Page:Origin and Growth of Religion (Rhys).djvu/677

Rh he was a potentate of great power, acquired by means of his fleet; but though Greek mythology has several deluges to speak of, it does not associate any of them with Minos; it does, however, with Deucalion, who, according to some accounts, was son of Minos. For Zeus is said to have become so enraged with the human race that he determined to sweep it off the face of the earth. So Deucalion was warned by Prometheus, whose son he is sometimes called—hence it is that some take two Deucalions for granted—and counselled him to prepare himself by building him an ark. Deucalion did as he had been advised, and he became the father of a son Hellen, the eponymus of the Hellenic people. On the other hand, the story of Iḍâ has an unmistakable counterpart in Greek literature in that of the foam-born Aphrodite; and from the Hindu version, together with the fate of the Norse Hymi (p. 115), one may conclude that the churning of the ocean which resulted from the mutilation of Uranus and ended with the evolution of Aphrodite, was part and parcel of the mythic event which Celts, Teutons and Hindus regarded as a deluge, that which one may briefly term the Aryan flood. Nay, it is by no means improbable that it is the part ascribed to Minos in a lost Greek story about that deluge, such as his making an ark, entering it and wandering in it on the face of the deep till it moored itself in Crete, that formed the basis of the euhemeristic account of him as a great naval potentate. Lastly, as Cronus was sometimes associated with Rhadamanthus and the departed, so was Minos even more; for the double aspect of the powers of the other