Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/130

 98 HISTORY OF GREECE on landing from the ark sacrificed a grateful offering to Zeu* Phyxios, or the God of escape ; he also erected altars in Thessaly to the twelve great gods of Olympus. 1 The reality of this deluge was firmly believed throughout the historical ages of Greece : the chronologers, reckoning up by gen- ealogies, assigned the exact date of it, and placed it at the same time as the conflagration of the world by the rashness of Phae- ton, during the reign of Krotopas king of Argus, the seventh from Inachus. 2 The meteorological work of Aristotle admits and reasons upon this deluge as an unquestionable fact, though he alters the locality by placing it west of Mount Pindus, near Do dona and the river Achelous. 3 He at the same time treats it as a physical phenomenon, the result of periodical cycles in the atmosphere, thus departing from the religious character of the old legend, which described it as a judgment inflicted by Zeus upon a wicked race. Statements founded upon this event were in circulation throughout Greece even to a very late date. The Megarians affirmed that Megaros, their hero, son of Zeus by a local nymph, had found safety from the waters on the lofty sum- me preferable to any of the other suggestions. Pindar, Olymp. ix. 47. 'Arcp 6' Eivuf 6fj.66a.ftov KTqaacr&av hidivov yovov Aaoi <5' uvo/iaadev. Virgil, Gcorgic i. 63. "Undo homines nati, durum genus." Epicharmus ap. Schol. Pindar. Olymp. ix. 56. Hygin. f. 153. Philochorus retained the ety- mology, though he gave a totally different fable, nowise connected with Deukalion, to account for it ; a curious proof how pleasing it was to the fancy of the Greek (see Schol. ad Find. 1. c. 68). 1 Apollod. i. 7, 2. Hellanic. Fragm. 15. Didot. Hellanikus affirmed that the ark rested on Mount Othrys, not on Mount Parnassus (Fragm. 16. Didot). Scrvius (ad Virgil. Eclog. vi. 41) placed it on Mount Athos Hyginus (f. 1 53 ) on Mount jEtna. 2 Tatian adv. Graec. c. 60, adopted both by Clemens and Eusebius. The Parian marble placed this deluge in the reign of Kranaos at Athens, 752 years before the first recorded Olympiad, and 1528 years before the Christian aira ; Apollodorus also places it in the reign of Kranaos, and in that of Nyctimus in Arcadia (iii. 8, 2; 14, 5). The deluge and the ekpyrosis or conflagration arc connected together also in Servius ad Virgil. Bucol. vi. 41 : he refines both of them into a "muta- tionem temporum." 3 Aristot. Meteorol. i. 14. Justin rationalizes the fable by telling us that Deukalion was king of Thessaly, who provided shelter and protection to the fugitives from the deluge (ii. 6, 17)