Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

THE CONFLAGRATION OF PHAETON. 165

like, in the waters; or the intelligent children of the earth betake themselves to deep caverns for protection from the conflagration.

How completely does all this accord, in chronological order and in its details, with the Scandinavian legend ; and with what reason teaches us must have been the con‘sequences to the earth if a comet had fallen upon it!

And the most ancient of the ancient world, the nation that stood farthest back in historical time, the Egyptians, believed that this legend of Phaéton really represented the contact of the earth with a comet.

When Solon, the Greek lawgiver, visited Egypt, six hundred years before the Christian era, he talked with the priests of Sais about the Deluge of Deucalion. I quote the following from Plato (“ Dialogues,” xi, 517, Zimeus) :

“Thereupon, one of the priests, who was of very great age, said, ‘O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children, and there is never an old man who is an Hellene.’ Solon, hearing this, said, ‘What do you mean?’ ‘I mean to say,’ he replied, ‘that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you the reason of this: there have been, and there will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes. There is a story which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Phaéthon, the son of Helios, haying yoked the steeds in his father’s chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunder-bolt. Now, this has the form of a myth, but really signifies a declination of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth recurring at long intervals of time: when this happens, those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the sea-shore.’”