Note 8 — PHYSIOGNOMY OF PLANTS.

p. 11.—“Traditions of Samothrace.”

Diodorus has preserved to us this remarkable tradition, the probability of which renders it in the eyes of the geologist almost equivalent to a historical certainty. The Island of Samothrace, formerly called also Æthiopea, Dardania, Leucania or Leucosia in the Scholiast to Apollonius Rhodius, and which was a seat of the ancient mysteries of the Cabiri, was inhabited by the remains of an ancient nation, several words of whose language were preserved to a later period in the ceremonies accompanying sacrifices. The situation of this island, opposite to the Thracian Hebrus and near the Dardanelles, renders it not surprising that a more detailed tradition of the catastrophe of the breaking forth of the waters of the Euxine should have been preserved there. Rites were performed at altars supposed to mark the limits of the irruption of the waves; and in Samothrace as well as in Bœotia, a belief in the periodically recurring destruction of mankind, (a belief which was also found among the Mexicans in the form of a myth of four destructions of the world), was connected with historical recollections of particular inundations. (Otfr. Müller Geschichten Hellenischer Stämme und Städte, Bd. i. S. 65 and 119.) According to Diodorus, the Samothracians related that the Black Sea had once been an inland lake, but that, being swollen by the rivers which flow into it, it had broken through, first the strait of the Bosphorus, and afterwards that of the Hellespont; and this long before the inundations spoken of by other nations. (Diod. Sicul. lib. v. cap. 47, p. 369, Wesseling.) These ancient revolutions of nature have been treated of in a special work by Dureau de la Malle, and all the information possessed on the subject has been collected in Carl von Hoff’s important work, entitled Geschichte der natürlichen Veränderungen der Erdoberfläche, Th. i. 1822, S. 105-162; and in Creuzer’s Symbolik, 2te Aufl. Th. ii. S. 285, 318, and 361. A reflex, as it were, of the traditions of Samothrace appears in the “Sluice theory” of Strato of Lampsacus, according to which the swelling of the waters of the Euxine first opened the passage of the Dardanelles, and afterwards caused the outlet through the pillars of Hercules. Strabo has preserved to us in the first book of his Geography, among critical extracts from the works of Eratosthenes, a remarkable fragment of the lost writings of Strato, presenting views which extend to almost the entire circumference of the Mediterranean.

“Strato of Lampsacus,” says Strabo (Lib. i. p. 49 and 50, Casaub.), “is even more disposed than the Lydian Xanthus,” (who had described impressions of shells at a distance from the sea) “to expound the causes of the things which we see. He asserts that the Euxine had formerly no outlet at Byzantium, but the sea becoming swollen by the rivers which ran into it, had by its pressure opened the passage through which the waters flow into the Propontis and the Hellespont. He also says that the same thing has happened to our Sea (the Mediterranean);” “for here, too, when the sea had become swollen by the rivers, (which in flowing into it had left dry their marshy banks), it forced for itself a passage through the isthmus of land connecting the Pillars. The proofs which Strato gives of this are, first that there is still a bank under water running from Europe to Libya, shewing that the outer and inner seas were formerly divided; and next that the Euxine is the shallowest, the Cretan, Sicilian, and Sardoic Seas being on the contrary very deep; the reason being that the Euxine has been filled with mud by the many and large rivers flowing into it from the North, while the other seas continued deep. The Euxine is also the freshest, and the waters flow towards the parts where the bottom of the sea is lowest. Hence he inferred that the whole of the Euxine would finally be choked with mud if the rivers were to continue to flow into it: and this is already in some degree the case on the west side of the Euxine towards Salmydessus (the Thracian Apollonia), and at what are called by mariners the “Breasts” off the mouth of the Ister and along the shore of the Scythian Desert. Perhaps the Temple of Ammon (in Lybia) may once have stood on the sea-shore, and causes such as these may explain why it is now far inland. This Strato thought might account for the celebrity of the Oracle, which would be less surprising if it had been on the sea-shore; whereas its great distance from the coast made its present renown inexplicable. Egypt, too, had been formerly overflowed by the sea as far as the marshes of Pelusium, Mount Casius, and Lake Serbonis; for, on digging beneath the surface, beds of sea-sand and shells are found; shewing that the country was formerly overflowed, and the whole district round Mount Casius and Gerrha was a marshy sea which joined the gulf of the Red Sea. When our Sea (the Mediterranean) retreated, the land was uncovered; still, however, leaving the Lake of Serbonis: subsequently this lake also broke through its bounds and the water flowed off, so that the lake became a swamp. The banks of Lake Mœris are also more like sea than river banks.” An erroneously corrected reading introduced by Grosskurd on account of a passage in Strabo, Lib. xvii. p. 809, Cas., gives instead of Mœris “the Lake Halmyris:” but this latter lake was situated not far from the mouth of the Danube.

The sluice-theory of Strato led Eratosthenes of Cyrene (the most celebrated of the series of librarians of Alexandria, but less happy than Archimedes in writing on floating bodies), to examine the problem of the equality of level of all external seas, i. e., seas surrounding the Continents. (Strabo, Lib. i. p. 51-56; Lib. ii. p. 104, Casaub). The varied outlines of the northern shores of the Mediterranean, and the articulated form of the peninsulas and islands, had given occasion to the geognostical myth of the ancient land of Lyctonia. The supposed mode of origin of the smaller Syrtis and of the Triton Lake (Diod. iii. 53-55) as well as that of the whole Western Atlas (Maximus Tyrius, viii. 7) were drawn in to form part of an imaginary scheme of igneous eruptions and earthquakes. (See my Examen crit. de l’hist. de la Géographie, Vol. i. p. 179; T. iii. p. 136.) I have recently touched more in detail on this subject (Kosmos, Bd. ii. S. 153; Engl. ed. p. 118-119) in a passage which I permit myself to subjoin:—

A more richly varied and broken outline gives to the northern shore of the Mediterranean an advantage over the southern or Lybian shore, which according to Strabo was remarked by Eratosthenes. The three great peninsulas, the Iberian, the Italian, and the Hellenic, with their sinuous and deeply indented shores, form, in combination with the neighbouring islands and opposite coasts, many straits and isthmuses. The configuration of the continent and the islands, the latter either severed from the main or volcanically elevated in lines, as if over long fissures, early led to geognostical views respecting eruptions, terrestrial revolutions, and overpourings of the swollen higher seas into those which were lower. The Euxine, the Dardanelles, the Straits of Gades, and the Mediterranean with its many islands, were well fitted to give rise to the view of such a system of sluices. The Orphic Argonaut, who probably wrote in Christian times, wove antique legends into his song; he describes the breaking up of the ancient Lyktonia into several islands, when ‘the dark-haired Poseidon, being wroth with Father Kronion, smote Lyktonia with the golden trident.’ Similar phantasies, which indeed may often have arisen from imperfect knowledge of geographical circumstances, proceeded from the Alexandrian school, where erudition abounded, and a strong predilection was felt for antique legends. It is not necessary to determine here whether the myth of the Atlantis broken into fragments should be regarded as a distant and western reflex of that of Lyktonia (as I think I have elsewhere shewn to be probable), or whether, as Otfried Müller considers, “the destruction of Lyktonia (Leuconia) refers to the Samothracian tradition of a great flood which had changed the form of that district.”