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 Secret of Plato's Atlantis. 
 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924028993355 
 
THE 
 
 SECRET OF PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 BY 
 
 LORD ARUNDELL OF WARDOUR, 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 " TRADITION, rniNOIPALLT WITH REPERENCB TO MYTHOLOGY AND THE tiAW OF 
 
 NATIONS ;" " THE SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF TRADITION ;" " THE NATURE 
 
 MYTH UNTENABLE FROM THE SCRIPTURAL POINT OF YIBW." 
 
 LONDON: BURNS AND OATES. 
 
 [^AU rights reserved.'] 
 
 1885. 
 
LONDON •/ ! 
 
 KOBSON AND SONS, PEINTERSJ eAnOKAS BOAD, N.W. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following pages were written for the Month, but in 
 the course of writing extended themselves beyond the 
 limits of a magazine article ; the third chapter more 
 particularly becoming too elaborate in form for suitable 
 publication in a periodical. I have, therefore, preferred 
 to publish them separately. As, however, it would have 
 involved too much trouble to have rewritten and recast 
 the articles, I have printed them in their original form, 
 as addressed to the readers of the Month. 
 
 The subject, at least, is a curious and interesting 
 one ; and Mr. Donnelly's work, which was the occasion of 
 the articles being written, contains much curious specula- 
 tion, and is written in a style calculated to give zest to 
 the inquiry. It has had a wide circulation. 
 
 I cannot expect the same circulation for this little 
 volume, more especially as the theory it offers is not of 
 the same romantic and popular character ; but I hope it 
 may contribute something towards the solution of an 
 interesting and difficult question. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. Plato's Atlantis : Mr. Donnelly's Theory . . i 
 
 II. Conjecture as to the probable Basis op Plato's 
 
 Atlantis 22 
 
 III. Further Conjectures — Diluvian Traditions . -33 
 
 IV. Eeoent Testimonies 57 
 
 V. Alternative Theories . .' . . . -75 
 
 Appendix A : The " Periplus " of Hanno . . .85 
 
 Appendix B : Plato's Atlantis 89 
 
 Appendix C : Theory as to the Prominence of the 
 
 Bull in Tradition 100 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Plato's atlantis — mb. Donnelly's theory. 
 
 A BOOK which is now (1883) in its seventh edition seems 
 to claim some reply from the point of view of Tradition. 
 It is entitled Atlantis': the Antediluvian World* and, 
 in fact, announces that the Deluge, in which we have 
 hitherto believed and have called universal, at any rate to 
 the extent of the destruction of all mankind,t did not 
 really occur, but that the subsidence of the island or con- 
 tinent of Atlantis at some indefinite period was attended 
 by very similar circumstances, and that it is the tradition 
 of this catastrophe which has somehow spread through all 
 countries, which has created the impression of a universal 
 deluge ; in other words, that there was a deluge, but a 
 deluge as revealed according to Plato, and not according 
 to Moses. 
 
 The evidence which Mr. Donnelly has accumulated, both 
 as to the diluvian tradition and also as to the common 
 
 * Atlantis : the Antediluvian World. By Ignatius Donnelly. 7th edi- 
 tion. (SampBon Low ) London, 1883. 
 
 t This chapter was written previously to the controversy on the Deluge 
 in the pages of the Tablet in the year 1884. I am not, however, aware 
 that anything transpired in that controversy which would require me to 
 retract or modify any statement in the present paper. If so, I shall be 
 obliged to any one who will put his finger on it. 
 
 B 
 
2 Plato's atlantis. 
 
 origin, at any rate, of the civilised nations " on both sides 
 of the Atlantic," is by no means inconsiderable ; and it 
 will be seen that, in so far as he fails to sustain his spe- 
 cial theory of the submerged Atlantis, his convictions, 
 facts, and testimonies must pass to the account or lapse 
 to the inheritance of what I have regarded as the tradition 
 of the human race. 
 
 As it is always safer and fairer to present the theory 
 of an author in his own words so far as may be possible, 
 I will give the principal heads under which Mr. Donnelly 
 summarises the purpose of his work. I shall have occa- 
 sion, at any rate indirectly, to refer to the omitted headings 
 in the course of this discussion : 
 
 " 1. That there once existed in the Atlantic Ocean, opposite 
 the mouth of the Mediterranean Sea, a large island, which was 
 the remnant of an Atlantic continent, and known to the ancient 
 world as Atlantis. 2. That the description of this island given by 
 Plato is hot, as has been long supposed, fable, but veritable history. 
 3. That Atlantis was the region where man first rose from a state 
 of barbarism to civilisation. 4. That it became in the course of 
 ages a, populous and mighty nation, from whose overflowings the 
 shores of the Gulf of Mexico, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Paci- 
 fic coast of South America, the west, coast of Europe and Africa, the 
 Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Caspian were populated by civilised 
 nations. 5. That it was the true antedUuvian world — the Garden 
 of Eden, the Garden of the Hesperides, the Elysian Fields, the Gar- 
 den of Alcinous, the Mesomphalos, the Olympos, the Asgard of the 
 traditions of ancient nations ; representing a universal memory of 
 a great land where early mankind dwelt for ages in peace and 
 happiness. ... 12. That Atlantis perished in a teri'ible convulsion 
 of nature, in which the whole island sank into the ocean, and nearly 
 all its inhabitants. 13. That a few persons escaped in ships and 
 on rafts, and carried to the nations east and west the tidings of 
 the appalling catastrophe, which has survived to our own time in 
 the Flood and Deluge legends of the different nations of the old 
 and the new worlds." 
 
 In this theory there are two distinct propositions : 
 (1) that an island or continent of Atlantis existed, and 
 
PLATO S ATLANTIS. 3 
 
 sank in the ocean ; (2) and that this submersion was the 
 origin of the various diluvian legends which are found in 
 all parts of the world. 
 
 The legend of Atlantis can hardly be asserted even by 
 Mr. Donnelly to be the tradition of the human race, for he 
 himself terms it " a novel proposition." 
 
 " The fact that the story of Atlantis was for thousands of years 
 regarded as a fable proves nothiag. There is an' unbelief which 
 grows out of ignorance as well as a scepticism which is born of 
 intelligence. . . . For a, thousand years it was believed that the 
 legends of the buried cities of gpmpeii and Herculaneum w ere 
 myths. . There was a time wheii the expedition sent out by 
 Necho to circumnavigate Africa was doubted, because the explorers 
 stated that, after they had progressed a certain distance, the sun 
 was north of them. This circumstance, which then aroused sus- 
 picion, now proves to us that the Egyptian navigators had really 
 passed the equator, -and anticipated by dlOO years Vasquez da 
 Gama in his disco vei^ of the Cape of Good Hope " (p. 3). 
 "v 
 
 On the other hand, although it does not appear that 
 Mr. Donnelly himself believes in the inspiration of Genesis, 
 yet the fact that it has been so believed by many millions 
 in many parts of the world during a long continuance of 
 years must stand for something as against a theory. 
 
 As it is my wish to confine my argument to the limits 
 of historical tradition, I should have been willing to have 
 accepted Mr. Donnelly's first proposition, viz. that Atlantis 
 existed and subsided, at any rate pro curgumento, if his- 
 torical investigation had not destroyed the prima facie 
 evidence which seemed to compel or invite the inquiry. 
 This, however, is a point which the reader must decide. 
 Apart, however, from the historical evidence, I must 
 remark that. Mr. Donnelly's theory is opposed, from their 
 several points of view, by Mr. Wallace, Mr. Darwin, 
 and Professor Geikie {vide Wallace's Island Life, chap, 
 vi. 11). 
 
 Mr. Wallace's argument is not, it is true, addressed to 
 
4 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 the same set of facts as are adduced in Mr. Donnelly's 
 chaps. V. vi.— " The Testimony of the Sea," " The Testi- 
 mony of the Flora and Fauna." This, however, is a matter 
 which Mr. Donnelly must settle with Mr. Wallace. The 
 date of Mr. Donnelly's first edition is not stated. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's second proposition is, of course, depen- 
 dent on the first ; but I will continue the analysis of his 
 evidence. If' the existence of Atlantis could have been 
 considered probable, we might have believed it to have 
 been the scene of the earthly paradise, the location and 
 domicile of man in the antediluvian world, and the direc- 
 tion to which alike the sad reminiscences and bright hopes . 
 of mankind reverted. 
 
 I will now proceed to discuss the principal evidence 
 which Mr. Donnelly adduces. There is one testimony at 
 p. 95 which seems in some sort to faypur the suggestion 
 I have just made : " The traditions of the early Christian 
 ages touching the Deluge pointed to the quarter of the 
 world in which Atlantis was situated." This, however, 
 is only based on the theory of the good monk Cosmas, who 
 believed that the world was flat. " There was a quaint 
 old monk named Cosmos [Cosmas] who, about a thousand 
 years" ago, published a book, Topographia Christiana, 
 accompanied by a map [an engraving of which is given], 
 in which he gives his view of the world as it was then 
 understood* It was a body surrounded by water, and 
 resting on nothing. ... It will be observed that while he 
 locates Paradise in the East, he places the scene of the 
 Deluge in the West, and he supposes that Noah came 
 from the Scene of the Deluge to Europe." In Dr. Smith's 
 Greek and Eoman biography it is, however, said on the 
 contrary : " The object of this treatise is to show, in 
 opposition to the universal opinion of astronomers, that 
 
 the earth is not spherical, but an extended surface 
 
 * Italics throughout are mine, unless the contrary stated. 
 
PLATO. S ATLANTIS. 5- 
 
 Weapons of every kind are employed against the prevailing 
 theory," &c. And although he quotes inter alia the 
 authority of the Fathers, it will hardly be disputed .that 
 the prevailing Christian opinion, commencing with 
 Gen. xi. 2, " And when they removed from the East " to 
 the plain of Sennaar, has located the descent from the 
 Ark in the mountains of Armenia. 
 
 " We have already seen that Berosus relates how in his time 
 portions of the Ark were removed and used as amulets. Josephus 
 says that remains of the Ark were to he seen in his day upon 
 Ararat. Nicolas of Damascus reports the sa,me. St. Epiphanius 
 writes, ' The wood of the Ark of Noah is shown to this day in the 
 KardKan [Koord] country'" [Adv. Hteres. lib. i. ; Legends of Old 
 Testament Characters, S. Baring-Gould, i. 165). 
 
 So much, at any rate, as to the prevailing opinion. 
 Cosmas, before he had become a monk, had been a great 
 navigator, but his explorations had been in the Indian 
 Ocean. 
 
 Mr. Donnelly is necessarily limited to the data found in 
 the fragment of Plato. Plato commences with this state- 
 ment : 
 
 "The tale, which was of great length, began as follows. I 
 have before remarked, in speaking of the allotments of the gods, 
 that they distributed the whole earth into portions differing in 
 extent, and made themselves temples and sacrifices. And Poseidon, 
 receiving for his lot the island of Atlantis, begat children by a 
 mortal woman. . . . He also begat and brought up five pairs of 
 male children : . . . the eldest, who was king, he named Atlas, and 
 from him the whole island and the ocean received the name of 
 Atlantis" (p. 13). 
 
 Now, as to Poseidon, I recommend Mr. Donnelly to a 
 short but able treatise — Poseidon : a Link between Semite, 
 Hamite, and Aryan. By R. Brown (Longmans, 1872) — 
 in which the worship is traced "from its starting-point in 
 Chaldsea, through Phoenicia, Philistia, Libya, and Greece;" 
 and Mr. Brown finally identifies him with the patriarch 
 
6 Plato's atlantis. 
 
 Noah, as handed down in Libyan mythology, following in 
 this the lines of tradition.* 
 
 And looking to the diffusion of this worship of Poseidon 
 in Africa, including Egypt, Carthage, Ethiopia, Mauri- 
 tania, and throughout the Phoenician colonisation, we 
 seem to understand Plato's statement that Atlantis once 
 "had an extent greater than Libya and Asia." "For 
 many centuries," says Lenormant, " the Pelasgi of the 
 Archipelago, Greece, and Italy, the Philistines of Crete, 
 the Sicilians, the Sardinians, the Libyans, the Maxyans 
 of Africa, in spite of the distance of sea separating them, 
 united in a close confederation, maintaining a constant 
 intercourse, and thus explaining the Libyan element, 
 hitherto inexplicable, in the most ancient religious tradi- 
 tions of Greece, the worship of the Athenian Tritonis 
 and of the Libyan Poseidon." 
 
 Atlantis takes its name from Atlas — " the king." We 
 hear of Atlas first in Hesiod, as son of Japetus ; his 
 brother was Mencetius ("Mnesius," Plato; "Menu," Le- 
 normant), and, according to ApoUodorus, his mother's 
 name was Asia. In the Homeric poems he knows all 
 the depths of the sea ; he bears the long columns which 
 tear asunder or carry all around earth and heaven : in 
 either case the meaning of keeping asunder is implied. 
 Atlas is also described as the leader of the Titans in their 
 
 * Mr. Brown's argument would have been much enforced if he had 
 noticed the following jjaeeage in the Journal of the Atiatic Society, xv. 
 p. 231, by Colonel Bawlinsoo, C.B. : "I read the two names — the cunei- 
 form writing cannot be transfeiTed to your columua — doubtfully as Sisi- 
 ron add Naha (Noah) That the god in question represents the Greek 
 Neptune is, at any rate, almost certain ; he was worshipped on the sea- 
 shore, and ships of gold were dedicated to him. His ordinary title . . . 
 and the latter word is explained in the vocabnlary as . . . that is, 
 ' apzn,' which may be allied to ' Poo- ' in PoseiSiojj, as it is also joined with 
 ' nun,' a fish. His other epithets are . . . ' Bur marrat,' ' king of the 
 sea,' and . . . probably 'god of the ship or ark.' Other titles I can- 
 not explain ; but they seem to be all connected with traditions of the 
 biblical Noah." 
 
PLATO S ATLANTIS. ■ 7 
 
 contest with Zeus ; others represent Atlas as a powerful 
 king, who possessed great knowledge of the course of the 
 stars (Smith's Dictionary). 
 
 In the Targums, Nimrod is thus made to address his 
 subjects : " Come, let us build a great city. ... In the 
 midst of our city let us build a high tower. . . . Yea, 
 let us go further ; . let us prop up the heaven on all sides 
 from the top of the toiver, that it may not again fall and 
 inundate us. Then let us climb up to heaven and break 
 it up . with axes. . . ." (Baring-Gould, Old Testament 
 Characters, i. 166). 
 
 We may be allowed to conjecture, then, that either 
 Atlas is the tradition of Nimrod, or Nimrod of Atlas. 
 Will Mr. Donnelly maintain the latter in face of the his- 
 torical evidence of Nimrod in the Bible, and in the cunei- 
 form tablets ?* Among other sons of Poseidon who bear 
 
 * In the Month, January 1884, I diseuesed the evidence as to the 
 historical existence of Nimrod with reference to the cuneiform tablets. 
 It has strack me since that the direct evidence, so far as I knovr, has. 
 never been collated with the indirect evidence, as, for instance, as to 
 the existence of Chus, the father of Nimrod. Now, for this there is 
 the textimony not only of Asia, hat of Africa. As regards the latter, 
 there is the testimony of Josephus, recording the Gentile evidence of his 
 day, and the independent recent evidence of the Egyptian monuments. 
 Josephus says [Ant. i. vi. 2) : " Some indeed of its names (despeut of 
 Ham) are utterly vanished ; . . . yet . . . time has not hurt at all the 
 name of ' Chus ;' for the Ethiopians, over whom he reigned, are even at 
 this day, both by themselves and by all men in Asia, called Ghusites. 
 The memory also of," &c. That this testimony of Josephus is corrobo- 
 rated by .the most recent evidence will be apparent from the following 
 references to Brugsch's Egypt (i. 284) : "We have substituted for the 
 Egyptian appellations Ta-Ehout and Kush, the better koonn names 
 Nubia and Ethiopia;" (ii. 76) "the land of Kush;" and upon the 
 Assyrian conquest of Egypt, B.C. 1000, we find the name Nimrod re- 
 appearing (ii. 206) : " for Takeloth, Usarkon, Nemaroth represent in the 
 Egyptian form writing the names Tiglath, Sargon, and Nimrod, so well 
 known in Assyria." As regards Asia, the tradition had been fully recog- 
 nised {vide J. of Asiatic Soc, v. xv. pp. 230-33) : " In Susiana. the chief 
 seat of the Gush, we have the Scythio " Soythio or Hamitic," [p. 232] 
 inscriptions of Susa and Elymais, and the Scythic names of Eissia, Cos- 
 sica, Shus Afar, &e., not forgetting the tradition of the Ethiopian Mem- 
 non and the Ethiopian Cepheus. Along the line to India the Ethiopians 
 
8 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 resemblance to Atlas and Nimrod are Orion, " the giant 
 hunter" ("Nimrod is called in the LXX. the giant 
 hunter,"), and " the colossal youths 6tos and Ephialtes, 
 who at nine years old attempted to scale heaven by piling 
 up mountains ; which, says Homer, they would have 
 accomplished had not Apollo slain them. . . . Mr. 
 Grladstone remarks that the efforts of the two youths 
 recall the traditions of the Tower of Babel " (Juv. Mun. 
 251 ; Brown's Poseidon, 84). 
 
 Mr. Donnelly's best point is his suggestion that Atlan- 
 tis is identical with Aztlan in Central America : 
 
 " Upon that part of the African continent nearest to the site of 
 Atlantis we find a chain of mountains known from the most 
 ancient times as the Atlas mountains. Whence the name Atlas, 
 if it be not from the name of the great king of Atlantis ? . . . 
 Look at it ! An Atlas mountain on the shore of Africa ; an Atlan 
 town on the shore of America ; the Atlantis living along the north- 
 west coast of Africa; an Aztec people from Aztlan in Central 
 America ; an ocean rolling between the two worlds called the 
 ■Atlantic ; a mythological deity called Atlas holding the world on 
 his 'shoulders ; and an immemorial tradition of an island of Atlantis. 
 Can all these things be result of accident ? " (p. 172.) 
 
 We shall presently have to consider the question how 
 far the " immemorial tradition " is the offspring of the 
 invention of Plato. Before abandoning the present ground, 
 let me remark that one form of the legend of Atlas makes 
 him King of Mauritania, where are also located the 
 mountains of Atlas and the Atlantis. Atlas was fabled 
 to have been turned into a mountain by Perseus, who was 
 refused hospitality by Atlas, because he had been informed 
 
 of Southern Persia were known to Homer, Herodotus, and Strabo. . . . 
 The Brahni division of the Belfts rejoined their Cushite brethren in 
 Mekran by crossing from Arabia, and still speak a Scythic dialect; 
 while the names of Kooch and Belooch for Kus and Beb^s remain to the 
 present day." — Colonel Rawlinson, C.B. (now Sir Henry Rawlinson, 
 K.C.BO- 
 
Plato's Atlantis. 9 
 
 by an oracle of Themis that he should be dethroned by 
 one of the descendants of Jupiter. This reads very much 
 like the tradition that the descendants of Japhet were to 
 dwell in the tsnts of Canaan ; and the belief of Atlas 
 having been subdued by Perseus the Grecian hero— the 
 friend of Athene— may account for that part of the speech 
 put into the mouths of the Egyptian priests by Plato : 
 " Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your 
 State in our histories ; but one of them exceeds all the 
 rest in greatness and valour ; for these histories tell of a 
 mighty power which was aggressing wantonly against the 
 whole of Europe and Asia, and to which your city put an 
 end. This power came forth out of the Atlantic Ocean," 
 &c. However, I shall give later on an alternative sug- 
 gestion. 
 
 The inadvertent reader needs to be very much on his 
 guard in reading Mr. Donnelly. Each subsequent chapter 
 absolutely assumes the conclusions of the previous chap- 
 ter. Thus, ch. vii., " The Irish Colonies from Atlantis," 
 which naturally excites our interest, commences, "We 
 have seen that beyond question Spain and France owed a 
 great part of their population to Atlantis ;" but if we 
 revert to ch. iv., " The Iberian Colonies of Atlantis," 
 with the exception of the statement, which I shall pre- 
 sently discuss, that the Turdetani are said by Strabo to 
 have had writings 6000 years old, there is nothing what- 
 ever tending to support his contention. There is, indeed, 
 the assertion that the Basque language has analogies 
 with the Algonquin and other American languages ; and 
 there is a similar argument in another very learned 
 chapter in respect to the affinity between the Maya and 
 Phoenician. I remember reading in the Month that 
 the devil is said to have spent two years in the Basque 
 country endeavouring to learn the language, but at the 
 end of that time abandoned it, as he had only mastered 
 
10 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 one word, which was written like " Nabuchodonosor " and 
 pronounced " Sennacherib." Allowing, however, Mr. 
 Donnelly to have seen farther into the millstone than any 
 one else, this correspondence of language would tend to 
 prove the common origin of mankind, the original unity 
 of tongue, and the migration from a common centre in 
 Mesopotamia equally with emigration from Atlantis ; 
 unless, indeed, the reader is prepared to believe that the 
 "Mayas" of America are descended from " Maia," the 
 daughter of Atlas ! The Iberians having been thus 
 demonstrated to be " Atlauteans," it suffices to show in 
 the chapter on Ireland that the early invasions came from 
 Iberia. " Spain in that day was the land of the Iberians, 
 the Basques, that is to say of the Atlanteans " (p. 409). 
 Again we read (p. 286) : 
 
 " We find the barbarians of the coast of the Mediterranean re- 
 garding the civiliseA people of Atlantis with awe and wonder. ' Their 
 physical strength was extraordinary, the earth shaking sometimes 
 under their tread. Whatever they did was done speedily. They 
 moved through space almost without the loss of a moment of time.' 
 This probably alluded to the rapid motion of their sailing vessels. 
 ' They were wise, and communicated their wisdom to men.' That 
 is to say, they civilised the people they came in contact with." 
 
 Other quotations follow, all with reference to Murray's 
 Mythology. 
 
 We should naturally expect that these quotations from 
 Murray had some reference to Atlantis. Not at all. Mr. 
 Murray is only speaking of the Olympians. But Mr. 
 Donnelly having satisfied himself that Olympos is identical 
 with Atlantis (he even contends that the letters of the 
 words are interchangeable and the names identical), hence- 
 forward everything that is recorded of Olympos is con- 
 vertibly to be spoken of Atlantis. 
 
 From one point of view, Atlantis and Olympos, As^ard 
 and Atlantis, are part of a common tradition, a question 
 which I shall presently discuss. When, however, Mr. 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 11 
 
 Donnelly recognises resemblances, they must at once be 
 regarded as conclusive, e.g. that Olympos is a tradition of 
 Atlantis. In short, Mr. Donnelly appears uniformly to 
 argue according to the formula " Csesar and Pompey very 
 much alike, especially Pompey." 
 
 It seems unnecessary to say that Mr. Donnelly sees the 
 name of Atlantis everywhere. Except when he clutches 
 at evidence in this w^ay he appears perfectly able to weigh 
 facts and evidence ; and it must be . acknowledged that 
 there is a seeming confirmation of his theory in the my- 
 thological and classical location of the Garden of the 
 Hesperides in the Islands of the West. I have already 
 (p. 2) quoted Mr. Donnelly on this head. His confirma- 
 tion of the theory, however, again disappears when we 
 remember that the Garden of the Hesperides was only one 
 of the reminiscences of Eden. It is true that from his 
 point of view Eden is only a reminiscence of Atlantis ; but 
 apart from the argument which I shaH proceed to put — 
 Eden in the East having been the prominent belief of 
 mankind — the onus probandi lies on his side of showing 
 that all those traditions, Meru, Olympos, Elysium, Asgard, 
 Midgard, centred in Atlantis. So far from this being the 
 case, the salient features of the tradition which are common 
 to the other legends are barely discernible in the descrip- 
 tion of Plato, e.g. instead of a garden we have only a fertile 
 plain. With the exception of the Garden of the Hesperides 
 all these other traditions place the Garden of Paradise in 
 the East,* or the supposed centre of the world. 
 
 In all these legends (we shall agree so far) we find the 
 embodiment of early tradition in a garden or a plain, a 
 palace on or in connection with a mountain. There is, 
 
 * Moreover, the Bible and the Babylonian tradition placed paradise 
 and the "father of countries" in the East [vide M. Lenormant, M. 
 Oppert, and L'Abbfi Vigoaroux, La Bible et les Decouvertes Modernes, 
 i. 196). 
 
12 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 however, one feature common to them all which, at first 
 sight, favours Mr. Donnelly's theory, and which, perhaps, 
 has confirmed him in it — they are all surrounded by water. 
 This he naturally contends means the island of Atlantis, 
 But when we consider that whenever the Ancients repre- 
 sented the world they represented it surrounded by water 
 — it is so represented in Homer and in the map which 
 Mr. Donnelly gives of the old monk Cosmas ; that one 
 form the legend takes is that of Midgard, the middle of 
 the earth, the " mesomphalos," which " was equally dis- 
 tant on all sides from the sea ;" and when we consider 
 that according to the experience of mankind in their 
 explorations in three directions, in the Atlantic and round 
 the African coast to the Chinese seas, all was water — the 
 north being, sealed to them, as it- is to us — I think Mr. 
 Donnelly has only to enlarge his view, and he will fall back 
 into the tradition of mankind. 
 
