Independently of the universal flood, if we believe the traditions of the Greeks, the Hebrews, and the Egyptians, there is another, partial one, whose waters would have overturned a part of the globe. This flood is called the flood of Deucalion by the Hellenes, that of Ogyges by the inhabitants of Attica, and of one day and one night by the Egyptians, because it lasted only twenty-four hours. The writers who attest it, with details whose developments do not seem to leave room for doubt, are too respectable for it to be permissible to see in it only a fable of Oriental mythology.
We shall first cite Plato, who says in his Timaeus: “It appears that after the flood and the earthquake , there was a cataclysm of one day and one night; an entire race of warlike men was swallowed up in the earth, and the Atlantic island, entirely submerged by the waves of the sea, disappeared altogether. This is why this strait is difficult to cross, because of the accumulation of materials arising from the destruction of that great island, which the sea carried there.1”
In the Chronology of Axum, the oldest collection of the antiquities of this part of Africa, according to Bruce, and whose authenticity is reputed respectable, it is said that Abyssinia was submerged by a flood whose effects were such that the country took from it the name Ouré-Midre, that is, devastated country.
Apollodorus relates that the flood of Deucalion was great; the tradition of Phrygia supposes that it extended over Asia Minor, and Diodorus of Sicily thinks that it might well have invaded as far as Upper Asia.2
But here is a still weightier authority, that of Aristotle. It suffices to read the Summa of Saint Thomas in order to understand the respect, the consideration, the prestige attached to this name. The Angelic Doctor, in citing him frequently, expresses himself in these terms: Ait philosophus, magister dixit [The Philosopher says; the master said]: so great was the confidence he had in his teachings. Well then! this prince of philosophers, in the first book of his Meteorology, speaks of the flood of Deucalion, of the effects it produced, of the countries it devastated. The details into which he enters, and the epoch in which he lived, do not permit one to doubt that he had in his hands, before his eyes, the irrefutable proofs of this cataclysm. We are going to report some of them:
“There are several countries,” he says, “which, formerly beneath the waters, now belong to dry land, just as the contrary also occurs. This upheaval does not always occur in the same countries; but it sometimes happens as at the time of the flood of Deucalion; for this flood invaded Greece as well as the part of that country which constituted ancient Greece, and in several regions changed the course of the rivers. It is known, indeed, that the Tanais and the Nile have not always had the same bed, and that the one in which they flow was formerly dry.3”
Footnotes
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Post autem diluvium et terræ motum intemperies extitisset unius noctis et diei spatio, omne illud bellicosorum hominum genus in terram absorptum fuit, illaque Atlantica insula maris fluctibus plane obvoluta omnino disparuit. Unde illud mare trajectu difficile est, cum lutum adhuc copiosum ex insula illius reliquiis remanserit. [But after the flood and the movement of the earth, a tempest had arisen for the space of one night and one day; that entire race of warlike men was swallowed up in the earth, and that Atlantic island, wholly enveloped by the waves of the sea, disappeared altogether. Hence that sea is difficult to traverse, since abundant mud still remained from the relics of that island.] (Plato in Timeo. [Plato in the Timaeus.]) ↩
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Cuvier.—Notes on the flood in Lemaire’s classics. ↩
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Complura enim sunt quæ cum autem aquosa essent continentium terra gaudent; sed contra res etiam habet. Et illud quidem non in iisdem semper locis fit; sed quo modo diluvium quod Deucalionis tempora evenit; hoc enim per Græciam pervasit, atque ejusdem partem quæ priscam
Græciam constituit; quod multis in locis cursum fluminum mutavit. Constat enim neque Tanaïm, neque Nilum semper defluxisse; sed locum unde fluunt aliquando siccum fuisse, etc. [For there are many things that, although they were watery, now enjoy the land of the continents; but the case also holds contrariwise. And that indeed does not always occur in the same places, but in the manner of the flood that occurred in the times of Deucalion; for this spread through Greece and through the part of it that constituted ancient Greece; it changed the course of the rivers in many places. For it is established that neither the Tanais nor the Nile always flowed, but that the place from which they flow was once dry, etc.] (Meteorologicorum, book I, chap. XIV.) ↩