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LETTER logical chronology, placed the Deluge under the XVI. great grandson, who may have so moved into and settled in Thessaly, and from thence have gone to Athens, instead of under the actual ancestor his grandfather, who was with Noah in the ark.

Pindar, in one of his Olympic odes, refers to the same catastrophe, and in words whose just meaning imply the idea of a general destruction of mankind.21

We have not the ancient traditions of the Romans on this subject. But Ovid gives us at great length the notions which he patronized and versified upon it in the reign of Augustus; and as poets who write to please generally adopt the most popular ideas on the topics they select, we may take his statement as a representation of what was then circulating among his countrymen, and especially the higher orders, for he was a courtly author in this respect."

Pliny expressly alludes to the Deluge as an actual occurrence. He speaks of it as we should do,

21 After stating that Pyrrha and Deucalion had produced a stony race, he adds, 'They say indeed that a black violence of showers had overflooded the earth.' Olymp. 9. v. 76.

22 Ovid narrates it with all his lavish exuberance, in his first book, in 225 hexameters. The crimes of the brazen generation were the cause. Jupiter swears that 'The race of mortals shall be destroyed by him wherever the sca surrounds the globe.' Met. 1. i. v. 187. But the poet gives a very remarkable reason why Jupiter chose to make water the instrument of destruction. He represents his deity as withholding his thunder, because he remembered that it had been decreed by the Fates that a future time was to come, when the sea and land, and palaces of heaven, were to be in flames, and the great mass of the world was to be struggling with this ruin.'

Esse quoque in fatis reminiscitur, affore tempus

Quo mare, quo tellus, correptaque regia cœli

ARDEAT: et mundi moles operosa laboret.' Lib. i. v. 256.

This intimation of the future conflagration of the world was written before our Saviour and his Apostles, and shows what important traditions had floated down from primeval antiquity, altho but few of them have been preserved.

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as a well-known and understood æra, and as a general LETTER overwhelming; for Joppa was in Syria, and not in Greece.23 Mela and Solinus also notice it as if it had been of this kind, an universal one.

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We may infer that the PHENICIANS had preserved some memory of this catastrophe by their tradition of it at Joppa, and by the fact that it was noticed by Hieronymus the Egyptian, in his Phenician Annals.25 That it was an object of public belief in SYRIA, we learn from Lucian's account of its temple at Hierapolis. The narrative there coincided with the Grecian account. But the people of this city ascribed the foundation of their sacred edifice to Deucalion; and added, that the chasm in the ground, over which it was built, had absorbed the waters from the earth: ascribing to their country that local deliverance from them, which Athens appropriated to her own land, and which the Syrians here commemorated in a similar manner; by erecting a temple over the presumed place of their departure."

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23 They state that Joppa of the Phenicians is more ancient than the Deluge: antiquior terrarum inundatione.' Pliny, lib. v. c. 14. As this is the port from which Jonah embarked, it is a singular circumstance that, as he adds, a fabulosa ceta,' a fabulous whale, was worshipped there; 'colitur illic.' Ib. It was there also that the whale was supposed to come out of the sea to swallow Andromeda. Ib..

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Joppe ante diluvium, ut ferunt, condita.' Mela. The notice of Solinus is to the same effect: Deinde Joppe, oppidum antiquissimum orbe toto, utpote ante inundationem terrarum condita.' Sol. c. 34.

25 Josephus refers to this author, as also to Mnaseas, whose works are now among those many historical volumes of antiquity which have long since been lost.

26 Lucian describes it as such in his treatise on the Syrian Goddess, quoted before in note 7.

27 He says, the Syrians there VOL. II.

state that a surprising thing happened

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It was a natural consequence both of such an event, and of the transmitted remembrances of it, that some countries would claim to be the locality, where the preserving vessel rested as the tempestuous waters subsided. Parnassus was the mountain reported in part of Greece to be the place, where those who escaped were saved.28 But the highest point of the Armenian chain was supposed by others to be the station on which they descended from the ark, 29 An ancient writer related that the person preserved went from Armenia into Syria.30 Such pretensions are further evidences of the diffusion of the persuasion, that a catastrophe like this had occurred to mankind.