 At p. 326, Mr.* Donnelly says : " Thus the nations on 
 the west of the Atlantic look to the east for their place of 
 origin ; while on the east of the Atlantic they look to the 
 west : thus all the lines of tradition con.verge upon 
 Atlantis." But precisely the same may be said if we 
 start mankind from the plain of Sennaar. 
 
 And if we start mankind from the plain of Sennaar on 
 the lines of the biblical narrative, is it unnatural to expect 
 that they should embody their traditions of paradise, the 
 Tower of Babel, and the Deluge in the conception, gro- 
 tesque no doubt, of a garden on a mountain surrounded 
 by water ? "In all the legends of India the original seat 
 of mankind is placed on Mount Meru, the residence of the 
 gods, a column uniting heaven to earth " (Lenormant, Frag. 
 Cosmog. de jB erase, p. 300). In the Scandinavian legend, 
 " the centrical fortress which the gods constructed from the 
 eyebrows of Ymen, and which towered from the midst of 
 the earth equally distant on all sides from the sea, is cer- 
 
Plato's atlantis. 13 
 
 tainly the Meru of the Hindoos and Indo-Scythae. ... It 
 was the peculiar residence of the hero-god iniimediately 
 after the Deluge ; and it is at once described with all the 
 characteristics of a paradise, and is represented as a 
 fortress which might secure the deities against any further 
 attacks of the giants " (S. Faber, O.P.I., i. 220). " Ac- 
 cording to this creed" (the mythology of the Eddas) 
 " ^sir and Odin had their abode in Asgard, a lofty hill 
 in the centre of the habitable earth in the midst of Mid- 
 gard — that middle earth which we hear of in early Eng- 
 lish poetry, the abode of gods and men. Round that earth, 
 which was fenced in against the attacks of ancient and 
 inveterate foes by a natural fortification of hills, flowed 
 the great sea in a ring, and beyond that sea was Utgard, 
 the outlying world, the abode of frost and giants and 
 monsters, those old natural powers who had been dis- 
 possessed by Odin and the ^sir when the new order of 
 the universe arose " (G..Webbe Dasent, Tales from the 
 Norse, Ivii.). Lenormant (301-2) says that the Iranian tra- 
 dition corresponds. Hierapolis, Delos, and Ecbatana were 
 constructed with reference to this tradition, and I consider 
 that I have proved that the ancient state of Meroe, in the 
 island of Meroe, near Mount Gibbainy — in the country 
 of the Soudan (vide Scientific Value of Fradition, pp. 
 161 to 179) — was organised with reference to this tra- 
 dition. The tradition of paradise in connection with the 
 Deluge and the Tower of Babel is also seen in the hanging 
 gardens (the paradisiacal mountain), the Pyramids in 
 stages, and the tower of Borsippa, near Babylon (vide Lenor- 
 mant, id. 318 etseq.). There is special mention (p. 320) 
 of a bas-relief in the palace of Assur-bani-pal, of which 
 a fragment has been published in Eawlinson's Five 
 Great Monarchies, i. 888, " where a royal paradise adjoins 
 a palace planted with large trees placed on the summit 
 of an eminence, and watered by a single stream of 
 
14 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 water, which divided itself into several channels on the 
 side of the mountain, like the stream of paradise, the 
 spring of Arvanda or Ardava-cura of the Iranian Hara 
 Berazuiti, and the Ganga of the Indian Meru " (Lenormant, 
 321). Compare this with Plato's description of Atlantis : 
 
 " On the side towards the sea, and in the centre of the whole 
 island, there was a plain which is said to have been the fairest of all 
 plains, and very fertile. Near the plain again, and also in the centre 
 of the island, at a distance of about fifty stadia, there was a moun- 
 tain not very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one of 
 the earth-born primeval men of that country whose name was Eve- 
 nor . . . and Lucippe, and they had an only daughter named Chito. 
 
 . Poseidon fell in love with her . . . and breaking the ground 
 enclosed the hill in which she dwelt aU round, making alternate 
 zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, encircling one another ; 
 there were two of land and three of water, which he turned as with a 
 lathe out of the centre of the island, equidistant every way, so that no 
 man could get to the island, for ships' voyages were not yet heard of. 
 He himself as he was a god, found no difficulty in making special 
 arrangements for the centre island, bringing two streams of water 
 under the earth, which he caused to ascend as springs, one of 
 warm water and the other of cold, and making every variety of food 
 to spring up abundantly in the earth. He also bega,t and brought 
 up five pairs of male children, dividing the island of Atlantis into 
 ten portions " (Donnelly's Atlantis, p. 13). 
 
 I have given these extracts in juxtaposition at some 
 length, as it will thus be possible to decide whether those 
 including Atlantis are all common traditions of the one 
 historic narrative which embraces and completes them all, 
 or whether they all developed out of the slender reminis- 
 cences recorded of Atlantis. 
 
 I assume that Mr. Donnelly will intrench himself in the 
 position, as it seems to me the only position that remains 
 to him, viz. that 
 
 " Plato states that the Egyptians told Solon that the destruction 
 of Atlantis occurred nine thousand years before that date, to wit, 
 about nine thousand six hundred years before tlie Christian era. 
 This looks like an extraordinarily long period of time, but it must be 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 15 
 
 remembered that geologists claim that the remains of man found in 
 the caves of Europe date back five hundred thojisand years " (p. 29). 
 
 So tremendous a position can only be taken by a pro- 
 cess of sapping and mining, as I confine myself to the 
 historical facts, and do not profess to have at command 
 such heavy artillery as will discharge 500,000 years in a 
 single explosion. 
 
 Considering that all chronologies and histories upon 
 analysis seem to terminate about 3000 B.C. — or, if they in- 
 clude the antediluvian world, to about 6000 e.g. ; that if 
 the migration of the nations is retraced they are found to 
 converge upon the central district lying between Persia and 
 the Mediterranean, Armenia to Ethiopia ;* that, according 
 to Mr. Proctor, the constellations known by similar names 
 to variously dispersed nations can astronomically be shown 
 to have been so named within the latitudes indicated above 
 and about the year 2200 B.C., there is a background of pro- 
 bability for traditions tracing back to that period ; and, as 
 aga,inst Mr. Donnelly, the argument might almost be stated 
 mathematically. Given the amount of scepticism which 
 will attach to the transmission of traditions of such calibre 
 as the garden of paradise, the universal Deluge, the dis- 
 persion during 3000 years, how much will exist as to the 
 preservation of the slight reminiscences of Atlantis, as 
 above, during 9000 years ? 
 
 As regards the reminiscences of Atlantis, either the 
 tradition of this palace, mountain, and canals was pre- 
 
 * For one instance, take what Colonel Bawlinson [sup. p. 232) esys 
 of the migration of the Seyths or Hamites : " They must have spread 
 themselTes at the same time over Syria and Asia Minor, tending out 
 colonies from one country to Mauritania, Sicily, and Iberia, from the 
 other. ... It is well known to tthnographers that the passage of the 
 Scythe is to be traced along all these lines, either by direct historical 
 tradition, or by the cognate dialects spoken by their descendants at the 
 present day. . . . And if we were to be thus guided by the mere inter- 
 section of linguistic paths, and independently of all reference to the 
 scriptural record, we should BtUl be led to fix on the plains of Shinar as 
 the focus from which the various lines hadjaiiiuted." 
 
16 PLATO'S ATLAll»TIS. 
 
 served before or after the subsidence of Atlantis. If before, 
 how explain the fact that this tradition so curiously runs 
 into the lines of' the diluvian tradition ? They must, 
 then, have been traditional of an event which happened 
 ex hypothesi at later date;, or if after, how explain that 
 what would then be the direct tradition of the Deluge, 
 or submersion, was thus transmitted only in an indirect, 
 disguised, and legendary form ; and, on the other hand, 
 that an apparently direct record of it, as in Genesis, 
 should^ in fact, be only the tradition at secondhand of a 
 tradition in indirect form ? 
 
 The biblical record, the cuneiform narrative, the In- 
 dian legend, &c., all profess to give the tradition in direct 
 form. How is it that they all tell of a universal deluge, 
 in which one family — sometimes one man — survived, and 
 that in all the prominent cause of the destruction was 
 unintermittent andjprotracted rain ? In the case of 
 Atlantis the cause was subsidence, or else the geological 
 argument must be abandoned. Moreover, if the intelli- 
 gence of the calamity, which was ultimately to take the 
 form of the diluvian tradition, was to be extended piece- 
 meal over the whole human race even in 9000 years, it 
 could scarcely have been through one man or one family, 
 but through many ; and it would seem none of the records 
 or traditions tell of the event in the manner it is sup- 
 posed to have happened, either according to the geological 
 evidence, or according to the revelation of Plato. 
 ^ In Tradition and elsewhere I have endeavoured to 
 collate, though very imperfectly, the various traditions 
 of the patriarch Noah in Chronos, Poseidon, Saturn, 
 Hoa, &c. Chronos no doubt was the father of Poseidon, 
 and so on ; yet fundamentally, whilst accreting other 
 traditions, as of Shem, Cham, and Japhet, they all de- 
 scribed a primeval legislator, who inaugurated or appeared 
 in connection with a new order of things ; j all came out of 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 17 
 
 or had relations with, without being identified with, the 
 ocean ; and although all are associated with the recollec- 
 tion of a primeval paradise, a golden age, a period of 
 happiness and prosperity which was lost to mankind, they 
 are almost all associated in some way with a catastrophe 
 or with calamity. | They all plant the vine or the olive, 
 so that it has been said " that all nations have given the 
 > honour of the discovery of agriculture to their first 
 sovereigns." Now it happens, for the purposes of his argu- 
 ment, 'to be convenient to Mr. Donnelly to recognise this 
 in part, and to apply it in this way. According to the 
 requirements of his theory, the intelligence of the sub- 
 mersion of Atlantis was conveyed by the survivors to the 
 various nations. He skilfully seizes hold of the tradition 
 to which I have just referred, in order to despatch the 
 various legendary heroes, no longer as representatives of 
 the patriarch Noah, but, so to speak, on their own account 
 to the various nations as the survivors of the catastrophe, 
 and as the civilisers and legislators of the countries to 
 which they came. Thus Hoa, or Hea, is despatched by 
 him to Assyria (p. 83) : " He it was who was said to 
 have brought civilisation and letters to the ancestors of 
 the Assyrians. He clearly represented an ancient mari- 
 time civilised nation ; he came from the ocean, and was 
 associated with some land and people that had been < 
 destroyed by rain and inundations." In like manner 
 Saturn is sent to Latium,; but although the tradition is 
 connected also with Kronos and Poseidon, and although 
 it is said (p. 82) that " Chronos and Saturn- were the 
 same," yet Kronos and Poseidon are not so distributed, 
 for the obvious reason that they stand at the commence- 
 ment of the civilisation of Atlantis ! But this affords a 
 measure for testing the theory. If " Chronos and Saturn 
 are the same," Chronos cannot both be the father of 
 Poseidon, who is gravely regarded by Mr. Donnelly as the 
 
 
 
18 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 actual founder of the kingdom and dynasty of Atlantis, 
 and at the same time the survivor after its subsidence 
 (which happened after the lapse of " many generations ") 
 who brought civilisation to Latium. 
 
 The tradition of Saturn in Latium, I admit, fits in 
 very well with Mr. Donnelly's theory, better even than he 
 seems aware. I should like, however, to know where Mr. 
 Donnelly finds mention "of 'a great Saturnian continent' 
 in the Atlantic Ocean"? Mr. Donnelly is not lavish of 
 references, and, until he gives one in this instance, I can 
 only surmise that it is a free Transatlantic translation of 
 the " Saturnia regna " of Virgil. 
 
 It may be, as Mr. Donnelly believes, that " Chronos 
 and Saturn are the same," and yet that they represent 'the 
 tradition at difi'erent stages and dates, and in Latium at 
 the later date. 
 
 Sanchoniathon {(vpud Eusebius) says " that Chronos 
 and II are the same," and Lenormant says the same of 
 Chronos and the Chaldean Ilu. Here we have the tradi- 
 tion at its earliest stage, and it will be worth while giving 
 an extract from M. Lenormant, as it shows close resem- 
 blance with the tradition of Chronos, through Poseidon, in 
 Plato's Atlantis : 
 
 " Ilu, the supreme mysterious god whom the Greeks have con- 
 ' stantly likened to their Kronos. . . . The part which tradition, as 
 recorded by Berosus, makes him play in the deluge is not perhaps 
 without reference to one of his ideographic names ; ... for the 
 complete group certainly reads Ilu — for example, in the name of 
 Babylon — Bab Uu ; the sign ... of which the primitive hieroglyph 
 which we possess in some monuments represents a land intersected 
 (coupee) by canals, is explained in the syllabaries by the root . . . 
 which in Hebrew signifies ' to cleanse,' and in Assyrian ' to inun- 
 date.' It is thus ' the god of inundation, the god of the deluge ' " 
 (viz. Oppert, Expedit. en Mesopotamie, ii. 67 ; Lenormant, Frag, 
 de Berose, 288). 
 
 We have seen Poseidorf in Atlantis encircling his hill 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 19 
 
 with alternate zones of sea and land, and in the descrip- 
 tion of his palace the canals which he constructed are 
 twice referred to. If these are commo%diluyian traditions 
 of Kronos and Poseidon,^ it must follow that in Plato's 
 account of Atlantis we may have diluvian traditions hefore 
 the alleged period of its subsidence, quod est impossibile. 
 Ergo, I should infer, a conclusion at which I shall arrive 
 mors definitely by another route, that Atlantis was, in the 
 main, only general tradition taking form and embodiment 
 in the mind of Plato. 
 
 I have still to notice the single fact upon which rests 
 the foundation of chaps, iv. vii., that the Iberians, Gauls, 
 and Celtic-Irish were Atlantes ; viz. that Strabo tells ua 
 that " the Turdetani had written books containing memo- 
 rials of ancient times, and also poems and laws set in 
 verse, for which .they claim an antiquity of six thousand 
 years." Unfortunately, if we are to argue on Mr. Donnelly's 
 lines, and if the submersion of Atlantis took place 9000 B.C., 
 writings extending back only six thousand years do not 
 help us at all. It is singular, hpwever, that this figure 
 should have been named by Strabo as dating anno mundi 
 — 6000 would be very nearly the correct date in his time. 
 Mr. W. Palmer in his synchronism, " within five years 
 four months and seven days," of the Hebrew and LXX., 
 with Joaephus and the Egyptian Chronicle, makes the 
 commencement of the world circa B.C. 6360. I may add 
 that, so long ,as Mr. W. Palmer's system remains unre- 
 futed, we may be entitled, at any rate, to prefer his con- 
 clusions to the assertions of the Egyptian priests confuted 
 by the testimony of their own monuments. 
 
 In Plato's description .of Atlantis prominence is natur- 
 ally given to the horse, as is appropriate in any mytho- 
 logical legend which commences with Poseidon. Mr. 
 Brown {Poseidon, p. 64) and also Mr. Gladstone {Juventus 
 Mundi) are much exercised by this " remarkable conhec- 
 
20 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 tion of Poseidon with the horse." I am now only con- 
 cerned with the fact. 
 
 It is one of M^Donnelly's contentions, in proof of the 
 existence of Atlantis, that the horse, which, upon the evo- 
 lutionist theory, he declares must have been first domes- 
 ticated in America, could not have passed from America 
 to Europe without the existence o.f "continuous land com- 
 munication between the two continents." . 
 
 Now, let us approach the question from the opposite 
 direction. According to the biblical indications, and the 
 tradition that mankind overspread the earth from the 
 plains of Mesopotamia, we should expect to trace the pos- 
 session and use of the horse, in the countries intermediate 
 between the Tigris and Atlantic from East to West. 
 
 If, however, Atlantis existed, and was the original seat 
 of civilisation and the point from which it spread to other 
 countries, and if it is part of the statement that the horse 
 existed on the island, then reversely we should expect to 
 trace the progress of its use from West to East. 
 
 ■ M. Lenormant, it need scarcely be added, without any 
 advertence to this question, has shown in his Premieres 
 Civilisations (p. 300), 
 
 " That the horse not only does not appear in any monument of 
 the old empire, but is equally absent from those of the period called 
 the middle empire, which extends from the first Egyptian revival 
 under the eleventh dynasty until the invasion of the shepherds. . . . 
 On the contrary, when the monuments recommence after a some- 
 what lengthened interruption under the eighteenth dynasty, the 
 horse is seen as an animal in habitualuse in Egypt." 
 
 On the other hand, the philological argument, the 
 only one to which we can have recourse, would seem to 
 show that the horse was well Known in the East during 
 the period it was absent from Egypt: 
 
 " The horse was one of the domestic species wliich the Aryans 
 possessed in the earliest times, and the use of which was General 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 21 
 
 among their tribes before they were dispersed, some in Europe, thS 
 others in Persia and India " (p. 318). 
 
 The evidence which we possess as to the migration of t"he 
 horse appears to me decisive. 
 
 There is one other statement which I should like to 
 have discussed, the only remaining one which has a look 
 of corroboration of Mr. Donnelly's theory — i.e. "apart from 
 his diluvian traditions, which would drift us too far in 
 their current. This chapter, however, has already run to 
 too great length, and the statement will perhaps be more 
 appropriately reserved for consideration in a subsequent 
 chapter, in which I think I shall be able to disclose the 
 secret of Atlantis. 
 
CHAPTEE II. 
 
 CONJECTURE AS TO THE PEOBABLE BASIS OF PLATO'S 
 ATLANTIS. 
 
 In my last chapter I reserved an argument of Mr. Donnelly's 
 for further consideration, and as it is based on one of the 
 facts upon which he apparently obtains foothold — one of 
 the islets or peaks, so to speak, of the submerged Atlantis 
 — I will give it in extract : 
 
 " There was an ancient tradition among the Persians that the 
 Phoenicians inigrated from the shores of the Erythean Sea, and 
 this has been supposed to mean the Persian Gulf ; but there was 
 a very old city of Erythia in utter ruin at the time of Strabo, 
 which was buUt in some ancient age long before the founding of 
 Gades, near the site of that town on the Atlantic coast of Spain. 
 May not this town of Erythia have given its name to the adjacent 
 sesi? and this may have been the starting-point of the Phoenicians 
 in their European migrations. It would even appear that there was 
 an island of Erythia " (Donnellj's Atlantis, ip. 310). 
 
 It will be perceived that this conjecture rests entirely 
 on the statement of Strabo. In the first place, between 
 Strabo's time and the commencement of Phoenician enter- 
 prise (B.C. 1200, Lenormant) there was full lapse of time 
 for a city to have been founded, matured, and, the monarch- 
 ical stage having elapsed, to have passed through the 
 inevitable stages of aristocracy, democracy, despotism, 
 revolution, and decay, and so in Strabo's time to have 
 been entitled to the description of an ancient city. 
 
 But Strabo (the sole authority cited) himself says, 
 according to Lenormant, without reference to this ques- 
 tion : 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 23 
 
 " We must especially bear in mind the information preserved by 
 Strabo (xvi. 766) with reference to the country first occupied by the 
 Canaanites in the Persian Oulf, information which substantially 
 agrees with that which Herodotus (i. i. v. 89 ; cf. Justin, xviii. 3) 
 had collected from the mouths of the Phoenicians themselves, that the 
 two most ancient sanctuaries of their race were situated in the 
 islands of Tylos and Aradus (two of the existing Bahrien islands), 
 which reproduced later on in the new country of the Phoenicians 
 in the Mediterranean the islElndi||||f Tyre and Aradus " (Fragmens 
 Oosmogoniques,^. 221).* 
 
 Even if Strabo had not said it, another line of tradition 
 would show that the Phoenicians sprang from the Erythean 
 Sea, between, the Ked Sea and the Persian Gulf; but as 
 this will afford evidence in another direction also, it will 
 be convenient to reserve it. The evidence which has now 
 accumula,ted will justify our reverting to Plato's fragment 
 with a view to discover, if possible, what its real import 
 may be. 
 
 Plato's Atlantis, so far as I know, has never been com- 
 pared and confronted with a' document, the authenticity of 
 which is recognised by Heeren and Lenormant (it will be 
 found in extenso in F. Lenormant, Mem. d'Hist. Ancienne, 
 ii. 414, and also in Heeren, Hist. Researches, Afric. 
 Nations, p. 478), viz. " the voyage of Hanno, which he 
 has posted up avtdristzv in the temple of Kronos." The 
 voyage of Hanno took place circa b.c. 500, and Plato was 
 born circa B.C. 430. This document, which has come down 
 to us in the form of a Greek translation, may reasonably 
 
 * M. Lenormant says this still more explioitly and emphatically {Hist. 
 Am:, ii. p. 241), as if in anticipation of some such theory as that of Mr. 
 DonneUy'B. He says : ." The Phoenician tradition, gathered at Tyre itself 
 by Herodotus, . . . accepted equally by the judioions Trogus Pompeius ; 
 the tradition of South Arabia, which Strabo has reported ; in fine, that 
 which was current in the first centuries of the Christian era, when the 
 original Syro-Chaldaio ms. of the book ' L' Agriculture Nabutienne ' was 
 ■written, all three agree in declaring that the Chanaanites had primitively 
 dwelt near the Chueites. their brethren in origin, upon the shores of the 
 Erythean Sea or Persian Gulf." Further evidence is adduced, but this 
 wiU perhaps suffice. 
 
Z4 • PLATO'S ATLANTIS. • 
 
 be presumed to have been accessible to Plato during his 
 residence either in Sicily or in Cyrene. 
 
 It is my contention (1) that thisdocument forms, so to 
 speak, the backbone of the Atlantis. I think that I shall 
 be able to show that Plato does not state any fact respect- 
 ing Atlantis which has not been taken from this document 
 except (2) — for 1 think the ^eptions are sufficiently im- 
 portant to justify a second ^ertion respecting it — unless 
 what Plato drew from the well of general or family tradi- 
 tion. Over the whole there is the glamour of Plato's style 
 and imagination. Eeserving what is preliminary, the 
 account of Atlantis commences thus :* 
 
 " The tale, which was of great length, began as follows : I have 
 before remarked, in speaking of the allotments of the gods, that they 
 distributed the whole earth into portions. . . . And Poseidon, re- 
 ceiving for his lot the island of Atlantis, begat children by a mortal 
 woman, and settled them in a part of the island which I will proceed 
 to describe. On the side towards the sea, and in- the centre of tlie 
 whole island, there was a plain which is said to have been the 
 fairest of all plains, and very fertile. Near the plain again, also 
 in the centre of the island, at a distance of about fifty stadja, there 
 was a. mountain not very high on any side. In this mountain 
 there dwelt one of the earth-born primeval men of that country 
 whose name was Evenor, and he had a wife jiamed Luoippe, and 
 they had an only daughter who was called Cleito " (Oritias : Pro- 
 fessor Jowett's Dialogues of Plato, ii. 603). 
 
 This allotment of the earth corresponds to the tradi- 
 tion of Pheroneus, "the father of mankind" (Clemens 
 Alex. i. 380), to whom the distribution of mankind was 
 attributed, " idem nationes distribuit" (Hyginus, 143), and 
 whom Plato calls " the first." 
 
 Hanno sailed about 500 B.C. with sixty vessels and 
 thirty thousand colonists. 
 
 Assuming that Atlantis was idealised from the narra- 
 
 * In Appendix A and Appendix B I give in extenso the description. of 
 Atlantis in Plato's Critias (Jowett's tran?,), and the translation of the 
 Periplus of Hanno from Heeren's Hist. Researches. 
 
Plato's Atlantis. 25 
 
 tive of Hanno, Atlantis would be coextensive with the 
 Carthaginian empire, including the Canary and Fortunate 
 Islands. Poseidon, son of Kronos, was the tutelary god 
 of the Carthaginians, as witness Hamilcar's elaborate 
 sacrifice to him in the war with Gelon [Juventus Mundi, 
 p. 249) ;. and Lenormant terms him " the Libyan Posei- 
 don " 
 
 The occupation of- Atlantis by Poseidon, and " his 
 begetting children by a mortal woman," and " settling 
 them " in a part of the island, may be conjecturally sup- 
 posed to be the Carthaginian colonisation of the islands 
 mentioned in Hanno's narrative and of the mainland 
 beyond the mountains of Atlas; and this seems exactly 
 confirmed when we read in Heeren (p. 40), " The colonists 
 which Hanno carried out consisted, as we are expressly 
 informed, of Liby-Phoeniciaus, and were not chosen from 
 among the citizens of Carthage, but taken from the 
 country inhabitants." 
 
