“Philemon and Baukis, an aged couple of the poorer class, were living peacefully and full of piety toward the gods in their cottage in Phrygia, when Zeus, who often visited the earth, disguised, to inquire into the behavior of men, paid a visit, in passing through Phrygia on such a journey, to these poor old people, and was received by them very kindly as a weary traveller, which he pretended to be.  Bidding him welcome to the house, they set about preparing for their guest, who was accompanied by Hermes, as excellent a meal as they could afford, and for this purpose were about to kill the only goose they had left, when Zeus interfered; for he was touched by their kindliness and genuine piety, and that all the more because he had observed among the other inhabitants of the district nothing but cruelty of disposition and a habit of reproaching and despising the gods.  To punish this conduct he determined to visit the country with a flood, but to save from it Philemon and Baukis, the good aged couple, and to reward them in a striking manner.  To this end he revealed himself to them before opening the gates of the great flood, transformed their poor cottage on the hill into a splendid temple, installed the aged pair as his priest and priestess, and granted their prayer that they might both die together.  When, after many years, death overtook them, they were changed into two trees, that side by side in the neighborhood—­an oak and a linden.”  (Murray’s “Mythology,” p. 38.)

Here we have another reference to the Flood, and another identification with Atlantis.

Zeus was a kind of Henry viii., and took to himself a number of wives.  By Demeter (Ceres) he had Persephone (Proserpine); by Leto, Apollo and Artemis (Diana); by Dione, Aphrodite (Venus); by Semele, Dionysos (Bacchus); by Maia, Hermes (Mercury); by Alkmene, Hercules, etc., etc.

We have thus the whole family of gods and goddesses traced back to Atlantis.

Hera, or Juno, was the first and principal wife of Zeus.  There were numerous conjugal rows between the royal pair, in which, say the poets, Juno was generally to blame.  She was naturally jealous of the other wives of Zeus.  Zeus on one occasion beat her, and threw her son Hephaestos out of Olympus; on another occasion he hung her out of Olympus with her arms tied and two great weights attached to her feet—­a very brutal and ungentlemanly trick—­but the Greeks transposed this into a beautiful symbol:  the two weights, they say, represent the earth and sea, “an illustration of how all the phenomena of the visible sky were supposed to hang dependent on the highest god of heaven!” (Ibid., p. 47.) Juno probably regarded the transaction in an altogether different light; and she therefore United with Poseidon, the king’s brother, and his daughter Athena, in a rebellion to put the old fellow in a strait-jacket, “and would have succeeded had not Thetis brought to his aid the sea-giant AEgaeon,” probably a war-ship.  She seems in the main, however, to have been a good wife, and was the type of all the womanly virtues.