Atlantis: The Antedeluvian World by Ignatius Donnelly (good books to read txt) 📖

other deities were arranged upon plateaus, or in ravines lower down the mountain.

These deities, including Zeus, were twelve in number: Zeus (or Jupiter), Hera (or Juno), Poseidon (or Neptune), Demeter (or Ceres), Apollo, Artemis (or Diana), Hephæstos (or Vulcan), Pallas Athena (or Minerva), Ares (or Mars), Aphrodite (or Venus), Hermes (or Mercury), and Hestia (or Vesta).” These were doubtless the twelve gods from whom the Egyptians derived their kings. Where two names are given to a deity in the above list, the first name is that bestowed by the Greeks, the last that given by the Romans.

It is not impossible that our division of the year into twelve parts is a reminiscence of the twelve gods of Atlantis. Diodorus Siculus tells us that among the Babylonians there were twelve gods of the heavens, each personified by one of the signs of the zodiac, and worshipped in a certain month of the year. The Hindoos had twelve primal gods, “the Aditya.” Moses erected twelve pillars at Sinai. The Mandan Indians celebrated the Flood with twelve typical characters, who danced around the ark. The Scandinavians believed in the twelve gods, the Aesir, who dwelt on Asgard, the Norse Olympus. Diligent investigation may yet reveal that the number of a modern jury, twelve, is a survival of the ancient council of Asgard.

“According to the traditions of the Phœnicians, the Gardens of the Hesperides were in the remote west.” (Murray’s “Manual of Mythology,” p.

258.) Atlas lived in these gardens. (Ibid., p. 259.) Atlas, we have seen, was king of Atlantis. “The Elysian Fields (the happy islands) were commonly placed in the remote west. They were ruled over by Chronos.”

(Ibid., p. 60.) Tartarus, the region of Hades, the gloomy home of the dead, was also located “under the mountains of an island in the midst of the ocean in the remote west.” (Ibid., p. 58.) Atlas was described in Greek mythology as “an enormous giant, who stood upon the western confines of the earth, and supported the heavens on his shoulders, in a region of the west where the sun continued to shine after he had set upon Greece.” (Ibid., p. 156.)

Greek tradition located the island in which Olympus was situated “in the far west,” “in the ocean beyond Africa,” “on the western boundary of the known world,” “where the sun shone when it had ceased to shine on Greece,” and where the mighty Atlas “held up the heavens.” And Plato tells us that the land where Poseidon and Atlas ruled was Atlantis.

“The Garden of the Hesperides” (another name for the dwelling-place of the gods) “was situated at the extreme limit of Africa. Atlas was said to have surrounded it on every side with high mountains.” (Smith’s “Sacred Annals, Patriarchal Age,” p. 131.) Here were found the golden apples.

This is very much like the description which Plato gives of the great plain of Atlantis, covered with fruit of every kind, and surrounded by precipitous mountains descending to the sea.

The Greek mythology, in speaking of the Garden of the Hesperides, tells us that “the outer edge of the garden was slightly raised, so that the water might not run in and overflow the land.” Another reminiscence of the surrounding mountains of Atlantis as described by Plato, and as revealed by the deep-sea soundings of modern times.

Chronos, or Saturn, Dionysos, Hyperion, Atlas, Hercules, were all connected with “a great Saturnian continent;” they were kings that ruled over countries on the western shores of the Mediterranean, Africa and Spain. One account says:

“Hyperion, Atlas, and Saturn, or Chronos, were sons of Uranos, who reigned over a great kingdom composed of countries around the western part of the Mediterranean, with certain islands in the Atlantic.

Hyperion succeeded his father, and was then killed by the Titans. The kingdom was then divided between Atlas and Saturn—Atlas taking Northern Africa, with the Atlantic islands, and Saturn the countries on the opposite shore of the Mediterranean to Italy and Sicily.” (Baldwin’s “Prehistoric Nations,” p. 357.)

Plato says, speaking of the traditions of the Greeks (“Dialogues, Laws,”

c. iv., p. 713), “There is a tradition of the happy life of mankind in the days when all things were spontaneous and abundant. . . . In like manner God in his love of mankind placed over us the demons, who are a superior race, and they, with great care and pleasure to themselves and no less to us, taking care of us and giving us place and reverence and order and justice never failing, made the tribes of men happy and peaceful . . . for Cronos knew that no human nature, invested with supreme power, is able to order human affairs and not overflow with insolence and wrong.”

In other words, this tradition refers to an ancient time when the forefathers of the Greeks were governed by Chronos, of the Cronian Sea (the Atlantic), king of Atlantis, through civilized Atlantean governors, who by their wisdom preserved peace and created a golden age for all the populations under their control—they were the demons, that is, “the knowing ones,” the civilized.

Plato puts into the mouth of Socrates these words (“Dialogues, Cratylus,” p. 397): “My notion would be that the sun, moon, and stars, earth, and heaven, which are still the gods of many barbarians, were the only gods known to the aboriginal Hellenes. . . . What shall follow the gods? Must not demons and heroes and men come next? . . . Consider the real meaning of the word demons. You know Hesiod uses the word. He speaks of ‘a golden race of men’ who came first. He says of them, But now that fate has closed over this race, They are holy demons upon earth,

Beneficent averters of ills, guardians of mortal men.’