 This corresponds sufficiently. It will be noticed that 
 Plato, after the passage about Poseidon (as above), gives a 
 description of a plain, and Hanno's account commences 
 thus : " When we had passed the Pillars of Hercules on 
 ©ur voyage, and had sailed beyond them for two -days, we 
 founded the first city, which we named ' Thymiaterium.' 
 Below it lay an extensive plain." The passage in Plato 
 about Poseidon refers to the foundation of his first city. 
 As regards the derivation of " Thymiaterium," it is diffi- 
 cult to get beyond what old Bochart wrote, " Qvi^iKT^giov, 
 ' id est Thuribulum quorsum ?" Thymiaterium, Lenormant 
 tells us, is the modern " Mamoura " — Mamora. Now, 
 the description of Mamora very well corresponds with 
 Plato's descriptions. " It is situated upon a hill, near the 
 mouth of the river Sjiboe, the waters of which, gradually 
 widening "in their course, fall icto the Atlantic at this 
 place and form a harbour' for small vessels." " The fer- 
 
26 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 tile pastures, the extensive waters and plantations, which 
 we passed on our way hither have already been remarked." 
 " We travelled among trees of various kinds, so agreeably 
 arranged that the place had more the appearance of a 
 park than of an uncultivated country. We crossed plains 
 which were rich with verdure, and we had a view of lakes 
 which extended many miles in length."* McCuUoch 
 (Geog. Diet.) says, " Morocco (the ancient Mauritania) has 
 a large extent of comparatively level land. Some of the 
 plains and valleys are of great extent and extraordinary 
 fertility ;" " the soil is now, as in antiquity, proverbial for 
 its fertility;" "the grass often attaining a height unequalled 
 except in the prairies of America." " On the north- 
 western side of the Atlas range the climate is healthy and 
 genial." QviJUiccrrigioi/ is only the Greek rendering of the 
 Libyan-Phoenician name, and perhaps a fanciful render- 
 ing. Bochart'st conjecture is that it was so called because 
 " situated in a plain," which corresponds to the fact ; 
 and Plato describes the plain in which Poseidon (Nep- 
 tune) " settled, his children " "as the fairest of all plains, 
 and very fertile." 
 
 Plato "then proceeds abruptly to inform us that " Posei- 
 don next, as he was a god, found no difficulty in making 
 special arrangements for the centre island, bringing the 
 streams of water under the earth, which he caused to 
 ascend as springs, one of warm water and the other of 
 cold ; and making every variety of food to spring up 
 abundantly on the earth." Here Plato a little anticipated 
 Hanno's narrative — apparently for the purpose of intro- 
 ducing the earliest Athenian legend concerning Poseidon, 
 for he is made to perform at Atlantis the same feat with 
 
 * Lempri^re's Tour to Morocco (Pinkerton), xv. 
 
 + Bochart's conjective is founded on a Hebrew eqnivalent ; but this 
 may hold, as the Phoenician iB^olassed by the philologistB ob a Shemitib 
 tongue. Concerning the extension of the Shemitic race, vide Origin of 
 the Nations of tVestern Europe, by J. Pym Yeatman. 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. ' 27 
 
 which he is credited at Athens. " In his reign (Ceerops) 
 Poseidon called forth with his trident a well on the Acro- 
 polis " (Smith's Mythological Dictionary).* 
 
 Hanno goes on to say ihat after passing the plain they 
 proceeded first to the west, where, " in a place thickly 
 covered with trees," they " erected a temple to Neptune " 
 (Poseidon), and then to the east, " where we found a lake 
 lying not far from the sea," which would correspond to 
 " the lakes which extended many miles in length " 
 {supra, p. 26). If they came upon a country where 
 sea and land, land and lakes, alternated, it might 
 have suggested to Plato's imagination "the alternate 
 zones of sea and land." Plato says, "And we are further 
 told that Poseidon, when he broke up the ground, .... 
 made alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller;' 
 encircling one another." 
 
 It is next stated in Plato that Poseidon proceeded 
 " to beget five pairs of male children, dividing the island 
 of Atlantis into ten portions." " The eldest, who was the 
 king, he named Atlas, and from him the whole island and 
 the ocean received the name of Atlantic." The name of 
 Atlas is here imported and transferred to the island by 
 Plato from the traditions of Atlas on the mainland. 
 
 Then follows a long account of the settlement of the 
 five pairs of male children, which might be allowed to 
 pass and form the foundation for the theory of Atlantis, if, 
 in corresponding sequence, Hanno had not added, " having 
 passed the lake about a day's sail, we founded cities. . ." 
 Five cities are named, the number corresponding with the 
 five pairs of children of Poseidon. 
 
 Plato then descants upon the wealth and possessions 
 
 of Atlas ; but before his eloquence has expended itself, he 
 
 abruptly and incongruously says, as if .in recollection of 
 
 some- fact, " Moreover, there were a great number of 
 
 * Compare supra, p. 14. 
 
28 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 elephants in the island, and there was provision for 
 animals of every kind, hoth for those that live in lakes 
 and marshes and rivers, and also for those which live in 
 mountains and on plains. . . ." In curious juxtaposition 
 with this I may place Hanno's statement just before his 
 mention of the five cities: "We proceeded until we 
 arrived at a lake lying not far from the sea, and filled 
 with abundance of large reeds. Here elephants and a 
 great number of other wild animals were feeding." 
 
 The coincidence of the mention in both narratives, 
 equally abruptly and unexpectedly, and in almost identi- 
 cal words, of elephants and other animals is noticeable, 
 but there is another coincidence equally remarkable. 
 Plato (p. 406) says : " The island in which the palace 
 (the palace of Poseidon) was situated had a diameter of 
 five stadia." The Atlantis island, or continent, thus 
 shrinks to these dimensions. No doubt there is mention 
 of a central island, which implies others; but the above 
 gives us a measure of the localities indicated, which corre- 
 spond very closely with the islands mentioned in Hanno's 
 exploration. 
 
 Hanno says : " Thence we proceeded towards the east,, 
 the course of a day. Here we found in the recess of a 
 certain bay a small island, containing a circle of five 
 stadia." "There we settled a colony, and called it Cerne." 
 But this small island would appear to have been their 
 head-quarters, for it is added, " We then came to a lake : 
 . . . this lake had three islands larger-than Cerne, whence, 
 returning back, we came again to Cerne." 
 
 If Hanno's narrative lies at the foundation of Plato'p 
 fragment of Atlantis, it is natural that what ie central in 
 the one should be central in the others, and, accordingly, 
 that what was the. head-quarters in the one should figure 
 as the palace of Poseidon in the other. 
 
 There is a slight resemblance in the way in which the 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 29 
 
 two narratives proceed. " Enougb of the royal palace. 
 Crossing the water harbours, which were three in num- 
 ber" (Plato). Hanno, after the mention of Cerne, which 
 corresponds to the palace : " We then came to a lake,^_ 
 which we reached by sailing up a large river. This lake 
 had three islands." 
 
 Several pages follow in Plato in description of the 
 city — " the nature and arrangement of the rest of the 
 country," and " th§ relations of their governments one 
 to another " — to which nothing in the short narrative of 
 Hanno corresponds, and for which the explanation must he 
 sought elsewhere. {Vide infra, ch. v. p. 77.) 
 
 At the conclusion, however, of the two narratives there 
 are descriptions which are very similar, and leave the im- 
 pression of one having been suggested to the imagination 
 by the perusal of the other. 
 
 Hanno says : " Towards the last day we approached 
 some, large mountains covered with trees, . the wood of 
 which was sweet-scented and variegated. Having sailed by 
 these mountains for two days, we came to an immense 
 opening of the sea, on each side of which, towards the 
 continent, was a plain, from which we saw by night' fire 
 arising at intervals in all directions, more or less;" and 
 further on, " When we had landed we could discover 
 nothing in the daytime except trees ; but in the night we 
 saw many fires burning, and heard the sound of pipes, 
 cymbals, drums, and confused shouts. We were then 
 afraid, and our divjners ordered us to abandon the island." 
 
 Plato describes Atlantis thus: "The whole country 
 was described as being very lofty and precipitous on the 
 side of the sea, but the country immediately about and 
 surrounding the city was a level plain. . . . The surround- 
 ing mountains," " for their number, size, and beauty," 
 "exceeded all that are now to be seen anywhere, having 
 in them" . . . "woods of various sorts abundant for every 
 
30 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 kind of work." " Also wha.teYer fragrant things there are 
 in the earth, whether roots or herbage or woods, grew and 
 thrived in that land." After an account of their laws and 
 customs, he describes their sacrifices of bulls to Poseidon 
 — how they burnt the limbs of the bull, and took the rest 
 of the victim to the^re, after having made a purification 
 of the column all round, and then poured a libation on the 
 fire, ; and when darkness came on, and the fire about the 
 sacrifice was cool (but not extinct), " all of them put on 
 most beautiful azure robes, and, sitting on the ground at 
 _ night near the embers of the sacrifice, on which they had 
 sworn, and extinguishing all the fires about the temple, 
 they received and gave judgment . . . ." — a scene which, 
 if accompanied, as we may imagine, with " sound of pipes, 
 cymbals, confused shouts," &c., would bring to the mind 
 much the same scene which affrighted the mariners and 
 diviners of Hanno's fleet. 
 
 Hanno's short narrative, or, at any rate, the Greek 
 translation of it which has come down to us, omitting 
 some final words about a savage people "whose bodies 
 were hairy " — conjectured by Lenormant and others to be 
 gorillas, that word having been wrongly substituted for 
 the " gorgones or gorgades of the original ms." — may be 
 said to end with a description of a volcanic region : 
 
 " Sailing quickly away thence, we passed a country burning with 
 fires and perfumes ; and streams of fire supplied from it fell into 
 the sea. The country was impassable on account of the heat. We 
 sailed quickly thence, being much terrified ; and passing on for four 
 days, we discovered at night a country full oT fire. In the middle 
 was a lofty fire, larger than the rest, which seemed to touch the 
 stars. When day came, we discovered it to be a large hill, called 
 the chariot of the gods." 
 
 Plato's fragment — and it is a circumstance to be noted 
 that both are fragmentary — terminates with the following 
 passage, which, apart from the argument, may be accept- 
 able : 
 
\ 
 
 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 31 
 
 " For many generations, as long as the divine nature lasted in 
 them, they were obedient to the laws, and well aflfec'tioned towards 
 the gods who were their kinsmen ; for they possessed true and in 
 every way great spirits, practising gentleness and wisdom in the 
 various chances of Ufe, and in their intercourse with one another. 
 . . . But when this divine portion began to fade away in them, then 
 they, being unable to bear thMr fortune, became unseemly, and to 
 him who had an eye to see they had lost the fairest of their pre- 
 cious gifts ; but to those who had no eye to see the true happiness 
 they still appeared glorious and blessed at the very time when 
 they were filled with unrighteous avarice and power. Zeus, the 
 god of^ gods, who rules with law, and is able to see into such 
 things, perceiving tjjat an honourable race was in a most wretched 
 state, and waiting to inflict punishment on them, that they might 
 be chastened and improve, colleoted all the gods into his most holy 
 habitation, which, being placed in the centre of the world, sees all 
 that partake of generation. And when he had called them together, 
 he spake as follows :" 
 
 There is nothing more, perhaps for the reason suggested ; 
 for Hanno's narrative or the Greek translation extends no 
 farther. ' 
 
 The catastrophe which was left thus vaguely impend- 
 ing had to be interpreted in the light of the previous 
 statement (p. 599) that "Atlantis was sunk by an earth- 
 quake." Thus one narrative ends somewhat abruptly with 
 the description of a volcano, and the other with a prognos- 
 tication of a volcanic subsidence. If it were worth while, 
 I might show a further coincidence in the approximation 
 of the term used by Hanno, "the chariot of the gods," 
 with the expression of Plato, "collecting all the gods into 
 his most holy habitation."* 
 
 As I have said, there is nothing more ; but if I have 
 succeeded in demonstrating that what is known as the 
 
 * Comp. also supra, p. 12, as to the centre of the world ; remark the 
 Btriking resemUance to this deBcription in the Chaldean account of the 
 Deluge discovered by Mr. George Smith : (eol. iii. 5-7) " The gods 
 passed the tempest and sought refuge ; they ascended to the heaven of 
 Assn ;" (17, 18) '-' The gods, in seats seated iu lamentation, covered 
 their lips for the coming evil." 
 
32 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 Periplus of Hanno is the foundation of Plato's Atlantis, 
 the discovery, if I may so term it, will at any rate supply 
 the reason why the Critias (Atlantis) was never completed, 
 which has remained a difficulty even to Professor Jowett. 
 
 " The Critias [Atlantis] is a fragment wMch breaks off in the 
 middle of a sentence. . . . Why the Critias [Atlantis'] was never 
 completed, whether from accident or advancing age, or from a 
 sense of the artistic difficulty of the design, cannot be determined " 
 (Professor Jowett's Introduction to Plato's Dialogues, ii. 595). 
 
 In speaking of the Atlantis as a fiction I by no, means 
 
 intend that it was a fabrication intended to deceive his 
 
 ,, contemporaries. It rather seems to me as if Plato was 
 
 ! indulging with them in a common and customary gratifi- 
 
 i cation of the imagination, and that this is almost ac- 
 
 ' knowledged in the following preliminary conversation : 
 
 " Consider, then, Socrates, if this narrative is suited to 
 
 the purpose, or whether we should seek for some other 
 
 1 instead." Socrates : " And what other, Critias, can we 
 
 I find that will be better than this, which is natural and 
 
 suitable to the festival of the goddess, and has the advan- 
 
 ' tage of being a fact, and not a fiction ?" (True in so far as 
 
 it was founded on Hanno.) '.' How or where shall we find 
 
 others if we abandon this ? There are none to hS had " 
 
 {Timceus, 27 : Jowett). In other words, "I have brought 
 
 an interesting document from foreign parts, and if you 
 
 approve I will interweave it with our traditions." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 FURTHER CONJECTURES — DILUVIAN TRADITIONS. . 
 
 In the last chapter I ventured to contend that the Periplus 
 of Hanno was the main foundation for Plato's myth of 
 Atlantis. Even, however, if this is conceded, something 
 more will be required to dispel this " mirage " which has 
 so long hung in the retrospect of human events. 
 
 Just as the "mirage" has led many in the past to 
 their doom in the desert and in the ocean, so is it now 
 apparently alluring them to abysses in the region of 
 • speculation. 
 
 " The fiction," says Professor Jowett, " has exercised great 
 influence over the imagination of later ages. . . . Without regard 
 to the description of Plaito, and without a suspicion that the whole 
 narrative is a fabrication, interpreters have looked for the spot in 
 ■ every part of the globe, America, Palestine, Arabia FeKx, Ceylon, 
 Sardinia, Sweden. The story has had also an effect on the early _ 
 navigators of the sixteenth century " (ii. p. 590). 
 
 If Plato had spoken with full and exact knowledge of 
 what was known in his days as to the extent of the explora- 
 tion beyond the Pillars of Hercules, and had deliberately 
 asserted his .opinion as to the existence of " a lost conti- 
 nent," his opinion would have had great weight. But all 
 that he says is that in consequence " of the 'subsidence of 
 the Island" " the sea in those parts is impassable and im- 
 penetrable, because there is such a quantity of shallow 
 mud in the way." 
 
 The manner in which he thus alludes to the Mare di 
 Sargasso looks as if he had heard something of the explora- 
 
84 Plato's Atlantis. 
 
 tion, but his saying this and no more would also convey 
 the impression that he had heard of it traditionally, at any 
 rate not very directly. I notice that Sir J. Lubbock 
 (Prehistoric Times, p. 39) suggests that the existence of 
 this sea of seaweed itself originated the idea of the sunken 
 island. He says, "May not the belief in the 'Atlantis' 
 be as probably owing to^he 'gulf- weed,' which would so 
 naturally suggest the idea of sunken land, as to any of the 
 other causes which are usually assigned for it?" And if 
 this "gulf-weed" 'formed an impassable and impenetrable 
 barrier to exploration in the Atlantic, it must have been 
 a constant subject of speculation with the Phoenician 
 mariners. 
 
 Although the conception of Atlantis arose as a myth in 
 the mind of Plato, there • is every indication that a great 
 deal of floating tradition was used in its fabrication, and 
 this "residuum" will remain after the dispersal of the 
 "mirage." 
 
 There is one statement which strangely falls in with 
 the lines of tradition, and which can scarcely escape observa- 
 tion when attention is directed to Plato's narrative, viz. 
 that when he was ten years old, at a particular feast — 
 the Apaturia or " registration of youth " — he was told the 
 history of the Deluge. For whether it was a true or false 
 story of the Deluge, whether it was the universal Deluge, 
 or only the deluge which destroyed the island or " conti- 
 nent " of Atlantis, the fact remains as regards this dis- 
 cussion that it was either the Deluge "which Moses and 
 the Hebrews and the Chaldeans and general tradition 
 record, or it was the subsidence of Atlantis which, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Donnelly, lies at the foundation of all these 
 traditions. 
 
 Before proceeding in the inquiry it may be well to have 
 Plato's words before us : 
 
 " I will tell you an old-world story which I heard from an aged 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 35 
 
 man ; for Critias was, as he said, at that time nearly ninety years 
 of age, and I was about ten years old. Now the day was that 
 day of the Apaturia which is called the registration of youth. . . " 
 He had previously referred to it as an ancient tradition — "he 
 told us an ancient tradition" (Jowett's Dialogues of Plato: Timcms, 
 p. 5i7). 
 
 These words taken in connection with the general tra- 
 dition are very remarkable, but their full significance will 
 not be appreciated until it is seen how closely the tradition 
 in Ancient Greece resembles the diluvian traditions in 
 America and Africa. It is not, however, my intention to 
 recapitulate here the evidence which I have collected in 
 chap. xi. of Tradition, and which; so far as I know, has 
 not been rebutted, but to supplement it. 
 
 As, however, it may be rash to assume that the. reader 
 has read, or retains in his recollection, the curious cere- 
 mony commemorative of the Deluge which Catlin witnessed 
 among the Mandan Indians in 1832, -it will be necessary 
 to give a few details. Mr. Catlin's account is attested by 
 J. Kipp (agent to the Missouri Fur Company), J. Craw- 
 ford Clark, and Abraham Bogard, who accompanied 
 him ; and in a subsequent account, published in 1867 
 by Messrs. Triibner, a letter of the Prince of Neuwied is 
 printed, fully corroborating Mr. Catlin's statements from 
 what he heard during a winter's residence among the 
 Mandans, although, he did not actually witness the cere- 
 mony; and in Tradition, p. 272, I pointed out that the 
 ceremony among the Mandan Indians had been mentioned 
 and briefly described in Ceremonies Religieuses a century 
 before Catlin's visit to them. 
 
 That the Prince of Neuwied did not witness it is 
 accounted for by the circumstance that it is only per- 
 formed once a year, and in the spring. 
 
 " I resolved to await its approach,"' says Mr. Catlin, " and on 
 inquiry found ' it would commence as soon as the willow leaves 
 were full grown under the bank of the river.' I asked him why the 
 
36 PLATO S ATLANTIS'. 
 
 willow had anything to do with it, when he again replied, ' The twig 
 which the hird hrought into the Big canoe was a willow bough, 
 and had full-grown leaves on it.' It wiU here be for the reader 
 to appreciate the surprise with which I met such a remark from 
 the lips of a wild man eighteen hundred miles from the nea,rest 
 civilisation." The ceremony in question, the 0-kee-pa, Mr. Catlin, 
 says, " though in many respects apparently so unlike it, was strictly 
 a religious eeremony [the italics are Mr. Catlin's] , with abstinence, 
 with sacrifices, and with prayer, whilst there were three other distinct 
 and ostensible objects for which it was held. 1st. As an annual 
 celebration of the event of the ' subsiding of the waters ' of the 
 Deluge, of which they had a distinct tradition, and which in their 
 language they called Mee-ne-ro-Jca-M-sha (the settling down of the 
 waters). 2nd. For the purpose of dancing what they called the 
 BuU dance, to the strict performance of wljich they attributed the 
 coming of buffaloes to supply them with food during the ensuing 
 ■ year. 3rd. For the purpose of conducting the young men who had 
 arrived at the age of manhood during the past year through an 
 ordeal of privation and bodily torture, which, while it was supposed 
 to harden their muscles and prepare them for extreme endurance, 
 enabled their chiefs, who- were spectators of the scene, to decide 
 upon their comparative bodily strength and ability to endure priva- 
 tions and sufferings that often fall to the lot of Indian warriors, and 
 that they might decide who amongst the young men was the best 
 able to lead a war-party to an extreme exigency." — 0-kee-pa of the 
 Mandans, by G. Catlin (Triibner & Co., 1867), p, 9. 
 
 Two facts, then, are in evidence : (1) that when 
 Plato was ten years old, at a feast called. the "Apaturia" 
 or the "registration of youth," he heard a discourse 
 delivered which collected various diluvian traditions ; and 
 (2) that under strangely different circumstances of time 
 and place Catlin came upon a curious ceremony professedly 
 commemorative of a universal deluge, in which again a 
 principal feature or interlude was a ceremony which might 
 be exactly described as a registration of youth'. 
 
 If, moreover. Several other points of resemblance can 
 be shown between the Greek and Mandan festivals, this 
 discovery will go far to preclude any theory which would 
 account for the American tradition through local conditions' 
 and modes of thought, and will further justify us in inter- 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. . 37 
 
 preting the one by the other, and regarding them as 
 divergent lines of primitive tradition.* 
 
 In the latter ages of Greece the festivals were innumer- 
 able, more especially, as Xenophon tells us, among the 
 Athenians ; but all that trace back to the remote past will 
 be found upon analysis to be reducible to one or two 
 primitive traditions. 
 
 Aristotle says, with a certain tone of authority which 
 conveys the impression that he had, in some way been 
 behind the scenes, and knew the facts, that " the ancient 
 sacrifices and festivals appear to have taken place after 
 the ingathering of the crops, as first-fruits." A/ yoig 
 a^aiui &votut kcci amohai (paii/ovrui yivsffdat ^ira, rag 
 Tuv xceg'^SJv (jiyx,o(/jihoLg oHov axu^ut. — Aristotelis Ethica 
 Nicomachea, viii. 11 (9). This view seems also to find 
 expression in Virgil, Eclogue v. 90, where the rustics are 
 made to invoke the primitive deities, Bacchus and Ceres 
 (comp. also infra, p. 40), to whom " vota quot annis 
 Agricolae facient." 
 
 The later festivals were, as I have said, numerous ; but 
 setting aside such as had only a local or historical origin, 
 and confining the analysis to those which were professedly 
 the most ancient, we come upon .many features which con- 
 firm the statement of Aristotle — which accords with what 
 we should have conjectured to be likely upon the scriptural 
 indications in Genesis. + The more ancient festivals were 
 
 * Since I have written this chapter I have come upon the following 
 passage in M. A. Reville's Les Religions des Peuples non-civilises, i. 263 : 
 " We find among the Bedskins an institution which is very similar to 
 the one we have seen in force in Africa, more especially among the 
 Caffre-Hottentot groups, namely, a sort of religious aud moral initiation 
 of youth at the age at which the young man claims admission into the 
 rank of warriors. These formalities are often very severe. Among the 
 Dacotas, the Mandans," &c. 
 
 f There is a still greater correspondence with the Hebrew festival of 
 the ingathering of the harvest on the fifteenth day of the seventh month : 
 "And you shall take to you on the first day the fruits of the fairest 
 trees . . . and the willowi of the brook" (Leviticns zxiii. 39, 40). 
 
38 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 held in honour of Jupiter, Apollo, Minerva, Bacchus 
 (Dionysus), Neptune (Poseidon), Ceres, and Diana. I 
 come to this conclusion upon the examination of the {circa) 
 319 festivals, the record of which Bishop Potter collects in 
 his chapter on "Grecian Festivals," in his Archceologia 
 GrcBca. He is also of opinion, basing "it apparently on 
 the passage already quoted, " that originally, as Aristotle 
 reports, there were few or no festivals among the Ancients 
 except those after harvest or vintage." If Apollo repre- 
 sented the Messianic tradition, we may see a special reason 
 for the observance of his festival in the earliest times, and 
 yet without anything specially commemorative of the 
 Deluge. As I have discussed this question in the Month, 
 April 1877, I omit further reference to it here; but in 
 the other festivals above mentioned as primitive there will 
 be found something which connects them with the dilu- 
 vian tradition. 
 
 Jupiter ("Dyaus pater^Zeus pater ^Jupiter," vide 
 Max Miiller and Tradition, p. 169),. again, like Apollo, 
 might have been expected to have had a festival apart ; yet 
 at any rate the culture secondarily became associated with 
 the tradition, for in the curious annual festival the Hydro- 
 phoria, to which we shall again have to refer, the Athenians 
 with great pomp carried vessels of water, which they poured 
 into a gulf or opening in the temple of Jupiter ; ". et dans 
 cette occasion ils se rappaloient le triste souvenir que leur 
 ancetres avoient ete submerges " (Boulanger, UAntiq. 
 devoile par ses Usages, i. 38). He adds they threw into 
 the same chasm cakes of meal and honey (Pausanias, 
 i. 18). 
 
 This may be compared with the following incident in 
 the 0-kee-pa of the Mandans. The mysterious individual 
 who opens the ceremony calls at each wigwam, and, 
 " relating the destruction of all the human family by the 
 Flood, excepting himself, who had been saved in his big 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. • 39 
 
 canoe, and now dwelt in the west," demands " gome 
 edged tool to be given to the water as a sacrifice." " On 
 the last day of the ceremony, at sundown, in the pres- 
 ence of the chiefs and all the tribes," the tools were 
 thrown '.' into deep water from the top of the rocks, and 
 • thus made a sacrifice to the water." 
 
