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 Astraea, 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 relics 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.”