He means by the golden men not men literally made of gold, but good and noble men; he says we are of the ‘age of iron.’ He called them demons because they were dah’mones (knowing or wise).”

This is made the more evident when we read that this region of the gods, of Chronos and Uranos and Zeus, passed through, first, a Golden Age, then a Silver Age—these constituting a great period of peace and happiness; then it reached a Bronze Age; then an Iron Age, and finally perished by a great flood, sent upon these people by Zeus as a punishment for their sins. We read:

“Men were rich then (in the Silver Age), as in the Golden Age of Chronos, and lived in plenty; but still they wanted the innocence and contentment which were the true sources of bu man happiness in the former age; and accordingly, while living in luxury and delicacy, they became overbearing in their manners to the highest degree, were never satisfied, and forgot the gods, to whom, in their confidence of prosperity and com fort, they denied the reverence they owed. . . . Then followed the Bronze Age, a period of constant quarrelling and deeds of violence. Instead of cultivated lands, and a life of peaceful occupations and orderly habits, there came a day when every where might was right, and men, big and powerful as they were, became physically worn out. . . . Finally came the Iron Age, in which enfeebled mankind had to toil for bread with their hands, and, bent on gain, did their best to overreach each other. Dike, or Astræa, the goddess of justice and good faith, modesty and truth, turned her back on such scenes, and retired to Olympus, while Zeus determined to destroy the human race by a great flood. The whole of Greece lay under water, and none but Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha were saved.” (Murray’s “Mythology” p. 44.) It is remarkable that we find here the same succession of the Iron Age after the Bronze Age that has been revealed to scientific men by the patient examination of the relies of antiquity in Europe. And this identification of the land that was destroyed by a flood—the land of Chronos and Poseidon and Zeus—with the Bronze Age, confirms the view expressed in Chapter VIII. (page 237, ante), that the bronze implements and weapons of Europe were mainly imported from Atlantis.

And here we find that the Flood that destroyed this land of the gods was the Flood of Deucalion, and the Flood of Deucalion was the Flood of the Bible, and this, as we have shown, was “the last great Deluge of all,”

according to the Egyptians, which destroyed Atlantis.

The foregoing description of the Golden Age of Chronos, when “men were rich and lived in plenty,” reminds us of Plato’s description of the happy age of Atlantis, when “men despised everything but virtue, not caring for their present state of life, and thinking lightly of the possession of gold and other property;” a time when, as the chants of the Delaware Indians stated it (page 109, ante), “all were willingly pleased, all were well-happified.” While the description given by Murray in the above extract of the degeneracy of mankind in the land of the gods, “a period of constant quarrelling and deeds of violence, when might was right,” agrees with Plato’s account of the Atlanteans, when they became “aggressive,” “unable to bear their fortune,” “unseemly,”

“base,” “filled with unrighteous avarice and power,”—and “in a most wretched state.” And here again I might quote from the chant of the Delaware Indians—“they became troubled, hating each other; both were fighting, both were spoiling, both were never peaceful.” And in all three instances the gods punished the depravity of mankind by a great deluge. Can all these precise coincidences be the result of accident?

May we not even suppose that the very word “Olympus” is a transformation from “Atlantis” in accordance with the laws that regulate the changes of letters of the same class into each other? Olympus was written by the Greeks “Olumpos.” The letter a in Atlantis was sounded by the ancient world broad and full, like the a in our words all or altar; in these words it approximates very closely to the sound of o. It is not far to go to convert Otlontis into Oluntos, and this into Olumpos. We may, therefore, suppose that when the Greeks said that their gods dwelt in “Olympus,” it was the same as if they said that they dwelt in “Atlantis.”

Nearly all the gods of Greece are connected with Atlantis. We have seen the twelve principal gods all dwelling on the mountain of Olympus, in the midst of an island in the ocean in the far west, which was subsequently destroyed by a deluge on account of the wickedness of its people. And when we turn to Plato’s description of Atlantis (p. 13, ante) we find that Poseidon and Atlas dwelt upon a mountain in the midst of the island; and on this mountain were their magnificent temples and palaces, where they lived, separated by great walls from their subjects.

It may be urged that Mount Olympus could not have referred to any mountain in Atlantis, because the Greeks gave that name to a group of mountains partly in Macedonia and partly in Thessaly. But in Mysia, Lycia, Cyprus, and elsewhere there were mountains called Olympus; and on the plain of Olympia, in Elis, there was an eminence bearing the same designation. There is a natural tendency among uncivilized peoples to give a “local habitation” to every general tradition.

“Many of the oldest myths,” says Baldwin (” Prehistoric Nations,” p.

376), “relate to Spain, North-western Africa, and other regions on the Atlantic, such as those concerning Hercules, the Cronidæ, the Hyperboreans, the Hesperides, and the Islands of the Blessed. Homer described the Atlantic region of Europe in his account of the wanderings of Ulysses. . . . In the ages