 Zeus or Jupiter is more directly connected with the 
 Deluge, as the flood of Deucalion occurred because " ^eus" 
 determined to destroy the human race by a great flood" 
 (Murray's Myth., p. 42). I have not met with any refuta- 
 tion of the arguments identifying the deluge of Deucalion 
 with the universal Deluge {ride Tradition, p. 222 to p. 
 235). The same ceremony is described by Lucian at" 
 Hierapolis in Syria, where there was the same custom 
 of pouring water into the cleft of the temple. Brett, in 
 The Indian Tribes of Guiana, gives a legend very similar 
 to that of Deucalion. Grote {Hist. Greece, i. 133) says, 
 " In this-, as in other parts of Greece, the idea of the 
 Deukalionian deluge was blended with the religious im- 
 pressions of the people, and commemorated by their most 
 sacred ceremonies." Boulanger (i. 39) says, "It was, 
 according to the legend, by the opening of this chasm that 
 the waters which covered Attica had disappeared ; and it 
 was alleged that Deucalion had erected an altar near this 
 place, and tradition attributed to Deucalion and his grati- 
 tude towards the gods the first foundation .of the temple 
 of Jupiter Olympius, ' aupres duquel se faisoienf ces cere- 
 monies lugubres.' " 
 
 Assuming a simple primitive festival which formed the 
 "nucleus" round which the various diluvian traditions 
 collected, the prominence of the festivals of Ceres and 
 Diana would be respectively accounted for by the general 
 tradition having passed through a people who'were either 
 husbandmen or hunters in their origin or in their pre- 
 dominant constituent. A pastoral people would have re- 
 
40 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 mained more scattered and isolated, and their tradition 
 would require special consideration. 
 
 If, therefore, we find that iron was thrown into the 
 water as a token of sacrifice in one instance, and meal 
 in another, it would be only what we should expect in the 
 case of tribes having different avocations, but A common 
 tradition. 
 
 Jn Athens there was a feast called 'AXam "in the 
 month of Posidon, in honour of Ceres and Bacchus, by 
 whose blessing the husbandmen received the recompense 
 of their toil and labour; and, therefore, their oblations 
 consisted of nothing but the fruits of the earth. Others 
 'say this festival was instituted aa a commemoration of the 
 primitive Greeks, who lived Iv rccTg oKuai, i.e. in vine- 
 yards and cornfields."* This festival recalls the primitive 
 simplicity of the ancient festivals noted by Aristotle, and 
 at the same time indicates a fusion with the diluvian 
 traditions in its connections with Posidon and Bacchus. 
 There was another festival (p. 400) named from "the 
 gathering of the fruits," held, according to Menander, in 
 honour of Ceres and Bacchus, and at which, according to 
 Eustathius, " there was also a solemn procession in honour 
 of Neptune." We are elsewhere told that the festival 
 6ia[/jOf6§iu was kept universally throughout Greece, except 
 by the Eretrians (p. 404). This festival was held in honour 
 of Ceres, as the law-giver,. " because she was the first w^o 
 taught mankind the use of laws ;" which may mean that 
 the festival went back to the time when law commenced 
 or recommenced — to Noah and the Deluge. + 
 
 There was one sacrifice in the Aloa festival which has 
 
 * Bishop Potter, i. p. 361. 
 
 I " On pent voir ioi nne application de la rggle d'aprds laqnelle on 
 tronve I'origine deB coutumes lee plna bizarres, quand on pent les com- 
 parer ohez les penplea dlverB, entourSes et comme flanqnSes de oontnmeB 
 n^oeBsbireB moins frSqaemment obsurvables, variant d'un pei^e i I'antre, 
 maiB pivotant antonr d'ane idSe toujonrB la m^iue " (Les Religions del 
 Peujalei non-civilisgs, par A. Beville, 1883, i. p. 337). 
 
PLATO S ATLANTIS. 41 
 
 a close resemblance to a festival among the Minatarces 
 — ^the village community adjoining the Mandans — -the 
 Thalusia — " a sacrifice offered by the husbandmen after 
 harvest, v^sg rrjg xocgTopogiug, i.e. in gratitude to the gods, 
 by whose blessingthey enjoyed the fruits of the ground. 
 The whole festival was called Aloa. . . . Hence comes 
 OaXvaiog agrog, sometimes called ©d^yfjXog, which was 
 the first bread made of the new corn " (Bishop Potter, i. 
 p. 400). 
 
 Compare CatHn, North American Indians, i. p. 189 : 
 
 " At the usual season and the time when, from outward appear- 
 ance of the stalks and ears of the corn, it is supposed to be nearly 
 readyfor use, several of the old women who are the owners of fields or 
 patches of corn . are delegated by ' the medicine-men ' to look 
 at the cornfields every morning at sunrise, and bring into the 
 council-house several ears of corn, the husks of which the women are 
 
 not allowed to break open, or even to peep through When from 
 
 repeated examination they come to the decision that it will do, they 
 despatch runners or criers announcing to every part of the village or 
 tribe that the Great Spirit has been kind to them, and they must 
 
 aU meet the next day to return thanks for his goodness." 
 
 • 
 
 A feast and dance follow. I will note further that 
 just as there was a festival in honour of Ceres when the 
 new corn* was ripe, so was there (Bishop Potter, p. 416) in 
 honour of Bacchus when the new wine was first tasted ; 
 and another (p. 427), the Protrugeia, in honoijr of Neptune 
 and Bacchus in connection with the new wine. It will 
 be remembered that the Mandan diluvian commemoration 
 took place as soon as the wiZZow leaves were full grown ; 
 and at Athens (p. 393) there was a festival of elenophoria, 
 " from iXii/cii, vessels made of bulrushes, with ears of 
 willow, in which certain mysterious things were carried 
 upon this day." The festival of Mysia (Potter, p. 415), 
 "in honour of Ceres, continued seven days, upon the 
 
 * The Hebrews (Leviticus xxiii. 10) were commanded " to bring sheaves 
 of eart, the first-fruits of your harvest, to the priebts." 
 
42 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 third of which, all the men and •dogs being shut out of the 
 
 temple, the women remained within. . . ." In 
 
 the Mandan festival, "orders were given by the chiefs 
 that the women and children should all be silent and 
 retire within their wigwams, and their dogs all to be 
 muzzled during the whole of that day, which belonged to 
 the Great Spirit" (Catlin, p. 11). 
 
 "In the middle of the last dance on the fourth day 
 [in the Mandan ceremony, Catlin, p. 22], a sudden 
 alarm throughout the group announced the arrival of a 
 strange character from the West. . . . This strange and 
 frightful character, whom they called the evil spirit, 
 darted through the crowd when the buffalo-dance was pro- 
 ceeding. His body was painted jet black. . . ." He is 
 confronted by the conductor of ceremonies and his medi- 
 cine pipe, who, "looking him full in the face, held him 
 motionless under its charm until the women and children 
 had withdrawn from his reach." After a while the women 
 gradually advanced and gathered around him. " In this 
 distressing dilemma he was approached by an old matron,, 
 who came up slyly behind him with both hands full of' 
 yellow dirt, which, by reaching round him, she suddenly 
 dashed in his face, changing his colour ; . . . and at 
 length another snatched his wand from his hand and 
 broke it across her knee. . . . His powej- was thus gone, 
 .... and bolting through the crowd he made his way 
 to the prairies." In (this we seem to see trace of the 
 primitive tradition that the woman should crush the head, 
 of the serpent. This tradition,* which may be almost said 
 to find direct expression in the antagonism of the serpent 
 Python to Latona, and his final discomfiture and death 
 at the hands of her son Apollo immediately upon his 
 birth, may perhaps also be seen in the prominence given 
 to women in some of the Grecian festivals — ostensibly, no 
 * Vide supplemental evidence, infra, p. 70. 
 
■ PIATO'S ATLANTIS. 43 
 
 doubt, in commemoration of some local victory ; e.g. 
 (Potter, 404) : " There was a mysterious sacrifice called 
 diorma, or apodiorma, because all men were excluded, 
 because in a dangerous war the women's prayers were so 
 prevalent with the gods that their enemies w^re defeated 
 and put to flight as far as Chalcis ;" and in the utristika 
 at Argos (p. -436), " where the chief ceremony was that 
 the men and women exchanged habits, in memory of the 
 generous achievement of Talasilla,-who, having enlisted 
 a suflBcient number of women, made a vigorous defence 
 against the whole Spartan army." It should have been 
 mentioned that after the defeat of the evil spirit by the 
 woman in the Mandau ceremony, " the whole government 
 of the Mandans was then in the hands of one woman — she 
 who had disarmed the' evil spirit; . . . that all must 
 repair to their wigwams ; . . . that the chiefs on that 
 night were oM i«o«iew, and had nothing to say. . . . "In 
 the Atow(Tioc ag-x^aiOTBgoi (Potter, p. 383), as distin- 
 guished from the iiSMTSga, celebrated in the temple of 
 Bacchus, " the chief persons who ofiBciated were fourteen 
 women, appointed by the Baff/XsOb, who was one of the 
 Archous. . . . They were called the Venerable. . . ." 
 
 The Apaturia, it will be remembered, was the feast of 
 the "registration. of youth," at which Plato tells us he was 
 told the legend of the subsidence of Atlantis; which, as I 
 contend, was only a form of the tradition of the uni- 
 versal Deluge. Now, the term "Apaturia," which signifies 
 "deceit" (Smith, Myth. Diet.), has no explanation in 
 anything that occurred or is recorded of the Grecian 
 festival. 
 
 There are, however, two legends in explanation. In 
 the one it is connected with a surname of Aphrodite; who 
 enticed the giants into a cavern to their destruction by 
 Heracles. The legend, no doubt, is susceptible of another 
 interpretation ; but in its main feature it is the destruction 
 
44 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 of the spirits of evil through the " artifice of a woman,"* 
 In the other it is told that the festival was first instituted 
 at Athens in memory of the stratagem by which Melan- 
 thius, the Athenian king, overcame Xanthus, the King of 
 BcBotia, in ' single combat. As they were, just going to 
 begin the fight, " Melanthius, thinking or pretending that 
 he saw at Xanthus's back a person habited in a black goat- 
 skin, cried out that the articles were violated ; upon this, 
 Xanthus, looking back) was treacherously slain by Melan- 
 thius " (Bishop Potter, i. 369). This brings to recollec- 
 tion the scene we have just witnessed, in which the Man- 
 dan maiden discomfiJ,ed the evil «pirit painted black by 
 stealthily approaching him from behind. 
 
 The resemblance might be deemed insufficient and 
 inconclusive, if it were not for the delation of the legend to 
 the festival of the " registration of youth ;" for this juxta- 
 position will be found also in the Mandan ceremony. 
 When the heroine after her victory is conducted to the 
 "medicine (or mystery) lodge," she orders the bull-dance 
 to be stopped, the four tortoise drums (concerning which 
 presently) to be carried in, the bufialo and human skulls 
 to be hung on the four posts, and she then invites the 
 chiefs to enter the medicine-lodge "to witness the volun- 
 tary tortures of the young men now to commence " (see 
 above, p. 36). 
 
 The Apaturia, it is true, did not, at any rate in the 
 time of Plato, present the horrible features of the Mandan 
 ceremony ; but in other Grecian festivals there are evi- 
 dences of scenes quite as revolting as those which Catlin 
 witnessed, and enacted apparently upon the same motives 
 
 * In the first instance it is the alarm of the woman in the Mandan 
 ceremony which brings about the intervention of the man with the medi- 
 cine or mystery pipe, who curbs the evil one, as in the legend Aphro- 
 dite decoys the giants to the caverns in which Heracles (who, according 
 to an interpretation of certain legends as Hercnles might be called " the 
 first or only man," like the mystery man) is concealed. 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 45 
 
 and idefts. One idea seems common to them all — to pro- 
 vide a certain registration of youth ; at Athens perhaps 
 only a civil registration engrafted on a primitive festival, 
 and at Sparta and among the Mandans a registration and 
 test of fortitude and endurance. 
 
 The Mandan (Catlin, p. 28 
 top. 31). 
 
 The Mandans were sus- 
 pended by splints inserted in 
 the flesh until life was appa- 
 rently extinct. " No one was 
 allowed to ofifer them aid whilst 
 they lay in this condition. They 
 were here enjoying their inesti- 
 mable privilege of voluntarily 
 entrusting their lives to the 
 keeping of the Great Spirit. 
 . . . The young men seemed to 
 take no care or notice of the 
 wounds thus made. . . . During 
 the whole time of this cruel part 
 of the ceremonies the chiefs and 
 other dignitaries of the tribes 
 were looking on to decide who 
 amongst the young men were 
 the hardiest, who could hang the 
 longest by his torn flesh without 
 fainting, . . . that they might 
 decide whom to appoint to lead 
 a war-party, or to place at the 
 most important posts in time of 
 war." If death ensued, " they 
 all. seemed to speak of this as . 
 an enviable fate rather than as 
 a misfortune ; for the Great 
 Spirit had so willed it for some 
 especial purpose, and no doubt 
 for the yo'-ing man's benefit." 
 
 The Spartan {Arohao, Ormca, 
 i. p. 379). 
 
 At Sparta it took the form of 
 the flagellation of youths before 
 the altar of Diana Orthia, and 
 lest the youths " should faint 
 under correction, or do anything 
 unworthy of Laoonian education, 
 their parents were usually pre- 
 sent, to exhort them to bear 
 whatever was inflicted upoii' 
 them with patience and con- 
 stancy. And so great was the 
 bravery and resolution of the 
 boys, that though they were 
 lashed till the blood gushed 
 out, and sometimes to death,* 
 yet a cry or groan was seldom 
 or never heard to proceed from 
 any of them. Those of them 
 that died by this means were 
 buried with garlands on their 
 heads in token of joy or victory, 
 and had the honour of a public 
 funeral. . . . By some it is said 
 to have been one of Lycurgus' 
 institutions to accustom the 
 youth to endure pain. _. . ." 
 By some it is traced to the 
 introduction of the worship of 
 Diana Taurica, and in mitiga- 
 tion of the oracle which com- 
 manded that human blo,od should 
 be shed upon her altar. 
 
46 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 Note in connection with the worship of Diana Taurica 
 that the Mandan custom was preceded by "the bull- 
 dance " and followed by " the feast o'f the buffaloes," and 
 that the grand operator in the tortures sat with " a dried 
 buffalo skull before him." In Sicily (p. 431) there was a 
 . festival in which the youths beat each other with sea- 
 onions ; the victor was rewarded with a bulb. I have made 
 a suggestion as to the significance of the bull in connec- 
 tion with the diluvian tradition, in Nature Myth Theory, 
 pp. 7-10, which I now reprint in Appendix C. The 
 Lacedaemonians detested the worship of Diana Taurica, 
 but- feared the anger of the goddess. To the faithful 
 observance of their custom the Mandans looked for their 
 annual supply of buffaloes. There was a festival of Pan 
 in Arcadia, when the boys used to beat his statue with 
 sea-onions, more especially when they missed their prey 
 in hunting. 
 
 There is something in the Mandan ceremony that 
 reminds us of the Dionysia, ' although they would appear 
 to have been a water-drinking people when Catlin visited 
 them ; at any rate, there is no mention of intoxicating 
 drinks. The immorality of the closing scene in the cere- 
 mony, however, recalls the Bacchanalian orgies, and more- 
 over the central object in their village, which they called 
 "the big canoe," and round which the dances took place, 
 was shaped like a hogshead cask (compare infra, p. 72). 
 Assuming the fact that Bacchus- represents the later 
 traditions of the patriarch Noah, or possibly the tradition 
 of Cham, embodying traditions of the episode recorded in 
 the Bible, the substitution of wine-sacks for vrater-sacks 
 in the following narratives would correspond to the con- 
 fusion of tradition we have just seen in the combination 
 of the wine-butt and the canoe.* 
 
 * The late Colooel George Macdonell, C.B., related that certain 
 Jesuit miBsionaries went in search of an Indian tribe whom Sir Jojjn 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 47 
 
 Mandan (Catlin). 
 
 "There were also four articles 
 of veneration, and importance 
 lying on the ground, which were 
 sacks containing each some three 
 or four gallons of water. They 
 seemed to "be objects of great 
 superstitious regard. . . . The 
 sacks of water had the appear- 
 ance of great antiquity, and the 
 Mandans pretended that the water 
 had been contained in them ever 
 since the Deluge. . . '. During 
 each and every one of these 
 bull-dances the four old men 
 who were beating on the sacks 
 of water were chanting forth their 
 supplications to the Great Spirit 
 for a continuation of his favours 
 in sending them buffaloes to sup- 
 ply them with food for the ensuing 
 year. . . ." 
 
 Archao. Grama, i. p. 372. 
 
 "'AffxuA/a. A festival cele- 
 brated by the Athenian hus- 
 bandmen in honour of Bacchus, 
 to whom they sacrificed a he- 
 goat because that animal de- 
 stroys the vines. . . . Out of 
 the victim's skin it was cus- 
 tomary to make a sack, wliich, 
 being fiUed with wine and oil, 
 they endeavoured to. leap upon it 
 with one foot, and he that first 
 fixed himself upon it was de- 
 clared victor, and received the 
 sack as a reward. The festival 
 was so called from leaping on 
 the sack (or bottle)." This must 
 .be considered in connection with 
 the conjoint festivals of Neptune 
 and Bacchus, e.g. the TrpoTpvyiTa, 
 from " new wine." 
 
 The young men at Rome were 
 invested with the toga virilis at 
 the Uberalia, a festival in honour 
 of Bacchus (Dollinger, Jew and 
 Gentile, a. 51). 
 
 Boss in hie voyage towards the North Pole had described as without any 
 creed of any kind. The Jeeuits found that they had no worship except 
 that at midday they assembled in a circle, and then the oldest man called 
 out three times "Ye-ho-wah," which they regarded as an invocation of 
 Jehovah. His informant was the Rev. G. Glover, S.J., at Eome. 
 
 I find a very similar account in Stanley Faber's Pagan Idolatry, ii. 
 p. 309, who quotes from The History df the American Indians, by James 
 Adair, a trader with the Indians, and resident in the country for forty 
 years. Mr. Adair gives an account of an Indian tribe who had carried 
 about with them an ark in which they kept various holy vessels. " This 
 ark the priests were wont to bear in solemn processions. They never 
 placed it on the ground ; when stones were to hand, they rested it upon 
 them ; when not, upon logs of wood. ... No one presumed to touch it 
 except the chieftain and his attendants, and only on particular occasions." 
 The dfity of this ark they invoked by the name of Yo-he-wah, which 
 Mr. Adair supposes to be ■ a slight variation of the Jehovah of the 
 Hebrews. Faber, however, after adducing supplementary evidence, con- 
 
48 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 If Dionysus (or Bacchus) embodies a tradition of 
 Noah, and if (Gen. ix. 3) the permission to eat flesh-meat 
 was first given to the patriarch, this is. an event which we 
 should expect to find transmitted in tradition, and we 
 seem to see it in the A^idiiiia, and the d)^b(payioi,, festivals 
 held in honour of Bacchus as "the eater of. raw flesh" 
 (Archao. Gr<pca, 362-439). 
 
 The probability of such indirect tradition is increased 
 by the fact of direct tradition in the pages of Porphyry, 
 the opponent of Christianity (vide extract from Porphyry, 
 De Abstinentia, liv. ii., in L'Abbe Gainet's Hist.de I'Anc. 
 et Nou. Test, par les seuls temoignages profanes, i. 175). 
 The aim of Porphyry's work was to revive the system of 
 Pythagoras, and beyond it to bring men back to the man- 
 ners of primitive life. " Now," he says, " these men, les 
 habitants voisins des generations divines, eat nothing which 
 had life, in order to give themselves up more freely to the 
 exercise of the intellect, and to hold themselves aloof from 
 the depravation of manners." Porphyry quotes Dicear- 
 chuB to this effectj and adds, what has a special significance 
 with reference to the theory of primitive barbarism: "And 
 it is evident that this light and simple kind of food gave 
 birth to the proverb which circulated in the succeeding 
 ages, ' Then the acorn sufficed. . . .' " 
 
 We have seen at the commencement of this inquiry 
 
 clndes : " I am inclined to believe that as Ho is Hu or Bacchus (comp. 
 Welsh Celtic legend of Hn, Paher.p. 304, and Chaldaic Hoa), so we have 
 no otHer than the Bacchic cry of Hevah or Evoe, and consequently that 
 the exclamation Yo-he-wah is in fact nothing more than Ho-Hevah, 
 •which is equivalent to Hues Evoe, or inversely Evoe Bacche." I must 
 leave the reader to decide between these conflicting views. St, Clemens 
 of Alexandria says, describing the orgies of the Bacchantes : " Coronati 
 serpentibuB et ululantes Evam. Evam illam per quam error est conse- 
 cutens ; et signum Bacohieorum orgionem est serpens mysteriis initiatus " 
 {Admon. ad Gintis, p. 9). I have discussed the evidence further in 
 chapter iv. ; and also, with reference to the Indian snake-dance, compai-e 
 page 71, infra. 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 49 
 
 that there was at Athens an annual ceremony directly 
 commemorative of the Deluge, which was called the Hydro- 
 phoria, from bearing water, which they poured into an 
 aperture in the temple, " in memory of those who perished 
 in the Deluge." This ceremony has this feature in com- 
 mon with the Syrian ceremony described by Lucian. It 
 is necessary to recall these facts in order to perceive the 
 full significance of the objects carried in the procession 
 
 . {vide Tradition, p. 248). It was celebrated on the 25th 
 Thargelion^Sth May (comp. Catlin above). Every citizen 
 contributed an ox and oZiwe-branches. " In the ceremonies 
 without the city there was an engine built in the form of a 
 ship on purpose for this solemnity ;" upon this the sacred 
 garment of Minerva " was hung in the manner of a sail ;" 
 " the whole conveyed to the temple of Ceres Eleusinia." 
 " This procession was led by old men, together, as some 
 say,- with old women, carrying olive-branches in their 
 hands." "After them .... sojourners, who carried little 
 boats as a token of their being foreigners, and were called 
 on that account boat-bearers ; then followed the women, 
 
 ^. . . . who were named vt^m<l)o^Oi, from bearing water- 
 pots" (comp. the hydrophoria, as above). 
 
 I have excluded from the inquiry two things which, in 
 certain aspects, are common to all these ceremonies in 
 their later and degenerate forms — obscenity, and solar- 
 worship. Before proceeding to justify the exclusion of 
 the latter, I must conclude the evidence with one striking 
 resemblance or coincidence between the Mandan and Gre- 
 cian festivals, which perhaps ought, to have been mentioned 
 before. The opening of the Mandan ceremony is thus 
 
 graphically described by Catlin (p. 9) : 
 • • 
 " The season having arrived for the holding of these ceremonies, 
 the leading medicine (mystery) man presented himself on top of a 
 wigwam one morning before sunrise, and haranguing the people, 
 told them that he ' discovered something very strange in the 
 
 E 
 
50 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 weBtem horizon, and he believed that at the rising of the sun a 
 great white man would enter the village from the west and open the 
 medicine lodge.' In a few moments the tops of the wigwams and 
 a,ll other elevations were covered with men, women, and children on 
 the look-out ; and at the moment the rays of the sun shed their first 
 light ... all eyes were directed to the prairie, where, at the dis- 
 tance of a mile or so from the village, a solitary human figure 
 was seen descending the prairie hills aj^d approaching the village 
 in a straight line until he reached the picket. . . . The head chief 
 and the council of chiefs . . . soon made their appearance in a 
 body at the picket, and recognised the visitor as an old acquaint- 
 ance whom they addressed as ' Nuh-mohk-miick-a-nah ' (the first or 
 only man). All ^hook hands with him, and invited him within the 
 picket. He then harangued them for a few minutes, reminding them 
 that every human being on the surface of the earth had been de- 
 stroyed by the water except himself, who had landed on a high moun- 
 tain in the west in his canoe, where he still resides, and from whence 
 he had come to open the medicine lodge, that the Mandans might 
 celebrate the subsiding of the waters (comp. hydrophoria — Lucian's 
 account of the ceremony at Hierapolis) and make the proper sacri- 
 fices to, the water, lest the same calamity should again happen to 
 them." 
 
 Let US listen if we do not seem to catch the-echoof this 
 in the account which Athenseus (lib. iii.) has given us of 
 the •^ikdigicc : "Baton, the Sinopensian rhetorician, in 
 his description of Thessaly and Hffimonia, declares that 
 the Saturnalia was a Grecian festival, and called by the 
 Thessalians Peloria." His words are these : 
 
 " At a time when the Pelasgians were offering public sacrifices, 
 one Pelorus came in, and told one of them that the mountains of 
 Tempe in Heemonia were torn asunder by an earthquake, and the 
 lake which had previously covered the adjacent valley, making its 
 way through the breach and falliug into the stream of Peneus, had 
 left behind a vast but most pleasant and delightful plain. The Pelas- 
 gians hugged Pelorus for his news, and invited him to an entertain- 
 ment where he was treated with all sorts of daintilfe. ... In 
 memory of this, when the Pelasgians had seated themselves in 
 the newly discovered country, they instituted a festival wherein 
 they offered sacrifices to Jupiter, surnarced Pelor, and made 
 sumptuous entertainments, whereto they invited not only all the 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 61 
 
 foreigners among them (compare the Panathensea), but prisoners 
 also . . . and slaves, aU of whom they permitted to sit down, and 
 waited on them." 
 
 This latter feature connects it with other Grecian 
 festivals, and also with the Persian festival held in the 
 spring of every year, " when the husbandmen were admitted 
 without distinction to the table of the king and his 
 satraps " (Gibbon, ii. 8). 
 
