archers, two slingers, three light-armed soldiers, the same number of stone-shooters and javelin-men, besides four seamen to make up the crews of one thousand two hundred vessels. Thus were the military affairs of this city arranged. Respecting those of the nine other allotments, there were different regulations, which it would be too tedious to narrate.

The following were the systems of official services and honors: Each of the ten kings ruled supreme over the people and the laws in his own allotment and over his own city, constraining and punishing whom he pleased. As the law was handed down to them, the government and commonwealth in each allotment were regulated by the injunctions of Poseidon. Inscriptions [of this law] were made by the first [kings] on a column of orichalcum, which was placed in the centre of the island, in the temple of Poseidon, where the kings consulted together every fifth year, (which they afterward changed to every sixth year,) each king representing at these meetings the entire kingdom and its subdivisions. The kings, when they were assembled, deliberated on matters respecting the common weal, and inquired what transgressions each had committed, and each respectively rendered his decision. Before they sat in judgment they gave one

"This agreement of the traditions of the most diverse peoples manifests itself in a striking manner when compared with the number assigned by the Bible to the antediluvian patriarchs. There are ten in the account in Genesis, and a singular persistence reproduces this number of ten in the legends of a very great number of nations, whose primitive ancestors are still enveloped in the mist of fables. *** The preserved fragments of the celebrated historical papyrus of Turin, containing a list of Egyptian dynasties traced in hieratic writing, seem clearly to indicate that the editor of this canon gives ten gods, who in the beginning ruled men."-Les Origines de l' Histoire d' après la Bible et les Traditions des Peuples Orientaux, par François Lenormant, professeur d' archéologie près la Bibliothèque nationale. Deuxième édition. Paris, 1880. PP. 214, 215, 227.

another pledges, according to the following custom : The ten, when they were assembled in the temple, after invoking the god to receive their sacrifice propitiously, went swordless, with staves and nooses, among the bulls grazing within the temple inclosure, and the bull they took they brought to the column and slaughtered it, the head of the bull being under the inscriptions. Besides the laws on the column, there was a malediction written containing denunciations of evil on the disobedient. When, therefore, in compliance with their laws, they sacrificed and burned all the limbs of the bull, they filled a goblet with the blood of the animal, and threw the remainder into the fire, in order to purify the column. Afterward dipping from the goblet with golden cups, they poured libations of blood on the fire, and swore to do justice according to the laws on the column, to punish any one who had previously transgressed them, besides swearing that they themselves would never afterward willingly transgress the inscribed laws, or rule or obey any ruler governing otherwise than according to his father's laws. Then after invoking these denunciations on themselves and their descendants, and after drinking from the cup and depositing it in the temple of the god, and sitting the necessary time at supper, they, as soon as it was dark and the fire of the sacrifice had ceased to burn, dressed themselves in beautiful dark-blue robes, and sat down on the ground, near the embers of the sacrifice, over which they had sworn. temple having been extinguished then mutually judged one another respecting any accusation of transgressing the laws. After their acts of judgment were ended, and daylight had come, they inscribed their decisions on a golden tablet and depos

All the fire in the for the night, they

ited it and their dresses in the temple as memorials. There were also many other special laws respecting the privileges of the kings. The principal ones were that they should never wage war upon one another, that all should lend their aid when any attempt was made in their cities to destroy the royal race, that they should consult together as their ancestors had done respecting the right course to be pursued in war and in other matters, and that they should allot the government of the empire to the Atlantic race. They did not allow the king, however, any authority to put to death any of his kinsmen, unless the execution was approved by more than five of the ten.' "

The priest also related that it was "about nine thousand years ago that war was proclaimed between those dwelling outside the Pillars of Hercules and all those within them." Athens "was the leader of the latter people and directed the operations of the war, and the kings of the Atlantic island were the com: manders of the forces of the former."3

"But in a later age,' said the priest, 'by extraordinary earthquakes and deluges, bringing destruction in a single day and night, the whole of your formidable race was at once sunk under the earth, and the Atlantic island in like manner plunged beneath the sea and concealed from view; therefore that sea is, at present, neither passable nor to be traced out, being

'Plato Critias, or the Atlantic.

