a= t~v gro=o~ ==vT&=a¢l 7s t~v ~.~0;~, told byhis great grand- father, a friend of Solon, there is much reason to believe that if Plato be not altogether feigning, he has at least referred to Solon what may have happened to himself, and that the alleged destruction of historical records was designed to prepare the way for the story of the Atlantians and their submerged islands. There is, however, independent ground for believing that the Egyptians really held the doctrine of the periodical destruction of the world by fire and water, in which they agree with the Hindoos. In the beginning of the third book of the Laws, Plato speaks of "many destructions of the human race by floods and diseases, and many other causes, in which only a small remnant of them was left," as the consequence of which civilization suffered violent interruptions, and mankind, in the case of a flood, only gradually descended from the mountains into which they had fled for safety fi'om the waters. The remark of Cuvier (p. 86. note), therefore, upon the mention of the flood of Deucalion in the Tima~u~, " I1 (Platon) place le nora deDeucalion imm6diatement apr~s celui de Pho- ron6e, le premier des hommes, sans fiire mention d'Ogyg6s : ainsi, pour lui, c'est encore un 6v6nement g6n6ral, un vrai d61uge universel, et le seul qui soit arriv6," is without founda- tion. Greek tradition spoke only of one flood in Greece, which Plato calls ~ x=r~xau~pd~, but he regarded it as only a part of a system which had operated at intervals through myriads of ),ears. He took the popular belieg and adapted it to his own theory of the progress of society ~'. Aristotle (Meteorol. i. I4.), having mentioned it as part of the order of nature that deluges of rain and inundations should fi'om time to time occur, now in one country now in another, goes on to Observe, that of such a kind was the flood, as it is called, in the time ofDeucahon: x~ 7a~ our0~ 7r%m~0~ E~.~.~wx0ve~,~v~ro FcO,¢'c=. ¢ . ' ~olrov • xal ~o~ovt ~reg~ ~r~v~ ¢ ~,;~ha~#P r~v'=pXa,=v"~ • • aur~~t ~*• Downloaded by [Tulane University] at 07:16 23 June 2016 eo'rw ~ wep~ r~lv Ao~=v~v xa~ 'roy Azs~ov" OUTO~;'y=p ~o~.ho~Xou "to ~euF.= F,.'ro~ge~,~xev" ~xouv yap o~ ~eh;~o~ svr=uO~ x=~ o~ ~=~ouF,evo~ ~ro"r*p~.~ I'p=txo'~, vS~ ~ "E~,h~ve;. " Aristote," says Cuvier, ubi supra, " semble le premier n'avoir consid6r6 ce d6tuge qu0 comme une inondation locale, qu'il place pros de Dodone et du fleuve Aeh61oiis, mais pr6s de l'Aeh61oiis et de ]a Dodone de Thessalie." It is very true that Aristotle is the first author whom we have met with expressly declaring that it was a local flood; but of the authors who pre-ceded him, which In the Critias, iii. 111. he speaks or'Attica as having sufl'ered ~r0xz~ ~e~,o~dr~, =o,=~~,e~u ,~=r~xuo(z~ in the 9000 years which had elapsed $iffee the war of the Atlantians. sH~, 4~0 Prof. Moseley in Answer to Mr. Earnshaw's Remarks

has said that it was universal ? That Dodona of Epirus was meant (the only real Dodona, indeed,) is evident from the mention of the Graiei, who were an Epirotie tribe. [To be continued.]

,., !

LXVII. Professor Moseley in Answer to Mr. F_amasha~gs Remarks on tke Principle of Least Pressure published in°me Philosophical Magazine for April. To the Editors of the Philosophical Magazine and Journal Gentlemen, T tHhEe objections originally alleged by Mr.Earnshaw against principle of least pressure were three in numb¢r. The first had reference to a general principle on which the demonstration of that prineiple was founded. The second referred, not to the demonstration of the principle, but to an assumption made in the application of it, that the value of each of a system of resistances was necessarily a function of the coordinates of its point of application ; and The third applied itself to the particular case of three resistances in the same straight line. With regard to his objections on these last two points, I am disposed to doubt whether Mr. Earnshaw can be serious in persisting in them ; and that I have good grounds for scepticism on this point will, I am sure, be admitted by any person who has taken the trouble to follow out the controversy between us. That he should adhere to his first, and, as he calls it, his principal objection, I can now fully understand. He has all along been labouring under a miseoneeption Of one of the very first principles of my theory. It is only from his last paper of objections, &e., that I make this discovery. He imagines me, it seems, to have assumed the directions Downloaded by [Tulane University] at 07:16 23 June 2016 of the resistances of the system B to be given. Whence he can have collected this erroneous view of the matter I know not. In the Number of the Phil. Mag. and Journal for October 18S3, in which 1 first brought the subject forward, and to which Mr. Earnshaw has frequently referred, he will find a summary of the analytical operations, by which the amount and DIR~.CTIONS of each resistance may be determined in terms of the coordinates of its point of application. It is therefore very evident, and might have appeared to Mr. Earnshaw, that I had considered the direction of each resistance to be a function of those coordinates, and not otherwise given than in terms of them. But he concludes that I have put the consideration of the directions of the forces