 Considering the prominent part which Bacchus plays in 
 these ceremonies and in mythological tradition, it is curious 
 that he should only once be mentioned in Sir G. W. Cox's 
 Mythology of the Aryan Nations. Is it not a notable 
 instance of the part of Hamlet being omitted in the play 
 of Hamlet ? This casual reference to him will be found 
 (ii. p. 4), " Bacchos the son of Dionysos ;" and I may here 
 notice that Sir G. W. Cox's mythology does not accord 
 either with the discarded Lempriere, or with Dr. Smith's 
 Dictionary of Mythology, or with Murray's Manual, 
 even when they all agree, and Sir G. W. Cox gives few 
 classical references. However, it is not necessary here to 
 discuss whether or not " Bacchos '' is " the son of Diony- 
 sos," or whether he is Bacchus the Roman equivalent for 
 the Greek Dionysos. 
 
 I am not impeaching Sir G. W. Cox's extensive 
 acquaintance with classical literature, but I do protest 
 against the manner in which this school presents its theory 
 to the exclusion of every other view. I think we might 
 have expected some recognition of the theory originally 
 held that Bacchus or Dionysos embodied traditions of the 
 patriarch Noah or Cham or Nimrod (for either might have 
 formed a " nucleus " round which the traditions or niyths 
 might have collected); at any rate, we should have expected 
 some advertence to the facts. 
 
 The salient facts from the traditional point of view are : 
 
 1. That although there are legends of a youthful 
 
52 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 Bacchus,* and of his double birth (equally explicable on 
 solar theory and on the theory of the revival of life and 
 second birth after the Deluge, which legend, by the bye, 
 takes the form- of Adonis, who is also saved in an ark), yet 
 the circumstances and surroundings which the legends 
 reveal necessarily locate him in the primitive ages of the 
 world. 
 
 2. Neither is it a difficulty that there " were three 
 Bacchuses," for they are all resolvable into various forms 
 of the same legend, or myth, equally from the historical 
 or nature myth point of view. " Like the Theban wine- 
 god, Adonis is born only on the death of his mother ; and 
 the two myths are, in one version, so far the same that 
 Dionysos, like Adonis, is placed in a chest which, being 
 cast into the sea, is carried to Brasiai, where the body of 
 his mother is buried" (Cox, Myth. ii. 9). "Adonis 
 stands to Dionysos in the relation of Helios to Phoibos " 
 (Cox, ii. 113). The extinct mother may as well be the 
 former world destroyed as the night or -the winter. 
 
 3. Various legends connect Bacchus with the sea. 
 
 4. He is the first legislator. 
 
 5. Bacchus first discovered and planted the vine. 
 
 The principal traditions regarding Bacchus are recorded 
 by Diodorus Siculus, and although Diodorus explicitly 
 states this, the statement is ignored in Cox, Murray, and 
 even in Smith and Lempriere. This is so important that 
 I must give the actual text. Writing at a period B.C. 8, 
 when tradition had become obscured, Diodorus inclines to 
 the naturalist views, which, by the bye, presuppose the ante- 
 cedence of the historical tradition or myth, inasmuch as 
 
 * Diodorus Sic. teUs us (1. iv.) that Dionysus (like Janns) had two 
 foces, "that the ancient Dionysus always wore a long beard." In the 
 other aspect he is reprtseuted " as a spruce young man." Janus (bifrons) 
 is reireseuted "with a prow of a ship on the reverse of his medals" 
 and on the Sicilian coins at Eryx with "a dove encircled with a crown, 
 which seems to be of olive " (Bryant, Myth. ii..254). 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 53 
 
 they are critical attempts to explaiji them away, and do 
 not materially differ from the modern attempts; e.g. 
 Diodorus (i. 3) says, " And these are the opinions of 
 those who take Bacchus for nothing else than the use and 
 strength found to lie in the vine ;" and in Cox (ii. p. 293), 
 Dionysos (Bacchus) is apparently "the manifestation of 
 that power which ripens the fruits of the earth, and more 
 especially the vine." Having, however, given the natu- 
 ralist view, Diodorus then says, "But 'those writers on 
 mythology ' who say that this god was a man unaniwously 
 attribute to him the finding out and first planting of the 
 vine, and everything that belongs to the use of the vine " 
 (Booth, tran. iii. p. 204). raiii is (jbvGoy^aipm o'i su^iiu- 
 roiih^ rov diof TagsKrd.'yoi/Teg Trjv (/j\v iu^iaiv rijg afii'TriXov 
 ««< <pvriitt,v xcii 'jrS.aa.v r^v ■^egi tov ohov Tgayi/jursiKii 
 aviJb<pm(ug avrSi TgocuTTOfjiri (Diodorus Siculus, lib. iii. 
 c. 63). I shall return to this text in a moment. 
 
 6. Horace uses in respect to Bacchus the very tra- 
 ditional phrase Father Bacchus : " Quis non te potius 
 Bacche pater " {Odes, i. 18). 
 
 7. Bacchus is described "as relentless in punishing 
 all want of respect for his divinity," and the punishment 
 of Pentheus, as narrated by Theocritus, B.C. 282, forcibly 
 reminds us of the curse of Chanaan in Genesis : 
 
 " Perched on tho sheer cliflF, Pentheus would espy 
 AU . . ." 
 
 (For profaning thus " these mysteries weird, that must 
 not be profaned by vulgar eyes," Pentheus is torn to 
 pieces by the Bacchanals) : 
 
 ..." Warned by this tale, let no man dare defy 
 
 Great Bacchus, lest a death more awful should he die, 
 And, when he counts nine years or scarcely ten, 
 
 Rush to his ruin. May I pass my days 
 Uprightly, and be loved by upright men ! 
 
 And take this motto, all who covet praise 
 
64 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 ('Twas segis-bearing Jove that spoke it first) : 
 The godly seed fares well, the wicked is aoeurst." 
 
 (Calverley's Theocritus, Idyll xxvi.) 
 
 8. Bacchus was regarded as the god of the drama and 
 the protector of theatres ; very naturally, if the commemo- 
 rative ceremonies we have heen discussing were primitive 
 and anteceded the stage and the drama. 
 
 9. In the lines of the Orphic hymn : 
 
 KmXriSKDi 'Aiovuaov hpl^pofiiov ihaerripa, 
 ifpUToyovov, A/pu^ rpiyovov. 
 
 The three last epithets exactly apply to Noah. Ai<pv^= 
 double = bifrons, as we have just seen him represented 
 looking back on the world that had perished, and for- 
 ward to the new birth he was inaugurating; r^iyovov in 
 allusion to his three sons; but more especially in the 
 epithet first-born — TT^uroyovov. As I have elsewhere 
 remarked, since all antediluvian traditions meet in Noah, 
 and are transmitted through him, there is an a priori 
 probability that we shall find all the antediluvian tradi- 
 tions confused in the tradition of Noah, and accordingly 
 the reduplication of Adam in Noah has not escaped observa- 
 tion. Thus the epithet " first-born " curiously applies; and 
 I must further note the remarkable resemblance to the 
 epithet addressed to the personage who appeared from the 
 plain to open the Mandan ceremony {vide sup., p. 49), 
 " the first or only man." 
 
 The cumulative force of the evidence appears to me 
 very strong, and assuming the existence of Noah, I think 
 it must be admitted that the tradition points to the 
 patriarch, or to some original progenitor immediately in 
 contact with him. It may, indeed, be alternatively as- 
 serted that Bacchus is the sun, but this will not suiSce. 
 This may be objected by those who believe in Genesis, or 
 by those who do not. If by the former, I reply that 
 whenever mythology commenced, Noah or Cham . may 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 65 
 
 have been identified with, or deified in connection with, 
 the sun ; and from this point of view the mythology 
 must have been subsequent to the Deluge, and, accepting 
 the scriptural indications, nothing is more probable than 
 that the mythology should have absorbed or embodied the 
 incidents of that stupendous event, and the personages 
 and facts of early history. 
 
 To those who only recognise the book of Genesis as. 
 a historical record I must submit that in supposing the 
 patriarch — perhaps they will recognise hiift, at any rate, 
 as a progenitor — to have been deified in connection with 
 the sun, I am not hazarding a mere conjecture, but am 
 stating as a hypothesis what there is evidence to show 
 was probable, because in accordance with the tendency of 
 thought at that day. 
 
 " The Egyptian priests, as we learn from Plutarch [De Isid. p. 
 354, rae Si ■'lu^ag XdfiTriiti aarpa), taught expressly that Cronos, 
 Osiris, Horus, and all their principal deities were once mere men ; 
 but that after they died their souls migrated into some one or other 
 of the heavenly bodies, and became the genii or animating spirits 
 of their new celestial mansions. ... la a similar manner we are 
 told by Sanchoniathon that Ilus or Cronos [comp. supra, p. 18] 
 was once a man, that he was deified by the PhcEnioians after his 
 death, and that his soul was believed to have passed into the 
 planet which bears his name. Eusebius, Prisp. Evan. lib. i. c. 10 " 
 (Stanley Faber, Pagan Idolatry, ii. p. 327). 
 
 The expression of Cicero also, " oportet contra illos 
 etiam qui hos deos ex hominum genere in coelum " (De 
 Nat. Deorum, iii. 21), may be adduced in evidence of the 
 tendency to this mode of deification. The inquiry would 
 seem to have resulted, so far, in the following facts : 
 Taking the evidence of Genesis (whether as revealed truth 
 or historical record), at the primitive commencement of 
 the human family after the Deluge (or of a large section 
 of mankind after a deluge), we have the account of the 
 first planting of the vine by the first progenitor, followed 
 
56 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 by a scene of intoxication which would, from its circum^ 
 stances, have impressed itself on the memories of his 
 descendants. 
 
 Tracing backwards, we find evidences of commemora- 
 tive ceremonies, which correspond to the facts above re- 
 corded in the circumstances that they were commemorative 
 of a deluge, of a first legislator, of the first planting of the 
 •vine, of the first cultivator, almost invariably terminating 
 in a scene of riot or intoxication — not always, it is true, 
 combining all ^hese traditions, but so combining features 
 of them as to disclose a common parentage. 
 
 On the other hand, it is contended that the Deluge of 
 Genesis was only one line of the tradition of the submer- 
 sion of Atlantis, which would give a measure of its mag- 
 nitude — " that great deluge of all," as Plato calls it. As 
 against this, I have pointed to a document to which 
 Plato's narrative very closely corresponds, and which, if 
 his narrative is not to be accepted literally, might easily 
 have formed the foundation for the fiction. That is how 
 the argument at present stands. 
 
CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 RECENT TESTIMONIES. 
 
 Since the previous chapter was written I have become 
 acquainted with Mr. A. Lang's Custom and Myth, quite 
 recently published (Longmans, 1884). Mr. Lang, having 
 made' the discovery that, in what is called the " orthodox " 
 school of mythology — the school of Mr. Max Miiller and 
 Sir G. W.' Cox — ■" the distinguished scholars and mytho- 
 logists " " usually differ from each other," and manifest 
 "none of the beautiful unanimity of orthodoxy," has 
 wisely sought to broaden the basis of mythology. Instead 
 of endeavouring to find its derivation in etymology, after 
 the manner of the philological school, he rather seeks it 
 in folklore, which, I may observe in passing, was the aim, 
 as is implied in the title of my book. Tradition with 
 Reference to Mythology, printed in 1872. Mr. Lang says 
 (p. 25): 
 
 " Our method throughout will be to place ths' usage or myth, 
 which is unintelligible when found among a civilised race, beside 
 the similar myth, which is intelligible enough when it is found 
 among savages. . . . The conclusion wiU usually be that the fact 
 which puzzles us by its presence in civilisation is a relic surviving 
 from the time when the ancestors of a civilised race were in a state 
 of savagerj'." 
 
 It will be noticed that Mr. Lang's view necessarily 
 supposes a state of primitive barbarism. Now if, on the 
 other hand, we point to the ancient and contrary belief of 
 a large section of mankind that the race commenced with 
 
58 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 civilisation and with survival from a Deluge ; and if we 
 further contend that, if this belief is accepted, all these 
 myths and customs fall into their place, and that their 
 similarity of feature demands no other explanation than 
 community of origin, all I need say is that this belief, or 
 theory, or tradition, cannot be displaced or overthrown by 
 any theory which assumes the state of primeval barbarism, 
 as this merely begs the question at issue. I feel dis- 
 pensed, therefore, from further advertence to Mr. Lang's 
 theory, and may confine myself to his facts, which bring 
 striking corroborative evidence. 
 
 Mr. Lang's account of " the bull-roarer " brings fresh 
 evidence in relation to the Mandan ceremony we have 
 just been examining, proving, if need be, that Catlin's 
 narrative is attested by external testimony, and further 
 connecting it with the diluvian tradition. 
 
 The " bull-roarer '' in itself need alarm no one, and an 
 interesting account of this traditional toy will be found in 
 Mr. Lang's book at p. 30. Its significance is in its rela- 
 tion to the diluvian ceremonies. It is simply a piece of 
 pointed wood tied to a string, which, when whirled round, 
 prodjQces a roaring noise. Assuming the identity of bull- 
 roarers, turbines, xmot and f'o|M/j3o;, the latter being some- 
 times interpreted as " a magic wheel," we may assume 
 also their identity with the " rattles " used in the Mandan 
 ceremony {infra, p. 67). 
 
 The " bull-roarer," like the " rattles," "is associated 
 with mysteries and initiations." If the belated traveller 
 in the plains of Australia hears the bull-roarer, ". he knows 
 that the blacks are celebrating their tribal mysteries." 
 " The roaring noise is made to warn all women to keep 
 out. of the way " (compare sup. p. 41) ; "just as Pentheus 
 was killed (with the approval of Theocritus) because he 
 profaned the rites of the women- worshippers of Dionysus " 
 (compare sup. p. 53). 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 69 
 
 Mr. Lang adds (p. 34) : 
 
 "Among the Kurmai in Australia the sacred mystery of the. 
 ' turndun,' or ' bull-roarer,' is preserved by a legend which gives a 
 supernatural sanction to secrecy. When boys go through the mystic 
 ceremonies of initiation, they are shown the bull-roarers, and made 
 to listen to their hideous din. They are then told that, if ever a 
 woman is allowed to see a ' turndun,' the earth will open, and water 
 will cover the globe." 
 
 Here we have the "turndun" connected with the tradi- 
 tion of the Deluge, and probably also with the tradition of 
 Eve. In the Scientific Value of Tradition, pp. 173-4, I 
 find that I have given four instances of a very similar 
 tradition — in Central Africa, and among " the Indian 
 tribes of Guiana " (Brett, p. 378) and in Hayti. The 
 first two are from letters written by Mr. H. M. Stanley 
 from Ugigi, where the origin of Lake Tanganika was 
 thus accounted for : A man and woman lived in possession 
 of the secret of a fountain which contained an abundance 
 of fish. She betrayed it to her lover, " who gazed on the 
 brilliant creatures with admiration ; then, seized with a 
 desire to handle one of them, he put his hand within the 
 water .... when suddenly the well burst forth, the earth 
 opened her womb, and soon an enormous lake replaced 
 the plain." 
 
 Mr. Lang continues : 
 
 " The old men point spears at the boys' eyes, saying, ' If you 
 tell this to any woman, you will die ; you will see the ground broken 
 up and like the sea.' ... As in Athens, in Syria, and among the 
 Mandans, the Deluge tradition of Australia is connected with 
 the mysteries. In Gippsland there is a tradition of the Deluge : 
 ' Some children of the Kumai, in playing about, found a turndun, 
 which they took home to the camp, and showed the women. Imme- 
 diately the earth crumbled away, and it was all water, and the 
 Kurnai were drowned.' " 
 
 The evidence also regarding the " initiations " is 
 scarcely less important. At least it has an equally direct 
 bearing on our argument. As the women were mora 
 
60 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 excluded from the ceremonies among the Australians than 
 among the Mandans, although it will be remembered that 
 their exclusion was the leading feature in the opening 
 scenes of the Mandan ceremony, we are not surprised 
 when we hear that "the Australian women were much 
 less instructed in their theology than the men." Still, in 
 the following extract from a conversation with one of their 
 women we may see evidence of the connection of the 
 " initiations " with the ceremony of which the noise of 
 the "turndun " formed part. "One woman believed she 
 had heard Pundjal, the chief sunernatural being, descend 
 in a mighty rushing noise — that is, the sound of the 
 ' turndun ' when boys were being ' made men,'' or initiated " 
 (Lang, p. 35). 
 
 Mr. Lang also says (p. 40): "Mr. Winwood Eeade, 
 Savage Africa [Captain Smith also mentions the cus- 
 tom in his work on Virginia, pp. 245-8] , reports the 
 evidence of Mongilomba. When initiated Mongilomba 
 was severely flogged in ' the fetich house ' (as the young 
 Spartans were flogged before the animated image of 
 Artemis), and then he was plastered over with goat- 
 dung" (compare sup. p. 47).. "Similar daubings were 
 performed at the mysteries by the Mandans, as described ■ 
 by Catlin." 
 
 " On the Congo Mr. Johnson found precisely the same 
 ritual in the initiations " (Lang, p. 40). 
 
 Catlin {0-kee-pa, pp. 28-9) mentions after the scene of 
 torture in the initiation of the young men instances of the 
 voluntary sacrifice of several of " the little fingers of the 
 left hand," or of " the forefinger," as " an ofi'ering to the 
 Great Spirit," which was struck off with a hatchet on a 
 buffalo skull. 
 
 It appears to me that this may supply a link to con- 
 nect another curious description of an Australian initiation 
 — the earliest on record with the tradition. 
 
Plato's Atlantis. 61 
 
 I find this description in David Collins's Account of 
 New South Wales, 1798. The ceremony of initiation was 
 witnessed 25th January 1795, at which the males, be- 
 tween the ages of eight and sixteen', " receive the qualifi- 
 cations which are given to them, by losing one of the 
 front teeth " (p. 563). At the time when Mr. Collins 
 (Judge Advocate and Secretary of the Colony) witnessed 
 it, the tooth was ostensibly extracted as a tribute, which 
 was exacted by the most powerful tribe of those parts from 
 the subordinate tribes. This explanation, however, did 
 not satisfy Mr. Collins. He noticed that the front tooth 
 was equally absent from the mouths of the conquering 
 tribe, and after further research he found that the teeth 
 were thus extracted with much form and ceremony at a 
 solemn gathering of the tribe. 
 
 Now, if we consider the matter a little, it will be seen 
 that the demand of a front tooth would have been felt as a 
 most wanton and tyrannous exaction even in barbarous 
 times and by a powerful tribe. But if in its origin this 
 abstraction of the tooth was a voluntary ofi'ering or a 
 customary sacrifice, it would have been the tribute that 
 would naturally have been seized upon by every conqueror, 
 as it would have given him a ready and certain mode of 
 ascertaining, and merely according to their customs, 
 the adult strength of the populations subject to him. 
 
 On the other hand, from the time that the custom be- 
 came associated with the notion of a tribute, its religious 
 significance would gradually have died out. 
 
 There are, however, certain evidences which identify it 
 more directly with the Mandan ceremony. The time of 
 the Australian custom was when certain shrubs were 
 flowering. The place selected "was of an oval figure, 
 the dimensions twenty-seven feet by eighteen feet, and 
 was named yoo-lahng." " Among them we observed one 
 man painted white to the middle, his beard and eye- 
 
62 PLATO'S ATLANTIS, 
 
 brows excepted, and altogether a frightful object " (Collins, 
 p. 564). Compare this with the description by Catlin of 
 the personage, " the first or only man," who opened the 
 Mandan ceremony. " He was in appearance a very aged 
 man .... with a robe, of four white wolves' skins. His 
 body and face and hair were entirely covered with white 
 clay, and he closely resembled, at a little distance, a cen- 
 tenarian white man " (p. 11). 
 
 The first engraving (Collins) represents the young men 
 
 "upon their hands and feet, imitating . the dogs of ' the 
 
 country. In the Mandan custom, " on the entry of the 
 
 ' white man,' the first order given is to muzzle all the dogs." 
 
 Canon Eawlinson, in his tllugtrations of the Old 
 Testament, p. 18, tells us that "the Cherokee Indians 
 had a legend of the destruction of mankind by a Deluge, 
 and of the preservation of a single family in a boat, to 
 the construction of which they had been incited by a dog." 
 
 The second engraving (Collins) represents the young 
 men seated on the ground facing a log of wood, which 
 may have done duty for "the big canoe" which, Catlin 
 tells us, was shaped like a "hogshead." In the engraving 
 a man is seen carrying in " a kangaroo made of grass," 
 concerning which presently, another carries a load of brush- 
 wood. The latter " had one or two flowering shrubs " in 
 his nostrils. 
 
 It will be recollected that the Mandan ceremony took ' 
 place when the willow first flowered. 
 
 In the third engraving we have a kangaroo dance. 
 Now, if the kangaroo was their principal food, it would 
 naturally supply the place of the buffalo in the Mandan 
 custom. In the Mandan ceremony we have a buffalo-bull 
 dance, " to the strict observance of which they attributed 
 the coming of buffaloes to supply them with food " (Cat- 
 lin). In Collins the dancers are represented advancing 
 "in Indian file," a phrase which Catlin uses with refer- 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. • 63 
 
 ence to the Mandan young men just previously to the bull- 
 dance, which occurs in corresponding sequence. 
 
 Engravings four, five, and six have only slight resem- 
 blances, and are merely preparatory to the tooth-extracting 
 or initiation scene. There is one noticeable feature, how- 
 ever, that at one point the youths " uttered a mournful 
 dismal sound like very distant thunder," suggesting the 
 " bull-roarer." This scene is called "Boo-roo-moo-roong," 
 a word which has resemblance in sound to boumarang, 
 which again has resemblance in its mode of use to the 
 " bull-roarer." In the sixth there is a presentation of 
 spears, recalling in something the presenting the spears 
 to the boys' eyes which Mr. Lang mentions. 
 
 Seventh scene is the extraction of the front teeth — a 
 rough operation with a splint of wood and a piece of stone 
 ■ — (yet "on showing it to our medical -men, they all 
 declared they could not have been better extracted if the 
 proper instruments had been used "). ' The operation was 
 performed with minute attention to mystic rites ; the 
 assistants all the time " made a most hideous noise in 
 the ears of the patients, crying ' Ewah, ewah ! Gaga, 
 gaga !' " (p. 580.) Has not this cry of " Ewah, ewah !" a 
 resemblance to the " Evoe, evoe !" of the Bacchanals ? 
 (Refer back to p. 47.) This scene of initiation in its 
 leading features corresponds to the Mandan tortures and 
 amputations. 
 
 In the eighth scene the custom closes like the Man- 
 dan in a saturnalia of riot. " Suddenly, on a signal 
 given " (they are now seen seated on the log of wood or 
 "big canoe " (?) which previous to initiation they had faced, 
 sitting on the ground), " they all started up and rushed 
 into the town, driving the men and women before them. 
 They were now received into the class of men, were pri- 
 vileged to wield the spear and club. They might now 
 also seize such females as they chose for wives." 
 
64 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 Certain other features in common may be noticed. 
 Previous to the tortures, the Mandan young men " lay 
 reclining round the medicine (mystery) lodge, and had 
 now reached the middle of the fourth day without eating, 
 drinking, or sleeping;" and the Australians "were seated 
 at the upper end of the yoo-lahng, each holding down his 
 head, bis hands clasped, and his legs crossed under him. 
 In this position, awkward and painful as it must have 
 been, we understood they were to remain all night ; and, 
 in short, until the ceremony was concluded, they were 
 neither to look up nor take any refreshment whatsoever." 
 
 Among the Mandans, on the occasion of the festival, 
 " an edged tool " was exacted " from every wigwam as a 
 sacrifice to the water." And among the Australians, when 
 the front teeth escaped the tribute, we catch a glimpse of 
 the original notion. Collins says their informant told 
 them " his own tooth was buried in the ground, and that 
 others were thrown into the sea." 
 
 The teeth were apparently (p. 594) extracted by their 
 priests, or car-rah-dis, as the fingers were lopped off 
 among the Mandans by their priests or " medicine (mys- 
 tery) men." 
 
 Captain J. G. Bourke has recently printed a valuable 
 and interesting account* of the snake-dance among the 
 Moqui Indians ; but it does not appear to have occurred 
 to him that this dance, if not identical, is cognate with 
 the Mandan and other diluvian traditions. This appears 
 manifest to ■ me from the similarity in the symbols, and 
 in the general correspondence, so to speak, in the pro- 
 gramme of the dance and the common fundamental notion 
 attaching to its observance. It may, indeed, be that the. 
 Moqui Indians have not retained the tradition in the same 
 
 * The Snake Dance of the Moquis of Arizona. By Captain J. G. 
 Bourke, U.S. Caralry. (London : Sampson Low. 1884 ) 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 66 
 
 direct form as the Mandans. And there is this further 
 difference, which may also account for the diluvian tradi- 
 tion being in their case subsidiary. 
 
 In tracing the resemblances between the Grecian 
 festivals "certain connections were noticed between the 
 festivals in honour of Ceres and Bacchus. But the former 
 probably had their origin in the offering of " first-fruits," 
 to which Aristotle refers (vide supra, p. 37),* and blended 
 with the diluvian commemorative ceremonial at later date. 
 
 The snake-dance of the Moquis, as will be seen from 
 the extracts given, has many features in common with the 
 worship of Ceres, and was held to propitiate, if no longer 
 the Deity, yet some higher power, to secure the growth of 
 their corn, just as the Mandans attributed the supply of 
 buffaloes to the fidelity with which they performed their 
 annual " custom;" e.g. (p. 161), Captain Bourke says : 
 
 " The first division in the dance remained in place, while the 
 second, two by two, arm in arm, slowly pranced round the sacred 
 rock, going through the motions of planting corn to the music of the 
 monotonous dirge chanted by the first division." 
 