Mount Ararat in Armenia, has obtained the dis

in their city; a great chasm opened and received all the water, and that Deucalion built a temple to Juno over it.' The author adds, 'I have seen the aperture. It is under the temple. Whether it was formerly larger, or such as it now is, I know not. What I beheld was small. They say that twice every year water comes from the sea into the temple. Not only the priests there, but all Syria and Arabia, carry water to it.

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Many men come even from Euphrates to the sea, and all bring up water and first pour it out in the temple. It goes into the chasm, and tho it be small, it receives a great quantity of water. In doing this they say the custom was established by Deucalion as a memorial of the calamity and of his preservation.' Luc. de Dea Syria.

28 Pausanius, p. 619.

29 The universal history of Nicolaus Damascenus has perished; but Josephus has preserved a passage from his 96th book, which states that ́in Armenia is a great mountain called Baris, on which the account is that many were saved from a flood, and that one person was carried in an ark (λapvakoç) to its summit. The remains of its wood were preserved there a long time.'

30 Melo, in his book against the Jews, is quoted by Alexander Polyhistor, to say, that 'the man who escaped from the deluge with his sons, was driven out of Armenia, and passing thro the intermediate country, settled in the mountain deserts of Syria.' Eusebius Pref. Ev. lib. ix. c. 19. p. 420.

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tinction from most writers, of being the position to LETTER which Moses alluded in his words, And the ark rested upon the mountains of Ararat.31

Among the ancient PERSIANS, the orthodox Magi believed the Deluge to have extended over the whole earth, while some of the sects of their superstitions disputed or doubted its universality.32

31 Gen. viii. 4. Grotius remarks, that the Hebrew name Ararat, used by Moses, has been translated by his Chaldee interpreters, Kardu, and that Josephus calls it the Cordyæan mountains. Curtius mentions the Cordæan mountains in Armenia which Strabo, Pliny and Ptolemy write 'Gordyæos.' Grot. de Ver. p. 192. It is just to the memory of this celebrated man to say, that he was one of the first who called the attention of mankind to most of these ancient testimonials of the flood, which Bayle observes, he a assemblé fort curieusement.' Euvr. Crit. v. ii. p. 328. They were cited in the notes to his intelligent work on the truth of Christianity.

32 See Hyde Rel. Vet. Pers. p. 171. The opinions of those who made it a partial inundation, seem to have been far more modern than the others. Thus the Parian marbles, which notice it as if only in Greece, were not inscribed until after the 264th year before the Christian era, or nearly 300 years after Solon. Whenever some Greeks place any historical events before their Deucalion, I think that, like the Egyptian priest to Solon, they allude to some imperfect traditions of what concerned the antediluvian world.

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LETTER XVII.

THE TRADITIONS OF THE FLOOD IN CHINA-IN THE PARSEE
BOOKS IN THE SANSCRIT-IN ARABIA AND TURKEY-IN
AFRICA-AND VARIOUS NATIONS OF SOUTH AMERICA-ALSO
IN NORTH AMERICA AND THE SOUTH SEA ISLES.

LETTER THE historical traditions recapitulated in the preceding Letter were those of the ancient world: if we extend our view from these to the modern nations who have become prominent around us, we shall find that similar impressions have also prevailed among them, altho more mingled with fantastic absurdities, in proportion to the inferiority of their intellectual cultivation, and to the extravagance of their popular superstitions.

The CHINESE literature has several notices of this awful catastrophe. The Chou-king, the history of China written by Confucius, opens with a representation of their country being still under the effect of the waters.' The opposing school of the Tao-see also speak of the Deluge as occurring under Niu-hoa, whom they make a female. The seasons were then

Yao, their most ancient sovereign, acknowleged by Confucius, is introduced abruptly as saying to his ministers, Alas! the deluging waters are spreading destruction. They surround the mountains. They overtop the hills. They rise high, and extend wide as the spacious vault of heaven.' Chou-king, translated by De Guignes, p. 1, 2, and Dr. Morrison's citation from it, in his preface to the Chinese Dictionary. The Han-lin commentators on the Chou-king and Houngan-koue remark, that this deluge did not happen in the time of Yao, but before him. The text of the Tchin-tsee, and the commentary of the Tehun-meou, are cited on this point in the Dissertation written by Ko, a Chinese, prefixed to Mem. des Chin. v. i. p. 159.

Fong-sou-long says, 'Niuhoa conquered the waters by wood, and made a vessel fit for a long course.' Mem. Ch. i. p. 157.

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