*"These figures of the mythic Egyptian chronology are still very imperfectly known to us—too little indeed to affirm any thing satisfactorily concerning the principle of their construction. *** We must, therefore, wait for some new discovery, like that of a royal canon similar to the one of Turin, in good condition, before we can make a thorough examination of the principle of the cyclic periods with which Egypt began her annals."-Les Origines de l'Histoire. Lenormant. p. 287.

Plato Critias, or the Atlantic.

blocked up with a great depth of mud made by the sunken island.'"

I

The history of the Atlantic people as it was known to the ancient Egyptians ends with this catastrophe. The inference of the priest that the mud of the submerged island made the Atlantic impassable is seemingly an assertion without any basis of fact. Had he said that the submergence of some of the islands west of the Pillars of Hercules obliterated the marked seapath between the continents of the two hemispheres, this statement would have strictly accorded with what he had said before, that "sea-faring men, at that time, could pass from it [the Atlantic island] to the other islands, and from them to the opposite continent." The disappearance of the islands, in sight of which seamen had steered their galleys, at once isolated the peoples of the two hemispheres. Thus it happened, in the course of centuries, that the aborigines of

2

'Plato Timæus, or Concerning Nature.

The ships of the ancients, in the time of Herodotus, were vessels propelled by oars and sails. Describing those used by the Egyptians on the Nile, he says: "Their ships in which they convey merchandise are made of the acacia, which in shape is similar to the Cyrenæan lotus, and its exudation is gum. From this acacia they cut planks about two cubits in length, and join them together as they do bricks, building their ships in the following manner; They fasten the planks of two cubits length to stout and long ties; when they have thus built the hulls, they lay rowing benches across them. They make no use of ribs, but caulk the seams inside with byblus. They make only one rudder, and that is driven through the keel. They use a mast of acacia, and sails of byblus. These vessels cannot sail against the current of the stream unless a fair wind prevails, but are towed from the shore. They are thus carried down the stream: There is a hurdle made of tamarisk, wattled with a band of reeds, and a stone bored through the middle, of about two talents in weight; of these two, the hurdle is fastened to a cable, and let down at the prow of the vessel to be carried on by the stream; and the stone by another cable at the stern; and by this means the hurdle, by the stream bearing hard upon it, moves quickly and draws along the 'baris', (for this is the name given to these vessels,) but the stone, being dragged at the stern, and sunk to the bottom, keeps the vessel in its course. They have a great number of these vessels, and some of them carry many thousand talents."-Euterpe xcvi.

The vessels of the Phoenicians were of a better build, but they also were fitted out with oars and sails.-Ezekiel xxvii. 3-9.

America passed out of the recollection of the inhabitants of the so-called Old World as an early-known people.

The writer of the first book of the Bible relates that when "Yahveh saw the wickedness of man was great upon the earth and every imagination of the thoughts of his heart only evil continually, *

it repented him of having made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart. And Yahveh said, 'I will exterminate man whom I have created from the surface of the ground.'" The information contained in these words of the learned Hebrew so closely correspond to that imparted to Solon by the Egyptian priest concerning the subsequent degeneracy of the primitive people of the earth, that it would seem as if it had been derived from the same source. "For many generations,' said the priest, so long as the god-nature continued in them, they remained obedient to the laws and were happily influenced by it. But when the divine nature became extinct by the dominance and constant ascendency of the human, and the habits of men overpowered them,

they de

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ported themselves in an unbecoming way. Therefore, Zeus, the god of gods, who rules justly and searches out such things, perceiving an illustrious people miserably depraved, and intending to inflict punishment on them that they might become better fitted to command their appetites and passions, collected all the gods into their own most holy habitation, which, being in the centre of the universe, commands a view of all things having a part in generation; and having assembled them, he said

'Genesis vi. 5, 6, 7.

2 Plato: Critias, or the Atlantic. Vide The Works of Plato.

*

Bohn's ed. London, 1849. vol. ii. Trans

lated by Henry Davis. pp. 413-429.