 And p. 123 : 
 
 " One of the old men held up a gourd-ratile, shook it, lifted his 
 
 * Mr. Lang {Custom and Myth, p. 36) suggests that the " mystica 
 vannus lacchi " was a mode of .raising a sacred wind, analogous to 
 that employed by the whirlers of the "tumdun." Mr. Lang, however, 
 gives the explanation of Servlus, "the ancient commentator on Virgil," 
 who offers other explanations, among them that the "vannus" was 
 a orate to hold offerings, "primatidi frugum." He also gives the 
 views of F&ve Lafltau, who was greatly struck with the resemblance 
 between Greek and Iroquois or Carib initiations. He takes Servins's 
 other explanation of the "mystica vannus," an osier vessel containing 
 rural offerings of first-fruits. " This exactly answers," says Lafitau, 
 " to that Carib ' Matoutou ' on which they offer sacred oasBaya cakes. " 
 
 There is a very well-autheoticated tradition of the connection of the 
 cassava-tree with the diluvian tradition in Mr. Everard P.im Thurn's book 
 on the Indians of Guiana, and among a Carib tribe, but it would irah this 
 note to too great length. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that 'lacchus was the solemn name of 
 BaoobuB in the Eleusinian mysteries, and that during their celebration 
 the initiated carried mystic baskets. 
 
 F 
 
66 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 hands in an attitude of prayer towards the sun, bent down his head, 
 moved his lips, threw his hands with fingers opened downwards 
 towards the earth, grumbled to represent thunder, and hissed in 
 imitation of lightning, at the same time making a sinuous line in 
 the air with the right index-finger ; and then, seeing that my atten- 
 tion was fixed upon him, made a sign as if something was coming 
 up out of the ground, and said in Spanish, ' Mucho' maiz ' (Plenty of 
 corn), and in his own tongue, 'Polamai' (Good)." 
 
 And p. 164 : 
 
 " The corn-meal had a sacred significance, which it might be 
 well to bear in mind in order thoroughly to appreciate the religious 
 import of this drama. Every time the squaws scattered, it, their 
 lips would be detected moving in prayer." 
 
 It may, perhaps, render Captain Bourke more placable 
 {vide pp. 169-70) towards these benighted people, if he 
 realises his own evidence that the snakes merely represent 
 the lightning and the storm, and that, therefore, the 
 introduction of the snake into their ceremonial may not 
 necessarily suggest demoniac associations. In the pas- 
 sage just cited this is evident ; but also at p. 124 it is said : 
 
 " Here also was a ground-altar. . . . The design, however, was 
 different, and represented a bank of four layers of yellow; green, red, 
 and white clouds, from which darted four snakes or streaks of Ught- 
 ning, coloured white, red, green, and yeUow respectively. See 
 Plate 19." 
 
 And it is to Captain Bourke that we are indebted for this 
 new light. 'In ch. xx. he gives quotations from several 
 authors who have written with reference to serpent-wor- 
 ship, and he is justified in saying (p. 225) : 
 
 "In quoting these authorities I desire to make one comment 
 only. Not one of them has alluded to the resemblance between the 
 undulatory motion of the serpent and the sinuous "meandering of 
 lightning, a resemblance patent to every one and porti'ayed by the 
 Moquis on the altar figured on Plate 6. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be suggested that a sufficient explan- 
 ation would be that lightning is frequently followed by 
 rain, and that in Central America rain is specially invoked 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 67 
 
 for the growth of corn. If, however, the lightning is the 
 concomitant of rain, it is more generally the concomitant 
 of the wind, the storm, the flood, and the deluge, which, 
 if invoked, would as often have brought destruction as 
 benefit to the crops. We might suppose, therefore, .that 
 something in milder similitude might have been found for 
 the fertilising influence " which droppeth as the gentle 
 rain from heaven." The present Moqui Indians, who do 
 not appear to have retained their tradition very tena- 
 ciously, may, indeed, connect their ceremony with the 
 invocation for rain ; but that it was not the 'original and 
 leading idea will, I think, be apparent when I show that 
 the snake, and more especially the rattlesijiake, the pro- 
 minent snake in the Moqui ceremonial, is common to the 
 Mandan custom, where the diluvian tradition is the pre- 
 dominant idea. 
 
 Catlin ^p. 19) says that among the spectators of "the 
 bull-d&nce " " there were two men called rattlesnakes, 
 their bodies naked and curiously painted, resembling that 
 reptile, each holding a rattle in one hand and a bunch of 
 wild sage in the other," who, at the close of the hull- 
 dance, " shook their, rattles." The rattle* corresponds 
 to " the bull-ioarei " or " turndun," which, as Mr. Lang 
 tells us, by an independent line of testimony, is connected 
 with the diluvian tradition. 
 
 But curiously what I may term the counterpart evi- 
 dence may be found in the names of the principal snakes 
 selected for the mysteries. Five are mentioned by Captain 
 Bourke, three of which, at any rate, bear in their names 
 allusions to the Mandan symbols : 
 
 . " 1. ' Chuna ' {rattler) ; 2. ' Le-lu-can-ga (this has 
 yellow and black spots, and may be the bull snake) ; . . . 
 ' Pa-chu-a ' (a water snake) . . ." (p. 116). 
 
 * Mr. Lang (p. 39) identifies the " bull-roarer " wHh the Oreoian 
 f)ii|U/3o$, which is ' sometimes interpreted as a magic wheel. ' 
 
68- PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 I have said that the general outline or programme of 
 the ceremonies corresponds. In the Moqui, as in the 
 Mandan, the medicine or mystery lodge is the pivot on 
 which the ceremony hinges ; and as another instance of 
 the interlinking of the evidence, I may mention that the 
 mystery lodge is covered with a buffalo-skin. The pro- 
 minence of the buffalo in the Mandan ceremony — the 
 buffalo-dance, the buffalo skulls — will not have been for- 
 gotten ; and here among the Moquis, in a- country where 
 the buffalo is not known, and where it must have been 
 procured — as, in fact, Captain Bourke tells us it was — from 
 a great distance, we find the buffalo-skin evidently used, 
 traditionally as a central object in the snake-dance. 
 
 In the Mandan lodge the most significant symbol was 
 the sack, or rather sacks, of water, which the Mandans 
 pretended contained the waters of the Deluge ; and among 
 the Moquis (p. 138) : 
 
 " Before the altar the Indians had now placed an earthenware 
 bowl. ... It was filled with water, and contained three large sea- 
 sheUs. The water had a saline taste,- and evidently contained 
 'medicine' (mystery)." 
 
 And p. 143 : 
 
 " One of the old men touched the string of olivette-shells on his 
 wrist, thus indicating a great distance in the west, ... an explana- 
 tion which I took to signify that these shells had been brought 
 from a great distance from the sea. The olivette may not be a 
 marine shell, it may be fluvial. Be that as it may, I cannot dispel 
 from my mind a conviction that the Moquis betray, in the shells, 
 the salt-water, sand, alabones, and other features of their dances, a 
 derivation from a people who once knew, and perhaps worshipped, 
 the ocean." 
 
 Before comparing the dance itself, I may again notice 
 the rattles, which are as conspicuous here as in the 
 Mandan ceremony, and form a connecting link with the 
 diluvian customs elsewhere through the " bull-roarer." 
 Mr. Lang, indeed, mentions the existence of the " bull- 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 69 
 
 roarer " among the Zunis, who adjoia the Moquis ; and 
 in the Moqui dance there is mention of the " sling- 
 whirler " (pp. 159 and 161), of " an old man who rapidly 
 twirled a wooden sling, which emitted the shrill rumble 
 of falling rain, so plainly heard, as the head of the pro- 
 cession was emerging from the arcade." 
 
 This brings us to the dance itself (ch. xv.). In the 
 Mandan and the Australian ceremonies we noticed the 
 prominence of an old man. The Moqui dance opens with 
 three old men; but one seemed to act as the "head- 
 priest," or master of ceremonies, " who stood in front 
 of and facing the mystery lodge, holding well before him 
 the platter of water and the eagle-feather wand," which 
 recalls one point of the Mandan ceremonial. This old 
 man heads the procession — "barefooted, crowned with a 
 garland of cotton leaves, holding in his hands in front of 
 him a flat earthen bowl, from which he sprinkled water on 
 the ground." The second old man "carried a flat basket 
 of fine corn-meal ;" the third " rattled a fan-shaped instru- 
 ment painted white." Five "men and eight little boys 
 " marched in single file," as in the Mandan and Austra- 
 lian ceremony, " with the same odd-looking rattles." The 
 dancers all wore "collars of white sea-shell beads " and 
 " alabone shells;" "the men and boys shook their rattles 
 gently, making the music of pattering showers." " Each 
 division marched solemnly round the, sacred lodge and 
 trees, the first division completing this formula shortly 
 before the second." The. old man in front of the lodge 
 "began to pray in a well-modulated voice, and sprinkled 
 the ground in front of him with more water. The first 
 division remained in place, while the second slowly pranced 
 around the sacred rock, going through the motions of 
 planting corn to the music of a monotonous dirge." 
 This ended the first act, which has resemblances to the 
 Mandan. In the second we have the snake-dance, which 
 
70 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 corresponds to the bull-dance among the Mandans. The 
 third ends as in the Mandan and Australian — with a 
 general dispersal. "The Indians then grasped the snakes 
 convulsively in great handfuls, and ran with might and 
 main to the eastern crest of the precipice, and then darted 
 down the trails leading to the foot, where they released 
 the reptiles to the four quarters of the globe." " The 
 old man armed with the sling " (whilst they were running) 
 " twirling it vigorously, causing it to emit the same 
 peculiar sound of rain driven by the wind which had 
 been heard on their approach." 
 
 There are two very striking interludes in the course 
 of the dance, to which particular attention must be drawn. 
 
 In the first, although the circumstances and surround- 
 ings are different, yet in its essential idea we seem to 
 detect the power and victory of the woman over the serpent 
 (Gen.iii. 15), of which we have seen evidences in the Mandan. 
 The first division of the Moquis "remained aligned upon 
 the sacred rock "* with the head-priest ; another section 
 approached, " their faces painted black, as with a mask of 
 charcoal, from brow to upper lip, where the ghastly white 
 of kaolin began . . . the crowning point being the deadly 
 reptiles borne in the mouth "t — a picture which recalls 
 the advent of the demon in the Mandan ceremony. 
 
 But then " the women scattering the corn-meal now 
 developed their Jine more fully, . . . the main body 
 massing between the sacred rock and sacred' lodge " 
 
 * The " sacred rook" in the Moqui stands in the place of the " big 
 canoe " in the Mandan ceremony. A clue to this may be discoveied at 
 p. 126 in Captain Boarke, when describing what he terms their idols, 
 "these were water-v oin fragments of sandstone; wafer- worn rocks 
 roughly shaped to some sacred configuration." And if the reader will" 
 turn to Plate 2 he will find that the representation there of the sacred 
 rock exactly corresponds to this description. 
 
 •f Catliu thus describes the Mandan demon (p. 22) : " His body was 
 painted jet-black with pulverised charcoal and grtase, with rings of white 
 clay over his limbs and body. Indentations of 'white, like hugd teoth, 
 surrounded his mnuth, and white rings surrounded his eyes." 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 71 
 
 (comp. Mandan supra, p. 42). "Nearly all carried the 
 beautiful, close-woven, flat baskets, in red, yellow, and 
 black, ornamented with the butterfly, thunder-bird, or 
 deer . . . from which was scattered the finely-ground corn- 
 flqur, not, as previously, on the ground, but in the air, and 
 upon the reptiles as fast as thrown down. The corn-meal 
 had a sacred significance. . . The use of the sacred meal 
 closely resembles the crithoraancy of the ancient Greeks, 
 but is not identical with it."* At a later stage it is said 
 the " ipaidens and matrons redoubled their energy, 
 sprinkling meal not only upon the serpents wriggling at 
 their feet, but throwing handfuls into the faces of the men 
 carrying them'' (p. 166), which forcibly reminds us of the 
 final discomfiture of the demon in the Mandan mystery. 
 
 Taking these facts, it wou^d seem that the introduction 
 of the serpent into their ceremonial was only secondary 
 and subsidiary, and not serpent-worship in the strict sense 
 of the word. I do not -recollect that there is direct 
 evidence of it at all. 
 
 There is another very curious fact mentioned by Captain 
 Bourke, that when the men and boys of the first division 
 shook their rattles in the dance, the men of the second 
 division waved their eagle feathers, all singing a refrain, 
 " Oh-ya-haw, oh-ya-haw, &c.," chanted with a slow 
 measure and graceful cadence. Compare this with the 
 completely independent testimony as above (p. 63) of the 
 Australian refrain in their ceremony of " Ewah, ewah, 
 &c.," and the evidence {supra, p. 47) of two other similar 
 invocations, all having a strange resemblance to the 
 
 * At page 165 it is said : " After a snake had been properly sprinkled 
 it was picked up, generally by one of the eagle wand-bearers, bat never 
 by a woman, and carried up to the Indians of the first division," where 
 was also ttie head-priest, just as the women in the Mandan ceremony 
 assembled round ihe mystic man in the first instance. As, however, the 
 serpents were specially guarded, and afterwards safely released, the 
 superstition may, perhaps, have been that the touch of the woman might 
 have been injurious or fatal to the serpent. 
 
72 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 "Evoe, evoe," which St. Clement of Alexandria tells us 
 was the cry of the Bacchanals. Compare also the " Euce 
 Bacche fremens " of Virgil, Mneid, vii. 389, ed. Heyne. 
 
 I have also come on unsuspected testimony in a most 
 unexceptional quarter — in the pages of Mr. Everard F. im 
 Thurn, who is ever watchfully on his guard against the 
 action of missionaries on myths. Compare the following 
 extracts with the evidence already adduced. Speaking of 
 the dances among the Indians of Guiana, he says (p. 323): 
 " Some heat time with hollow bamboos covered at .one end 
 with skin like a drum." Some had " wAirZ-sticks, to 
 which are tied bunches of certain seeds, which when struck 
 against the ground clash and rattle." 
 
 " AU form a procession, and march slowly round the Paiwari 
 or liquor-trough [comp. supra, pPn46, 47] , droning out a chant, keep- 
 ing step and waving their instruments in slow measured time. 
 Round and round the trough the strange procession winds, all feet 
 stamping in time the monotonous. chant of Hia-hiahia. Suddenly 
 the chant gives place to loud discordant cries, and' the procession 
 breaks up." 
 
 As regards the connection of the initiations with these 
 feasts, there is this evidence: "In one of their Paiwari 
 feasts there is a strange and painful dance." "They lash 
 each other .... till the blood flows freely " (comp. swp. 
 p. 45), " probably originally devised as a means of testing 
 endurance." 
 
 And Mr. Thurn says (p. 819) : 
 
 " The festivals, dances, and games originally peculiar to any 
 people often remain but little altered long after most other matters 
 which distinguished that people from the rest of the world have 
 disappeared." 
 
 The initiations do not occupy so conspicuous a place 
 in the Moqui festival, and they are in milder form. The 
 boy race, where the boys figure as " antelopes " in the 
 Mandan, seems to have taken the place of the tortures, 
 and developed into a severe trial of stamina and endur- 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 73 
 
 ance — (" the antelope " is also one of the devices on the 
 Moqui walls). It takes place before the dance. " Every 
 one of the men was streaming with perspiration, and the 
 thumping of hearts and wheezing of lungs could be plainly 
 heard." A further form of initiation appears during the 
 dance in the handling of the serpents by the youths. 
 " An infant Hercules " stoutly and bravely upheld a five- 
 foot monster. 
 
 There is, however, a remarkable coincidence. 
 
 At p. 133, Captain Bourke tells us that Tochi, their 
 guide, told him that' when the rain did not come from the 
 sky, the Moquis came into this "estufa" and "danced 
 for it ;" that here also came the young men to be baptised 
 for medicine (mystery) men — " bautista por cochinos." 
 The guide spoke in broken Spanish. Captain Bourke 
 adds : 
 
 " I made Tochi repeat all he had said, and then asked for an 
 explanation. He said that, after all the big dances — as, for ex- 
 amfile, after that of to-day — the young men who were to learn all 
 the secrets would come to one of the estufas, and there have their 
 heads washed with water by the old men. As he said this, he made 
 the motion of pouring a few drops of water upon the head of some 
 one kneeling beneath him." 
 
 Captain Bourke remained in doubt how far " this lus- 
 tration partook of the nature of the sacrament of baptism," 
 and how far it was " likely to be a reminiscence of the 
 teachings of the early missionaries . . . ." Now for the 
 coincidence. If it was the reminiscence of baptism rather 
 than of the prefigurement of baptism, how are we to 
 account for the apparently identical initiations among the 
 Maoris of New Zealand ? 
 
 I find in The Natural History of Man, by the Rev. 
 
 J. G. Wood, M.A. (Routledge, 1870), p. 177 : 
 
 " Youths undergo a long course of instruction before they can 
 take rank among the priests. Dr. Dieffenbach was fortunate enough 
 to witness a portion Of this instruction. ' I was present at one of 
 
74 PLATO'S ATLANTIS, 
 
 the lessons. An old priest was sitting under a tree, and at his feet 
 was a boy, his relative. He listened attentively to the repetition 
 of certain words, which seemed to have no meaning, but which it 
 must have requirfid a good memory to retain in their due order. At 
 the old Tohunga's side was part of a man's skull filled with water ; 
 but from time to time he dipped a green branch which he moved 
 over the boy's head. . . .' " 
 
 The resemblance in the external forms of the initiation 
 will be noticed, and beyond it the symbols of the water and 
 the green branches, which a slight reference to the pre- 
 ceding pages will show to have been intimately associated 
 with the Mandan and Moqui rites. 
 
 One thing is obscure : how it has come about that 
 theMoijuis of Arizona — the /Sna/ce Indians — call themselves 
 Opii. " The Moquis call themselves Hopii, or Opii, a 
 term not now in the language of every-day life, but refer- 
 ring in some way to the Pueblo custom of banging the 
 hair at the level of the eyebrows . . . . " (Captain Bourke, 
 p. 117). This surmise, however, leaves untouched this 
 difficulty, that the name Opii is so suggestive of ophiolatry ; 
 and although, as I have contended, the Snake Indians are 
 not in any strict sense serpent-worshippers, yet the 
 affinity of their name with the Greek 0<pig is, to say the 
 least, striking and surprising. I do not venture, how- 
 ever, to attempt to solve the difficulty, but must leave it 
 as a " crux " to the philologers. 
 
 Additional evidence will be found in chapter xi. (with 
 Appendix) of Tradition with Reference to Mythology 
 (Burns & Oates, 1872) in respect to the Mandan, Daho- 
 man, Pongol (India), Pota (India), p. 247, and Patagonian 
 festivals. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ALTERNATIVE THEORIES. 
 
 There still remain passages in Plato's discourse which 
 have to be cleared up before the ground can be said to be 
 exhausted. There is one statement especially which the 
 Egyptian priests of Sais made to Solon, as Critias is 
 made to say, which must not be forgotten, from Mr. 
 Donnelly's point of view. I mean the statement in Timceus, 
 p. 517 (Jowett), "about the greatest action which the 
 Athenians ever did, and which ought to be most famous, 
 but which, through lapse of time and the destruction of 
 the actors, has not come down to us." And p. 521 : 
 " Many great and wonderful deeds are recorded of your 
 state (Athens) in our histories. But one of them exceeds 
 all the rest in greatness and valour. For these histories 
 tell us of a mighty power which was aggressing wantonly 
 against the whole of Europe and Asia, and to which 
 your city put an end. This power came forth from the 
 
 Atlantic Ocean " 
 
 If Atlantis is a fiction of Plato's, every .tradition 
 imported into his discourse will naturally be located in 
 Atlantis. As regards the mighty power which was aggress- 
 ing against the whole of Europe, the view which had 
 occurred to me I find accords with Professor Jowett's, 
 which I will give accordingly, adding a few words in 
 further elucilation. Professor Jowett says (ii. 589) : 
 " This mythical conflict is prophetic or symbolical of the 
 struggle of Athens and Persia, and, perhaps, in some 
 degree also of the wars of the Greeks and Carthaginians, 
 in the same way that the Persian is prefigured by the 
 
76 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 Trojan War to the mind of Herodotus, or as the narrative 
 of the first part of the Mneid foreshadows the wars oi 
 Carthage and Rome." 
 
 That what is set down in the " sacred register " of the 
 Egyptian priests (p. 520) cannot be taken as strictlj 
 historical is obvious from what Professor Jowett points 
 out — that the statement that the war occurred " nine 
 thousand years ago " is slightly inconsistent with the 
 statement " which gives the same date for the foundation 
 of the city " (p. 590). Professor Jowett's view of Atlantis 
 (p. 589) is that " we may safely conclude that the entire 
 narrative is due to the imagination of Plato." I have in 
 a previous chapter hazarded the conjecture that it was 
 founded on the narrative of Hanno. 
 
 1. I will now consider, in the first place, how far 
 the statements in Plato's discourse that do not correspond 
 to facts in the narrative of Hanno were imported by Plato 
 himself, and secondly, how far they may have been trans- 
 mitted through Solon. 
 
 If the statement we are now considering was a con- 
 fused and exaggerated tradition of the Persian War, it 
 must have been imported by Plato ; and I may suggest 
 that the confusion and exaggeration may have come about 
 in this way, and if so without being entirely due to the 
 imagination of Plato. If Plato was himself in Egypt, as 
 Valerius Maximus (Lewes's Hist, of Phil., G. W. Collins's 
 Life of Plato) tells us he was, or even during his resi- 
 dence at Syracuse, he might "have heard the statements, 
 such as were not derived from Hanno, which he attributes 
 to Solon. Now, if we recollect that Plato's visit would 
 have taken place during the Persian domination in Egypt,* 
 
 * The Persian rule in Egypt may be broadly said to have extended 
 from B 0. 527, when Cambyses overthrew the dynasty of Sais, till B.C. 
 332. The intervention of the XXIX. and XXX. Dynasties would not have 
 affected the sentiment at Sais as against the Persians. The dates are 
 from BmgBch'a Egypt. 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 77 
 
 this legend of a gigantic war, in which Athens was vic- 
 torious and " brought to an end " (a phrase, by the bye, 
 applicable to the termination of the Persian War, but 
 inconsistent with the destruction of both parties to the 
 contest through " the subsidence of Atlantis "), is pre- 
 cisely the recollections which, in its distorted circum- 
 stances, may have remained in Egypt of the Grseco- 
 Persian War, and which the priests of Sais, " the city 
 from which Amasis the .king was sprung," and where a 
 Greek colony had been established from an early date {circa 
 660 B.C.), would have cherished and magnified in^their 
 legend as against the Persian domination, which had 
 engulphed them, as well as the rest of Greece, in a com- 
 mon deluge, subsidence, and destruction, and yet which, 
 BO long as the domination lasted, they would, perhaps, 
 deem it prudent to veil under a legendary disguise. 
 
 We do not, perhaps, sufBciently realise that history 
 was not then digested as it is now, however inaccurately, 
 into recognised record ; and although mss. of Herodotus 
 and Thucydides, and other histories, were drifting, the 
 recollection of events was, in the main, traditional. 
 
 2. In chapter ii., when, discussing Plato's Atlantis 
 with reference to the report of Hanno, I omitted to advert 
 to a digression on the laws and institutions of the island 
 of Atlantis, " as I considered that it would be better re- 
 served until we came to the consideration how far other 
 traditions might have been imported. Now, what we are 
 told of these customs, which " were regulated by the 
 injunctions of Poseidon as the law had handed them 
 down," and " were inscribed by the Jirst men on a column 
 of orichalcum, . . . ." bears a close resemblance to what 
 is recorded of the Amphictyonic council and to the Areo- 
 pagus — institutions which had fallen into comparative 
 insignificance since the time of Pericles, and whose 
 authority Plato might not unnaturally seek indirect 
 
78 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 means of reviving. Just as we are told that the laws of 
 Atlantis were injunctions of Poseidon and handed down 
 by the first men, so we find the Amphictyonic laws attri- 
 buted to the son of Deucalion, and that the Ionian feder- 
 ation held their assemblies at a sacred place on Mount 
 Mycale, where they had dedicated in common a temple to 
 Neptune. Plato tells us that the laws were engraved on a 
 column of orichalcum ; and it is recorded that the terms 
 of the Latin League — an analogous confederation— were 
 engraved " on a brazen column," which was preserved in 
 the time of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a fact which 
 might not impossibly have come at earlier date to the 
 knowlege of Plato also. The Atlanteans " were to deliber- 
 ate together about war and other matters, and were not to 
 take up arms against one another," just as, according to 
 their oath, referred to by ^skines " as the ancient oath of 
 the Amphictyons," they were bound "not to destroy each 
 other's cities or debar them from the use of their foun- 
 tains in peace and war. . . ." Plato adds, " There were 
 many special laws which the several kings had inscribed 
 about the temple." This is, perhaps, intended to cover 
 the introduction of certain other customs which may be 
 identified with what has come down to us of the mode of 
 proceeding of the Areopagus. There was a special reason 
 why they should be imported into the narrative on the 
 particular occasion, as the institution of the Areopagus 
 was by some attributed to Solon and by others to Cecrops, 
 both in the line of his reputed ancestors. 
 
 The judges of the Areopagus " always sat in the open 
 air, because they took cognisance of murder ; and by their 
 laws it was not permitted for the murderer and his accuser 
 to be both under the same roof. . . . They always heard 
 causes and passed sentence in the night, that they might 
 not be prepossessed in favour of the plaintiff or the defend- 
 ant by seeing them." In the confederacy of the Atlanteans 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 79 
 
 the judicial proceedings are also described as in the open 
 air ; and " when darkness came on, and the fire about the 
 sacrifice was cool, all of them put on most beautiful azure 
 robes, and sitting on the ground at night, .... if any one 
 had any accusation to bring against any one ; and when 
 they had given judgment, at daybreak they wrote down 
 their sentences on a golden tablet, and deposited them as 
 memorials with their robes " (Plato's Atlantis, Jowett). I 
 should have mentioned — and it should be remarked also in 
 the almost inseparable connection of the ox or the bull with 
 the diluvian commemorative customs — that " before the 
 Amphictyons proceeded to business they sacrificed an ox, 
 and cut his flesh into small .pieces, intimating that union 
 and unanimity prevailed _in the several cities they repre- 
 sented." Plato says when the Atlanteans gathered together, 
 " before they passed judgment they gave their pledges to 
 one another in this wise : there were bulls who had the 
 range of the temple of Poseidon, and the ten who were left 
 alone in the temple, after they had offered prayers to the 
 gods that they might take the sacrifices which were accept- 
 able to them, hunted the bulls without weapons, but with 
 staves and nooses, and the bull which they caught they 
 led up to the column." " When, therefore, after offering 
 sacrifice according to their customs, they had burnt the 
 limbs of the bull, they mingled a cup and cast in a clot of 
 blood for ea.ch of them. . . ." Although it may be objected 
 that these extracts are taken somewhat at random from 
 Plato's narrative, yet, on being pieced together, they will 
 be found to exhaust all the disclosures of Plato respecting 
 Atlantis. 
 
 We will now consider (it being conceded that the basis 
 of Plato's fiction was the Periplus of Hanno, and that he has 
 imported more recent facts, as, for instance, the incidents 
 of the Persian War) whether something of the original 
 figment of Atlantis might not have been handed down, as 
 
80 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 Plato says it was, in family tradition from Solon', and 
 reconstructed or adapted by Plato. 
 
 The conception of Atlantis probably originated in some 
 development of the diluvian tradition. It is curious, how- 
 ever, that it might have been brought prominently to the 
 notice and speculation of Solon or the priests of Sais under 
 circumstances very similar to those of which we have evi- 
 dence — in the case of Plato as regards Hanno, viz. through 
 the circumnavigation of Africa during the reign of Necho 
 or Nako (b.o. 611). JSTo record, however, of this explora- 
 tion has survived. 
 
 Even if we adopt this conjecture, yet if Plato had not 
 seen the ms.' of Solon (" My great-grandfather Dropidas 
 had the original writing, which is still in my possession, 
 and was carefully studied by me when I was a child") 
 since he was ten years old (" I will tell an old-world story, 
 which I heard from an aged man ; for Critias was, as he 
 said, at that time nearly ninety years of age, and I was 
 about ten years old "), he might naturally have based or 
 rebased the fiction on the narrative more recently within 
 his knowledge than that which had faded from his recol- 
 lection. He uses such phrases as " If I can recollect and 
 recite enough of what was said by the priests," and "If I 
 have not forgotten what I heard when I was a child," 
 " and I would specially invoke Mnemosyne," which imply 
 that, if any such ms. existed, he was separated from it, 
 and Tiad not seen it since he was a child. 
 
 We know little more, of the life of Solon than what 
 Plutarch has preserved, but the little that is told us 
 describes a situation, in which the production of a fiction 
 such as Atlantis in covert allusion would be exceedingly 
 natural. We are told that 
 
 " The occasion which first brought Solon prominently forward 
 as an actor on the political stage was the contest between Athens 
 and Megara respecting the possession of Salamis. The ill-success of 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 81 
 
 the attempts . .- . had led to the enactment of a law forhidding the 
 writing or saying anything to urge the Athenians to renew the con- 
 test. Solon, indignant at the dishonourable renunciation of tljeir 
 claims, and seeing that many of the younger and more impetuous 
 citizens were only deterred by the law from proposing a fresh 
 attempt, ... hit upon the device of feigning to be mad and 
 causing a report of his condition to be spread over the city; 
 whereupon hfe rushed into the agora, mounted the herald's stone, 
 and there recited a short elegiac poem of one hundred lines, . . 
 calling upon the Athenians to retrieve their disgrace and reconquer 
 the lovely island." 
 
 I 
 
 This led to the repeal of the enactment. If, in the 
 interval, encouraged by his success, he had covertly sought 
 to excite their enthusiasm in the cause of Salamis, " the 
 lovely island," would not an allegory in the disguise of' 
 Atlantis have admirably subserved his purpose? In this 
 case the legend must have taken a different shape from 
 that in which it was presented by Plato. The description, 
 however, in BJato would much more exactly befit the 
 dimensions of Salamis than those of a " lost continent," 
 as we have already seen in the way in which the descrip- 
 tions would equally fit the account given by Hanno of the 
 islands he visited in the course of his exploration. Solon's 
 love for Salamis would appear to have been the abiding 
 sentiment of his life ; but the secret of it is not so 
 apparent. 
 
 It may possibly be accounted for in this way : Solon 
 is said to have been the descendant of Codrus, the last 
 King of Athens, and Codrus was the reputed representative 
 of Cecrpps. Cecrops, however, is enveloped in the mists 
 of a mythical age. He undoubtedly represents a local 
 aboriginal ancestor, but at the same time we find him 
 invested with the features and attributes of the primeval 
 progenitor : like Cannes and Dagon, he is half-man, half- 
 fish ; like Bacchus and Saturn, he is the first cultivator. 
 " The different mythical personages of this name in Boeotia 
 
 G 
 
82 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 and Eubcea are only multiplications of the one original 
 hero " (Smith, Myth. Diet.). Dr. Smith says, with refer- 
 ence to the statement that he migrated from Sais in 
 Egypt, " But this account is not only rejected by some 
 of the ancients themselves, but by the ablest critics of 
 modern times " (Miiller, Th'irlwall). 
 
 There is a personage of this mythical age who may 
 possibly be regarded as in one degree less mythical than 
 Cecrops — Cenchreus or Cychreus, King of Salamis. If 
 Cecrops is represented as half-man, half-dragon, Cychreus 
 is said to have delivered Salamis from a dragon. He is 
 fabled to have been the son of Salamis, who gave her name 
 to the island by Poseidon, and whose mother's name was 
 Asopis. Cychreus- Asopis might pass in contraction into 
 Cecrops, and as King of Salamis might have extended his 
 dominion to the mainland. If he was the Cecrops who 
 founded the Athenian dynasty, and if the dynasty was 
 thus associated with Salamis, it would j,ccount for the 
 predilection and love of his descendant Solon for " the 
 lovely island." The sentiment of Solon almost renders' 
 such an origin probable, and there is a slight confirmation 
 of this connection between' Athens and Salamis in the 
 later legend, that while the battle of Salamis was going 
 on, a dragon appeared in one of the Athenian ships, and 
 that an oracle declared this dragon to be Cychreus (Smith, 
 Myth. Diet.). 
 
 This speculation concerning Solon would seem to re- 
 quire that he should have travelled in Egypt in early life, 
 and Plutarch (Smith, Myth. Diet.) appears to be the 
 authority for the statement that in his youth he sought 
 his fortune as a foreign trader. 
 
 Plato says that Solon devived his information from 
 the priests of Sais, " the city from which Amasis the 
 king was sprung." If this is intended to mean that 
 he visited Sais when Amasis (Aahmes) was king, he must 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 83 
 
 have visited Egypt in his latter years : Solon, circa B.C. 
 638-520 (Smith, Myth. Diet.) ; Aahmes or Amasis, 572 
 B.C. (Brugsch) ; 569-525 b.c. (Lenormant). If, however, 
 his dying instructions were that his ashes were to be 
 scattered on the soil of Salamis — and, ait any rate, the 
 tradition is recorded by Aristotle (Smith, Diet.) — his 
 sentiment regarding the island would appear to have been 
 as strong in his old age as in his youth, and similar 
 reasons for his covert allusions to Salamis might have 
 existed then. 
 
 This exhausts the few facts which were available for 
 the inquiry so far as Solon is concerned. In venturing 
 the theory as to the Periplus of Hanno, we seemed to 
 touch more tangible evidence, and to stand on firmer 
 ground. Beyond this point we can only float in a " mare 
 di sargasso " of conjecture. 
 
 But, however the .exigencies of historical truth may 
 compel us to discard the legend of Atlantis from the 
 ground of history, few would wish to see it banished from 
 the regions of poetry and imagination ; and here we must 
 recur to the pages of Mr. Donnelly, and express the hope 
 that if the legend shopld die out everywhere else, it may 
 survive in the charming lines which I append :* 
 
 " ' Mother, I've been on the cliffs out yonder, 
 Straining my eyes o'er the breakers free 
 To the lovely spot where the sun was setting, 
 Setting and sinking into the sea. 
 
 The sky was fuU of the fairest colours — 
 
 Pink and purple and paly' green, 
 With great soft masses of gray and amber. 
 
 And great bright rifts of gold between. 
 
 • Mr. Donnelly's Atlantis, p. 421, These extracts are given "from a 
 poem of Miss Eleanor 0. Donnelly of Philadelphia, ' The Sleeper's Sail,' 
 where the starving boy dreams of the pleasant and plentiful land." The 
 lines follow as above. 
 
84 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 And all the birds that way were flying, 
 
 Herqn and curlew overhead, 
 With a mighty eagle westward floating, 
 
 Every plume in their pinions red. 
 
 And then I saw it, the fairy city. 
 
 Far away o'er the waters deep ; 
 Towers and castles and chapels glowing, 
 
 Like blessed dreams that we see in sleep. 
 
 What is its name ?' ' Be still, acushla 
 
 (Thy hair is wet with the mists, my boy) ; 
 • Thou hast looked perchance on the Tir-na-n'oge, 
 Land of eternal youth and joy ! 
 
 Out of the sea, when the sun is setting, 
 
 • It rises golden and fair to view ; 
 No trace of ruin, or change of sorrow, 
 No sign of age where all is new.' . . . 
 
 The starving child seeks to reach this blessed laud in a boat, 
 and is drowned. 
 
 High on the cliifs, the lighthouse-keeper 
 Caught the sound of a piercing scream ; 
 
 Low in her hut, the lonely widow 
 
 Moaned in the maze of a troubled dream ; 
 
 And saw in her sleep a seaman' ghostly, 
 
 With seaweeds clinging in his hair, 
 Into her room, all wet and dripping, 
 
 A drowned boy on his bosom bear. 
 
 Over Death Sea, on a bridge of silver, 
 
 The child to his Father's arms had passed ; 
 
 Heaven was nearer than Tir-na-n'oge, 
 
 And the golden city was reached at last." 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 THE " PEEIPLTJS " OF HANNO. 
 
 The Periplus or Voyage of Hannp, commander of the 
 Carthaginians, B.C. 515 .(Lenormant), from Heeren's His- 
 torical Researches : Africa, p. 478. Heeren says : " I 
 , cannot, however, believe that any critic will in the present 
 day doubt its authenticity in the whole, though they 
 may its completeness." M. F. Lenormant expresses no 
 doubt. He says : " The ofiScial report of the voyage of 
 Hanno round the coast of Africa, deposited in the temple 
 of Baal-Hamon [in the Greek text "of Kronos"*] at Car- 
 thage, has been preserved to us in its entirety in a Greek 
 version." He adds, " that it is the single historical Car- 
 thaginian document of any extent which has reached us " 
 {Hist. Anc. ii. p. 413). 
 
 " It was decreed by the Carthaginians that Hanno 
 should undertake a voyage beyond the Pillars of Hercules, 
 and found Liby-Phoenician cities. [The colonists which 
 Hanno carried out consisted, as we are expressly informed, 
 of Liby-Phcenicians, and were not chosen from among the 
 citizens of Carthage, but taken from the country inhabi- 
 tants.] He sailed accordingly with sixty ships of fifty 
 oars each, and a body of men and women to the number 
 of 30,000, and provisions and other necessaries. • 
 
 " When we had passed the Pillars on our yoyage, and 
 
 had sailed beyond them for two days, we founded the first 
 
 city, which we named Thymiaterium. Below it lay an 
 
 extensive plain. Proceeding thence towards the west, we 
 
 * Vide lupro, p. 23. 
 
86 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 came to Solocis, a promontory of Libya, a place thickly 
 covered with trees, where we erected a temple to Neptune ; 
 and again proceeded for the space of half a day towards 
 the east, until we arrived at a lake lying not far from the 
 sea and filled with abundance of large reeds. Here ele- 
 phants and a great number of other wild beasts were 
 feeding. 
 
 "Having passed the lake about a day's sail, we founded 
 cities near the sea called Cariconticos and Gytte and Acra 
 and Melitta and Arambys. Thence we came to the great 
 river Lixus, which flows from Libya. On its banks the 
 Lixitse, a shepherd tribe, were feeding flocks, amongst 
 whom we continued some time on friendly terms. Beyond 
 the LixitsB dwelt the inhospitable Ethiopians, who pasture 
 a wild country intersected by large mountains, from which 
 they say the river Lixus flows. In the neighbourhood of 
 the mountains lived the Troglodytse, men of various appear- 
 ances, whom the LixitsB described as swifter in running 
 than horses. 
 
 " Having procured interpreters from them, we coasted 
 along a desert country towards the south two days. Thence 
 we proceeded towards the east the course of a day. Here 
 we found in a reces^ of a certain bay a small island con- 
 taining a circle of five stadia, where we settled a colony 
 and called it Cerne. We judged from our voyage that this 
 place lay in a direct line with Carthage ; for the length of 
 our voyage from Carthage to the Pillars was equal to that 
 from the Pillars to Cerne. 
 
 " We then came to a lake, which we reached by sailing 
 up a large river called Chretes. Thj^ lake had three 
 islands larger than Cerne ; from which, proceeding a day's 
 . sail, we came to the extremity of the lake, which was 
 overhung by large mountains, inhabited by savage men 
 clothed in skins of wild beasts, who drove us away by 
 throwing stones and hindered us from landing. Sailing 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 87 
 
 thence, we came to another river that was large and broad 
 and full of crocodiles and river-horses ; whence, returning 
 back, we came again to Cerne. 
 
 " Thence we sailed towards the south twelve days, 
 coasting the shore, the whole of which is inhabited by 
 Ethiopians, who would not wait our approach, but fled 
 from us. Their language was not intelligible even to the 
 Lixitffi who were with us. Towards the last day we 
 approached some large mountains covered with trees, the 
 wood of which was sweet-scented and variegated. Having 
 sailed by these mountains for two days, we came to an 
 immense opening of the sea, on each side of which, to- 
 wards the continent, was a plain, from which we saw by 
 night fire arising at intervals in all directions, more or 
 
 "Having taken in water there, we sailed forward five 
 days near the land, until we came to a large bay, which, 
 our interpreters informed us, was called Western Horn. 
 In this was a large island, and in the island a salt-water 
 lake, and in this another island, where when we landed we 
 could discover nothing in the day-time except trees, but 
 in the night we saw many fires burning, and heard the 
 sound of pipes, cymbals, drums, and confused shouts. 
 We were then afraid, and our diviners ordered us to 
 abandon the island. Sailing quickly away thence, we 
 passed a country burning with fires and perfumes ; and 
 streams of fire supplied from it fell into the sea. The 
 country was impassable on account of the heat. We 
 sailed quickly thence, being much terrified ; and passing 
 on for four days, we discovered a country full of fire. In 
 the middle was a lofty fire, larger than the rest, which 
 seemed to touch the stars. When day came, we discovered 
 it to be a large hill, called the Chariot of the Gods. On 
 the third day after our departure thence, having sailed by 
 those streams of fire, we arrived at a bay called the Southern 
 
88 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 Horn, at the bottom of which lay an island like the former, 
 having a lake, and in this lake another island, full of 
 savage people, the greater part of whom were women, 
 whose bodies were hairy, and whom our interpreters called 
 GorillsB. Though we pursued the men, we could not 
 seize any of them ; but all fled from us, escaping over the 
 precipices and defending themselves with stones. Three 
 women were, however, taken; but they attacked their' con- 
 ductors with their teeth and hands, and could not be pre- 
 vailed upon to accompany us. Having killed them, we 
 flayed them and brought their skins with us to Carthage. 
 We did Hot sail further on, our provisions failing us." 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 Plato's Atlantis. 
 [Professor B. Jowett's Plato, ii. pp. 602-612 ; Gritias, 113-119] 
 
 " The tale, wliich was of great length, began as follows : 
 I have before remarked, in speaking of the allotments of 
 the gods, that they distributed the whole earth into por- 
 tions differing in extent, and made themselves temples 
 and sacrifices. And Poseidon, receiving for his lot the 
 island of Atlantis, begat children by a mortal woman, and 
 settled them in a part of the island which I will proceed 
 to describe. On the side toward the sea, and in the centre 
 of the whole island, there was a plain which is said to 
 have been the fairest of all plains, and very fertile. Near 
 the plain again, and also in the centre of the island, at a 
 distance of about fifty stadia, there was a mountain, not 
 very high on any side. In this mountain there dwelt one 
 of the earth-born primeval men of that country, whose 
 name was Evenor, and he had a wife named Leucippe, 
 and they had an only daughter, who was named Cleito. 
 The maiden was growing up to womanhood when her 
 father and mother died ; Poseidon fell in love with her, 
 and had intercourse with her ; and, breaking the ground, 
 enclosed the hill in which she dwelt all round, making 
 alternate zones of sea and land, larger and smaller, en- 
 circling one another ; there were two of land and three of 
 water, which he turned as with a lathe out of the centre 
 of the island, equidistant every way, so that no man could 
 get to the island, for ships and voyages were not yet heard 
 of. He himself, as he was a god, found no difficulty in 
 making special arrangements for the centre island, bring- 
 
90 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 ing two streams of water under the earth, which he caused 
 to ascend as springs, one of warm ■\Vater and the other of 
 cold, and making every -variety of food to spring up abun- 
 dantly in the earth. He also begat and brought up five 
 pairs of male children, dividing the island of Atlantis into 
 ten portions : he gave to the first-born of the eldest pair 
 his mother's dwelling and the surrounding allotment, 
 which was the largest and best, and made him king over 
 the rest ; the others he made princes, -and gave them rule 
 over many men and a large territory. And he named 
 them all : the eldest, who was king, he named Atlas, and 
 from him the whole island and the ocean received the 
 name of Atlantic. To his twin-brother, who was born 
 after him, and obtained as his lot the extremity of the 
 island towards the Pillars of Heracles, as far as the 
 country which is still called the region of Gades in that 
 part of the world, he gave the name which inthe Hellenic 
 language is Eumelus,- in the language of the country 
 which is named after him, Gadeirus. Of the second pair 
 of twins, he called one Ampheres and the other Evsemon. 
 To the third pair of twins he gave the name Mneseus to 
 the elder, and Autochthon to the one who followed him. 
 Of the fourth pair of twins, he called the elder Elasippus 
 and the younger Mestor. And of the fifth pair, he gave 
 to the elder the name of Azaes, and to the younger Dia- 
 prepes. All these and their descendants were the inhabi- 
 tants and rulers of divers islands in the open sea; and 
 also, as has been already said, they held sway in the 
 other direction over the country within the Pillars as far 
 as Egypt and Tyrrhenia. Now Atlas had a numerous and 
 honourable family, and his eldest branch always retained 
 the kingdom, which the eldest son handed on to his eldest 
 for many generations ; and they had such an amount of 
 wealth as was never before possessed by kings and poten- 
 tates, and is not likely ever to be again, and they were 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 91 
 
 furnished with everything which they could have, both in 
 city and country. For, because of the greatness of their 
 empire, many things were brought to them from foreign 
 countries, and the island itself provided much of what was 
 required by them for the uses of life. In the first place, 
 they dug out of the earth whatever was to be found there, 
 mineral as well as metal, and that which is now only a 
 name, and was then something more than a name — ori- 
 chalcum — was dug out of the earth in many parts of the 
 island, and, vsdth the exception of gold, was esteemed the 
 most precious of metals among the men of those days. 
 There was an abundance of wood for carpenters' work, and 
 sufficient maintenance for tame and wild animals. More- 
 over, there were a great number of elephants in the island, 
 and there was provision for animals of every kind, both 
 for those which live in lakes and marshes and rivers, and 
 also for those which live in mountains and on plains, and 
 therefore for the animal which is the largest and most 
 voracious of them. Also, whatever fragrant things there 
 are in the earth, whether roots, or herbage, or woods, or 
 distilling drops of flowers or fruits, grew and thrived in 
 that land ; and again, the cultivated fruit of the earth, 
 both the dry edible fruit and other species of food, which 
 we call by the general name of legumes, and the fruits 
 having a hard rind, affording drinks, and meats, and oint- 
 ments, and good store of chestnuts and the like, which 
 may be used to play with, and are fruits which spoil with 
 keeping — and the pleasant kinds of dessert which console 
 us after dinner, when we are full and tired of eating — all 
 these that sacred island lying beneath the sun brought 
 forth fair and wondrous in infinite abundance. All these 
 things they received from the earth, and they employed 
 themselves in constructing their temples, and palaces, 
 and harbours, and docks ; and they arranged the whole 
 country in the following manner : First of all they bridged 
 
92 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 over the zones of sea which surrounded the ancient metro- 
 polis, and made a passage into and out of the royal palace ;" 
 and then they began to build the palace in the habitation 
 of the god and of their ancestors. This they continued to 
 ornament in successive generations, every king surpassing ' 
 the one who came before him to the utmost of his power, 
 until they made the building a marvel to behold for size 
 and for beauty. -And, beginning from the sea, they dug 
 a canal three hundred feet in width and one hundred feet 
 in depth, and fifty stadia in length, which they carried 
 through to the outermost zone, making a passage from 
 the sea up to this, which became a harbour, and leaving 
 an opening sufficient to enable the largest vessels to find 
 ingress. Moreover, they divided the zones of land which 
 parted the zones of sea, constructing bridges of such a 
 width as would leave a passage for a single trireme to pass 
 out of one into another, and roofed them over ; and there 
 was a way underneath for the ships, for the banks of the 
 zones were raised considerably above the water. Now the 
 largest of the zones into which a passage was cut from 
 the sea was three stadia in breadth, and the zone of land 
 which came next of equal breadth ; but the next two, as 
 well the zone of water as of land, were two stadia, and 
 the one which surrounded the central island was a stadium 
 only in width. The island in which the palace was situ- 
 ated had a diameter of five stadia. This, and the zones 
 and the bridge, which was the sixth part of a stadium in 
 width, they surrounded by a stone wall, on either side 
 placing towers, and gates on the bridges where the sea 
 passed in. The stone which was used in the work they 
 quarried from underneath the centre island and from 
 underneath the zones, on the outer as well as the inner 
 side. One kind of stone was white, another black, and a 
 third red ; and, as they quarried, they at the same time 
 hollowed out docks double within, having roofs formed out 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 93 
 
 pf the native rock. Some of their buildings were simple, 
 hut in others they put together different stones, which 
 they intermingled for the sake of ornament, to be a natural 
 source of delight. The entire circuit of the wall which 
 went round the outermost one they covered with a coating 
 of brass, and the circuit of the next wall they coated with 
 tin, and the third, which encompassed the citadel, flashed 
 with the red light of orichalcum. The palaces in. the 
 interior of the citadel were constructed in this wise : In 
 the centre was a holy temple dedicated to Cleito and Posei- 
 don, which remained inaccessible, and was surrounded by 
 an enclosure of gold ; this was the spot in which they ori- 
 ginally begat the race of the ten princes, and thither they 
 annually brought the fruits of the earth in their season 
 from all the ten portions, and performed sacrifices to each 
 of them. Here, too, was Poseidon's own temple, of a 
 stadium in length and half a stadium in width, and of a 
 proportionate height, having a sort of barbaric splendour. 
 All the outside- of the temple, with the exception of the 
 pinnacles, they covered with silver, and the pinnacles with 
 gold. In the interior of the temple the roof was of ivory, 
 adorned everywhere with gold and silver and orichalcum ; 
 all the other parts of the walls and pillars and floor they 
 lined with orichalcum. In the temple they placed statues 
 of gold : there was the god himself standing in a chariot 
 — the charioteer of six winged horses — and of such a size 
 that he touched the roof of the building with his head ; 
 around him there were 'a hundred Nereids riding on dol- 
 phins, for such was thought to be the number of them in 
 that day. There were also in the interior of the temple 
 other images which had been dedicated by private indi- 
 viduals. And around the temple on the outside were 
 placed statues of gold of all the ten kings and of their 
 wives ; and there were many other great offerings, both of 
 kings and of private individuals, coming both from the 
 
94 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 city itself and the foreign cities over which they held sway. 
 There was an altar, too, which in size and workmanship 
 corresponded to the rest of the work, and there were palaces 
 in like manner which answered to the greatness of the 
 kingdom and the glory of the temple. 
 
 "In the next place, they used fountains hoth of cold 
 and hot springs; these were very abundant, and both 
 kinds wonderfully adapted to use by reason of the sweet- 
 ness and excellence of their waters. They constructed 
 buildings about them, and planted suitable trees; also 
 cisterns, some open to the heaven, others which they 
 roofed over, to be used in winter as warm baths : there 
 were the king's baths, and the baths of private persons, 
 which were kept apart ; also separate baths for women, 
 and others again for horses and cattle, and to them they 
 gave as much adornment as was suitable for them. The 
 water which ran off they carried, some to the grove of 
 Poseidon, where were growing all manner of trees of won- 
 derful height and beauty, owing to the excellence of the 
 soil ; the remainder was conveyed by aqueducts which 
 passed over the bridges to the outer circles : and there 
 were many temples built and dedicated to many gods ; 
 also gardens and places of exercise, some for men, and 
 some set apart for horses, in both of the two islands formed 
 by the zones ; and in the centre of the larger of the two 
 there was a racecourse of a stadium in width, and in 
 length allowed to extend all round the island, for horses 
 to race in. Also there were guard-houses at intervals for 
 the body-guard, the more trusted of whom had their 
 duties appointed to them in the . lesser zone, which was 
 nearer the Acropolis ; while the most trusted of all had 
 houses given them within the citadel, and about the per- 
 sons of the kings. The docks were full of triremes and 
 naval stores, and all things were .quite ready for use. 
 Enough of the plan of the royal palace- Crossing the 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 95 
 
 outer harbours, which were three in number, you would 
 come to a wall which began at the sea and went all round : 
 this was everywhere distant fifty stadia from the largest 
 zone and harbour, and enclosed the whole, meeting at the 
 mouth of the channel toward the sea. The entire area 
 was densely crowded with habitations^ and the canal and 
 the largest of the harbours were full of vessels and mer- 
 chants coming from all parts, who, from their numbers, 
 kept up a multitudinous sound of human voices and din 
 of all sorts night and day. I have repeated his descrip- 
 tions of the city and the parts about the ancient palace 
 nearly as he gave them, and' now I must endeavour to 
 describe the nature and arrangement of the rest of the 
 country. The whole country was described as being very 
 lofty and precipitous on the side of the sea, but the 
 country immediately about and surrounding the city was 
 a level plain, itself surrounded by mountains which de- 
 scended toward the sea ; it was smooth and even, but of 
 an oblong shape, extending in one direction three thousand 
 stadia, and going up the country from the sea through the 
 centre of the island two thousand stadia ; the whole region 
 of the island lies toward the south, and is sheltered from 
 the north. The surrounding mountains he celebrated for 
 their number and size and beauty, in which they exceeded 
 all that are now to be seen anywhere ; having in them also 
 many wealthy inhabited villages, and rivers and lakes, and 
 meadows supplying food enough for every animal, wild or 
 tame, and wood of various sorts, abundant for every kind 
 of M'ork. I will now describe the plain, which had been 
 cultivated during many ages by many generations of kings. 
 It was rectangular, and for the most part straight and 
 oblong ; and what it wanted of the straight line followed 
 the line of the circular ditch. The depth and width and 
 length of this ditch were incredible, and gave the impres- 
 sion that such a work, in addition to so many other works, 
 
96 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 could hardly have been wrought by the hand of man. But 
 I must say what I have heard. It was excavated to the 
 depfrh of a hundred feet, and its breadth was a stadium 
 everywhere ; it was carried round the whole of the plain, 
 and was ten thousand stadia in length. It received the 
 streams which came- down from the mountains, and wind- 
 ing round the plain, and touching the city at various 
 points, was there let off into the sea. From above, like- 
 wise, straight canals of a hundred feet in width were cut 
 in the plain, and again let off into the ditch, toward the 
 sea ; these canals were at intervals of a hundred stadia, 
 and by them they brought down the wood from the moun- 
 tains to the city, and conveyed the fruits of the earth in 
 ships, cutting transverse passages from one canal into 
 another, and to the city. Twice in the year they gathered 
 the fruits of the earth — in winter having the benefit of the 
 rains, and in summer introducing the water of the canals. 
 As to the population, each of the lots in the plain had an 
 appointed chief of men who vyere fit for military service, 
 and the size of the lot was to be a square of ten stadia 
 each way, and the total number of all the lots was sixty 
 thousand. 
 
 "And of the inhabitants of the mountains and of the 
 rest of the country there was also a vast multitude haying 
 leaders, to whom they were assigned according to their 
 dwellings and villages. The leader was required to furiiish 
 for the war the sixth portion of a war-chariot, so as to 
 make up a total of ten thousand chariots ; also two horses 
 and riders upon them, and a light chariot without a seat, 
 accompanied by a fighting man on foot carrying a small 
 shield, and having a charioteer mounted to guide the 
 horses ; also, he was bound to furnish two heavy-armed 
 men, two archers, two slingers, three stone-shooters, and 
 three javelin men, who were skirmishers, and four sailors 
 to make up a complement of twelve hundred ships. Such 
 
. PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 97 
 
 was the order of war in the royal city— that of the other 
 nine governments was "different in each of them, and would 
 be wearisome to relate. As to offices and honours, the 
 following was the arrangement from the first : Each of the 
 ten kings, in his own division and in his own city, had 
 the absolute control of the citizens, and in many cases of 
 the laws, punishing and slaying whomsoever he would. 
 
 " Now the relations of their goverments to one another 
 were regulated by the injunctions of Poseidon as the law 
 had handed them down. These were inscribed by the 
 first men on a column of orichalcum, which was situated 
 in the middle of the island, at the temple of Poseidon, 
 whither the people were gathered together every fifth and 
 sixth year alternately, thus giving equal honour to the odd 
 and to the even number. And when they were gathered 
 together, they consulted about public affairs, and inquired 
 if any one had transgressed in anything, and passed judg- 
 ment on him accordingly — and before they passed judg- 
 ment they gave their pledges to one another in this wise : 
 There were bulls who had the range of the temple of Posei- 
 don ; and the ten who were left alone in the temple, after 
 they had offered prayers to the gods that they might take 
 the sacrifices which were acceptable to them, hunted the 
 bulls. without weapons, but with staves and nooses; and 
 the bull which they caught they led up to the column ; 
 the victim was then struck on the head by them, and slain 
 over the sacred inscription. Now on the column, besides 
 the law, there was inscribed an oath invoking mighty 
 curses on the disobedient. When, therefore, after offer- 
 ing sacrifice according to their customs, they had burnt 
 the limbs of the bull, they mingled a cup and cast in a 
 clot of blood for each of them ; the rest of the victim they 
 took to the fire, after having made a purification of the 
 column all round. Then they drew from the cup in golden 
 vessels, and, pouring a libation on the fire, they swore 
 
 H 
 
98 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 that they would judge according to the laws on the column, 
 and would punish any one who had previously transgressed, 
 and that for the future they would not, if they could help, 
 transgress any of the inscriptions, and would not command 
 or obey any ruler who commanded them to act otherwise 
 than according to the laws of their father Poseidon. This 
 was the prayer which each of them offered up for himself 
 and for his family, at the same time drinking, and dedi- 
 cating the vessel in the temple of the god; and, after 
 spending some necessary time at supper, when darkness 
 came on and the fire about the sacrifice was cool, all of 
 them put on most beautiful azure robes, and, sitting on 
 the ground at night near the embers of the sacrifices on 
 which they had sworn, and extinguishing all the fire about 
 the temple, they received and gave judgment, if any of 
 them had any accusation to bring against any one ; and, 
 when they had given judgment, at daybreak they wrote 
 down their sentences on a golden tablet, and deposited 
 them as memorials with their robes. There were many 
 special laws which the several kings had inscribed about 
 the temples, but the most important was the following : 
 That they were not to take up arms against one another, 
 and they were all to come to the rescue if any one in any 
 city attempted to overthrow the royal house. Like their 
 ancestors, they were to deliberate in common about war 
 and other matters, giving the supremacy to the family of 
 Atlas ; and the king was not to have the power of life and 
 death over any of his kinsmen, unless he had the assent 
 of the majority of the ten kings. 
 
 " Such was the vast power which the god settled in 
 the lost island of Atlantis ; and this he afterwards directed 
 against our land on the "following pretext, as tradition 
 tells : For many generations, as long as the divine nature 
 lasted in them, they were obedient to the laws, and well- 
 affectioned toward the gods, who were their kinsmen ; for 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 99 
 
 they possessed true and in every way great spirits, prac- 
 tising gentleness and wisdom in the various chances of 
 I'fe, and in their intercourse with one another. They de- 
 spised everything but virtue, not caring for their present 
 state of life, and thinking lightly on the possession of 
 gold and other property, which seemed only a burden to 
 them ; neither were they intoxicated by luxury ; nor did 
 wealth deprive them of their self-control ; but they were 
 sober, and saw clearly that all these goods are increased 
 by virtuous friendship with one another, and that by ex- 
 cessive zeal for them, and honour of them, the good of 
 them is lost, and friendship perishes with them. 
 
 "By such reflections, and by the continuance in them 
 of a divine nature, all that which we have described waxed 
 and increased in them ; but when this divine portion began 
 to fade away in them, and became diluted too often, and 
 with too much of the mortal admixture, and the human 
 ijature got the upper-hand, then, they being unable to bear 
 their fortune, became unseemly, and to him .who had an 
 eye to see, they began to appear base, and had lost the 
 fairest of their precious gifts ; but to those who had no eye 
 to see the true happiness, they still appeared glorious and 
 blessed at the very time when they were filled with un- 
 righteous avarice and power. Zeus, the god of gods, who 
 rules with law, and is able to see into such things, per- 
 ceiving that an honourable race was in a most wretched 
 state,' and wanting to inflict punishment on them, that 
 they might be chastened and improved, collected all the 
 gods into his most holy habitation, which, being placed in 
 the centre of the world, sees all things that partake of 
 generation. And when he had called them together he 
 spake as follows :'' 
 
 [Here Plato's story abruptly ends.] 
 
APPENDIX C. 
 
 THEORY AS TO THE PEOMINENCE OF THE BULL IN 
 TEADITION. 
 
 In a pamphlet, in reply to an interesting article in the 
 Month, hy the JElev. H. W. Lucas, in exposition of what 
 he happily termed " the nature myth " theory, I ventured 
 to suggest a counter-theory for the prominence of the bull 
 in connection with the Diluvian tradition ; and as I am 
 not aware that it has been advanced before, and as I have 
 referred to it in the text, I reprint it here. 
 
 One of the myths which Mr. Lucas brings in illustra? 
 tion is the myth of Indra, and as he is a personage of the 
 Eigveda, and has good claims to be regarded as primitive, 
 Mr. Lucas is fully justified in doing so. Mr. Lucas says, 
 " There can be no doubt that in the Vedic hymns Indra 
 is the rain-giving firmament." With Mr. Cox he is "the" 
 solar god ; " the god of the bright heaven ;" " one of the 
 powers which produce the sights of the changing sky," 
 and also "the giver of rain," and "the ra,in-bringer " 
 (Cox, Ai-yan Myths, i. 336-41). Signer Angelo de Guber- 
 natis, Zool. Myths, i. 8, says somewhat obscurely, "Like 
 the winds, his companions, the Sun Indra, the sun (and 
 the luminous sky) hidden in the dark, who strives to 
 dissipate the shadows — the sun hidden in the clouds, 
 that thunders and lightens to dissolve it in rain, is repre- 
 sented as a poiverful bull, as the bull of bulls, invircible 
 son of the cow, that bellows like the Maratas." If the 
 mythologists will forgive me, I will endeavour to take this 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 101 
 
 bull' by the horns. Mr. Cox, I observe, keeps this name 
 of the Bull in the background when speaking directly of 
 Indra, although when speaking of bulls in mythology he 
 refers to it. 
 
 But how came the luminous sky to get these incon- 
 gruous associations with the bull ? All are agreed that 
 it is through Indra's connection with rain. Still, why the 
 identification with the bull, " the bull of bulls "? Signor 
 Angelo de Gubernatis comes to the rescue and says, " To 
 increase the number of cows .... is the dream — the 
 ideal — of the andient, Aryan. The bull, the fcecundator, 
 is the type of male perfection, the symbol of regal 
 strength. Hence it is only natural that the two prominent 
 animal figures in the mythical heaven should be the cow 
 and the bull." This reasoning may appear very cogent 
 to Signor Angelo de Gubernatis, and " may be highly 
 creditable to him," but for man in his infancy, man in 
 the gelatinous stage of pure imagination, it must have 
 been a great effort, and an effort to which the poetical 
 faculty could have contributed little assistance. It 
 amounts to this, that as according to primitive observa- 
 tion grass grew when the rain fell, and that when the 
 grass grew more bulls would fatten, and that when the 
 rain fell it fell from heaven, therefore the heaven above 
 must be a great cow or bull, or contain a great cow or 
 bull ! It is easy to see, however, that this anomalous 
 introduction of the bull ill accords with Mr. Cox's really 
 poetical and refined speculations ; and, accordingly, by a 
 transcendent efibrt of the imagination, he makes the Bull 
 Indra identical with the " Lord of the pure ether "! 
 (i. 437.) Surely a greater incongruity was never con- 
 ceived by mythologist or poet. 
 
 Let us now see how this question can be worked on 
 the lines of traditi.on. 
 
102 Plato's atlantis. 
 
 Mr. Cox (i. 336) admits that the myth of Indra may 
 embody a religious idea : "that a moral or spiritual element 
 may be discerned in some of the characteristics of this 
 deity is beyond question, that the whole idea of the god 
 can be traced to the religious instinct of mankind, the 
 boldest champion will scarcely venture to afBrm." Neither 
 is it necessary to affirm it. The admixture of the mythic 
 and historical is no difficulty for us, but it is fatal to Mr. 
 Max Miiller's theory, unless the religious or historical- 
 element can be proved to be secondary. 
 
 Now the counter traditional explanation which I shall 
 . offer must be regarded as primary and fundamental, as it 
 is intimately connected with the Deluge, and goes back 
 to the second commencement of the human race. There 
 is a tradition that Noah entered the ark when the sun was 
 in the ^ign of the Bull in the Zodiac. 
 
 It will hardly be disputed that this was a date which 
 would have impressed itself upon the recollection of man- 
 kind. It was the date when the unintermittent rain 
 commenced, and the sign . of the Bull therefore would 
 naturally henceforward have been associated in men's 
 minds with rain and water, whether in fear remembered 
 in connection with havoc and destruction, or whether in 
 pleasant anticipation as the catastrophe faded from recol- 
 lection, and in the Indian plains drought came to be the 
 greater evil deprecated. 
 
 In all the Diluvian traditions the alternations from 
 gloom to rejoicing, the transitions from destruction to 
 subsequent renovation, the contrasts of death and life, 
 have been as much remarked, and are as much in keeping 
 with the narrative in Genesis, as are the contrasts of light 
 and darkness with the solar myths. 
 
 Let us now listen to some of those Vedio songs, and 
 see if this key does not equally "unlock the Mythology." 
 Mr. Lucas's quotation, from the Eigveda, shall have pre- 
 
PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 103 
 
 cedence (the Month, p. 192).* "I declare the former 
 valorous deeds of Indra [the Bull] which the thunderer 
 has achieved, he clove the cloud : he cast the waters down, 
 
 he broke (a way) for the torrents of the raountains 
 
 Inasmuch, Indra, as thou hast struck the first-born of 
 the clouds [or first struck the clouds poetically with the 
 point of his horns, commencing the Duluge] thou hast 
 destroyed the delusions of the deluders, and thus engender- 
 ing the sun, the dawn, and the firmament, thou hast not 
 left an enemy to oppose thee. . . ." Everything here is 
 in keeping except the engendering the Firmament. Taking 
 their statement it would result, however, that the Bull or 
 Indra could not be identical with the firmament, as in 
 some sense of their own he was supposed to precede it or 
 engender it. But if the firmament meant was the new 
 firmament which arose after the Deluge after forty days 
 and forty nights' rain, the notion might be connected 
 with reminiscences of renovation after the Deluge, when 
 'Indra, "as the sun," "in the serene heaven shone out 
 when the deluging clouds had passed away " (Cox, i. p. 
 337). 
 
 Let us now pursue the career of Indra, in the pages 
 of Mr. Cox, "although he has" (p. 339) "but little 
 of a purely moral or spiritual element in his charac- 
 ter. . . " " It is true that he is sometimes invoked as 
 witnessing all the deeds of men, and thus as taking cogniz- 
 ance of their sins." Of Indra, at p. 340, it is said, 
 " Thou thunderer hast shattered with thy bolt the broad 
 and massive cloud into fragments, and hast sent down the 
 
 * Mr. CiarleB B. Govat {Journal of the Boy. Asia. Soc, new Series, 
 vol. i. p. 1, 1870), in his account of "the Pongol festival in Southern 
 India," says, " Krishna is always declared by the Brahmins to be the 
 Pongol god ; but the tradition itself hears witness that the feast is older 
 than the god. The tale is that when the great wave of Krishna-worship 
 passed over the peninsula, the people were so enamoui'ed of him that 
 they ceased to perform the Pongor rites to Indra. This made the latter 
 deity so angry that he poured down a flood upon the earth." 
 
104 • PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 waters that were confined in it to flow at will; verily thou 
 alone possessest all power." " At the birth of thee who 
 art resplendent [" resplendent " would apply to a star or 
 constellation, and by its birth might be intended the new- 
 era, which was inaugurated by its appearance or promi- 
 nence in the heavens at the commencement of the Deluge] 
 trembled the earth through fear of thy wrath, the mighty 
 clouds were confined ; they destroyed, spreading the waters 
 over dry places." Mr. Cox interpolates thus — " destroyed 
 (the distress of drought) ;" but that is only a gloss of his 
 own, and the "dry places" may signify high and dry, 
 places never reached by the waters before. At p. 342 we 
 find Indra especially described "as the god of battles, the 
 giver of victory to his worshippers, the destroyers of the 
 enemies of religious rites, the subverter of the cities of the 
 Asuras." 
 
 In De Gubernatis (i. p. 9) it is said that the cloud in 
 the Rigveda is often represented " as an immense great- 
 bellied barrel (Kabandkas), which is carried by the divine 
 Bull." " The terrible bull bellows and shows his strength 
 and sharpens his horns, the splendid bull with sharpened 
 horns, who is able of himself to overthrow all peoples." 
 " The bull Indra is called the bull with the thousand 
 horns who rises from the sea." But these verses were 
 composed by a pastoral people, who, if the descendants of 
 Japhet, had probably always dwelt inland since the De- 
 luge. At p. 19, Indra is represented as discomfiting "the 
 monster (rakshohanan) who destroys by fire the monsters 
 that live in darkness." Another Vedic hymn informs us 
 that the monster Valas had the shape of a cow ; another 
 hymn represents the cloud as the cow that forms the 
 waters, and that has now one foot, now four, now eight, 
 now nine [more applicable to the constellation than to the 
 rain-giving firmament], and fills the highest heavens with 
 sounds [commencement of the Deluge] ; still another 
 
FLATUS ATLANTIS. 105 
 
 hymn sings that the sun hurls his golden disc in the 
 variegated cow ; they who have been carried off, who are 
 guarded by the monster serpent, the waters, the cows 
 become the wives of the demons." 
 
 This will suffice tc^how that these poems maybe read in 
 another than the present popular sense. It must be noted 
 that the cavern in which the cows are concealed is also, 
 according to Bryant and Faber, a common form of the 
 tradition of the ark. Moreover, " three or seven brothers 
 and sisters figure in these conflicts and 'adventures. The 
 number three corresponds with the sons of Noah, the 
 number seven with the persons saved in the ark, if re- 
 ferred to separately from the Patriarch. As to the recur- 
 rence of the numbers seven and eight, vide Tradition^ p. 
 193 : compare the representation of Horus, who " is fre- 
 quently represented as the eighth, conducting the bark of 
 the gods with the seven great gods." The Patriarch might 
 get detached in tradition in several ways, e.g. when he is 
 located in or identified with the sun, and the rest in other 
 p.irts of the heaven. In the Vedas, however, when men- 
 tioned in connection with the Bull, " the seven shiners " 
 may very well be the seven brilliant stars, which forni the 
 Pleiades in the constellation- Taurus (in the neck of the 
 Bull). The Hyades in the same constellation, Mr. Lucas 
 tells us, were associated with " moisture," and it might 
 have been added, as the " tristes Hyades," with ill- 
 omen to mariners. 
 
 It may be asked whether, beyond the indirect, I have 
 any direct testimony to this tradition, that Noah entered 
 the ark when the sun was in the sign of Taurus or the 
 Bull. I cannot recall at this moment where I met with 
 the tradition in the first instance, but I have since come 
 upon confirmatory evidence, with which I shall conclude, 
 as I think it will sufficiently establish my point. 
 
 As the Zodiac commences with Aries, it is presumable 
 
106 PLATO"S ATLANTIS. 
 
 that the primitive months commenced their series also 
 with Aries, the Earn. 
 
 The traditional character of the Zodiac has often been 
 remarked — and this is fally confirmed by Mr. George 
 Smith's recent Assyrian discoveries. In his Chaldcean 
 Account of Genesis, p. 69 : 
 
 " In the fifth tablet of the Creation legend we read : 
 
 1. 'It was delightful all that was fixed by the great gods. 
 
 2. ' Stars, their appearance [in figures] of animals he arranged. 
 3 ' To fix the year through the observation of their constella- 
 tions 
 
 4. ' Twelve months (or signs) of stars in three rows he arranged.' '' 
 
 And at p. 73, Mr. G. Smith says : 
 
 " We then come to the creation of the heavenly orbs, which are 
 described in the inscription as arranged like animals, while the 
 Bible says they were set as ' Ughts in the firmament of heaven ;' 
 and just as the book of Genesis says they were set for signs and 
 seasons, for days and years, so the inscription describes that the 
 stars were set in courses to point out the year. The twelve con- 
 stellations or signs of the Zodiac and two other bands of constella- 
 tions are mentioned, just as two sets of twelve stars each are men- 
 tioned by the Greeks, one north and one south of the Zodiac." 
 
 In our tables, Taurus, or the bull, is the second sign 
 of the Zodiac. Now Genesis (vii. 11) tells us that Noah 
 entered the ark on the 17th of the second month. Again, 
 I find in Mon. F. Lenormant's Fragmens Cosmogoniques 
 de Berose, 1871, p. 211, that the second Assyrian month 
 was named " the Bull," also the Accadian second month, 
 and also the Hebrew. "Les nom des mois juifs sont les 
 noms des mois CHALDEO-assyriens." 
 
 I see further trace of the tradition in the following 
 passage from Canon Kawlinson's Illustrations of the 
 Old Testavient, p. 18, bearing in mind that the Vedic 
 legends of the dog {canis major) are connected with the 
 legends of Indra (De Gubernatis, ii. 19), " The Cherokee 
 Indians had a legend of the destruction of mankind by a 
 
PLATO S ATLANTIS. 107 
 
 deluge, and of the preservation of a single family in a 
 boat, to the construction of which they had been incited 
 by a dog." 
 
 Plutarch, in his treatise De facie in orbe Lunce, c. 26 
 (vide Sir G. Cornewall Lewis's Astronomy of the Ancients, 
 p. 491), says that the people of the island of Oxygia (com- 
 pare deluge of Oxyges*) " pay the principal honours to 
 Saturn, and after him to Hercules. When the planet 
 Saturn (compare analogy between Saturn and Noah, Tra- 
 dition, &c., p. 211) is in the sign of Taurus (the bull), a 
 coincidence which occurs every thirty years, they send out 
 a body of men, selected by lot, to seek their fortunes across 
 the sfa." Mr. Lucas's instinct as a mythologist will tell 
 him that true tradition may be found embodied in fabulous 
 narration, and he will not peremptorily reject the evidence, 
 even if the geographical latitude of Oxygia is not precisely 
 ascertainable. 
 
 These instances are taken more or less casually, and 
 the list is far from being exhausted. It is very probable 
 that other traces might be found. However widely we 
 may differ, we are agreed as to the importance of the 
 inquiry. There are those who deride the study of Mytho- 
 logy, although we might truly extend the dictum of 
 Proudhon, that " au fond de toute question on trouve 
 toujours la theologie," and add, "et la Mythologie." The 
 prominence given to it in current literature is in attesta- 
 tion of this remark. 
 
 No theory, not excepting Darwinism, so seductively 
 
 * " The Greeks had two different traditions as to the Deluge which 
 destroyed tde primitive race. The first was connected with the name of 
 Oxyges . . . personnage tout a fait mythique. . . . His name even wus 
 deived from a root or word {de celui qui) which originally imp ied the 
 Deluge ^in Sanscrit ' Augha '). They narrated that in his time the whole 
 country was invaded by the Deluge, tue waters of which reached the 
 hf avens, and from which he escaped in a vessel, with some companions. 
 The second tradi'ion was the Tfiessalian legend of Deucalion" (F. 
 Lenurmaut, Manuel d'Mist. Ancienne, ii. p. 69). 
 
J.08 PLATO'S ATLANTIS. 
 
 takes back the history of the human race, and shrouds it 
 in the indefinite lapse of ages, as the mythology of the 
 winds and the elements. 
 
 Mine is perhaps only a feeble attempt to get, so to 
 speak, at the back of the North Wind ; but any attempt 
 which succeeds in doing so will reveal as much to science 
 (however grim the revelation and dipappointing to golden 
 dreams) as the discovery of the North Pole.