"Of good red clay, Haply from Mount Aornus, beyond sweep Of the black eagle's wing." The cave-temples of India-the oldest temples, probably, on earth--are a reminiscence of this cave-life. We shall see hereafter that Lot and his daughters "dwelt in a cave"; and we shall find Job bidden away in the "narrow-mouthed bottomless" pit or cave. [1. "Myths of the New World," p. 244.] {p. 208} CHAPTER VIII. LEGENDS OF THE AGE OF DARKNESS. ALL the cosmogonies begin with an Age of Darkness; a damp, cold, rainy, dismal time. Hesiod tells us, speaking of the beginning of things "In truth, then, _foremost sprung Chaos_. . . . But from Chaos were born _Erebus and black Night;_ and from Night again sprang forth Æther and Day, whom she bare after having conceived by _union with Erebus_." Aristophanes, in his "Aves," says:[1] "_Chaos and Night and black Erebus_ and wide Tartarus _first existed_."[2] Orpheus says: "_From the beginning the gloomy night enveloped and obscured all things_ that were under the ether" (the clouds). "The earth was invisible on account of the darkness, but the light _broke through the ether_" (the clouds), "and illuminated the earth." By this power were produced the sun, moon, and stars.[3] It is from Sanchoniathon that we derive most of the little we know of that ancient and mysterious people, the Phœnicians. He lived before the Trojan war; and of his writings but fragments survive--quotations in the writings of others. [1. "The Theogony." 2. Faber's "Origin of Pagan Idolatry," vol. i, p. 255. 3. Cory's "Fragments," p. 298.] {p. 209} He tells us that-- "The beginning of all things was a condensed, windy air, or a breeze of _thick_ air, and a _chaos turbid and black as Erebus_. "Out of this chaos was generated Môt, which some call Ilus," (_mud,_) "but others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. And from this sprang all the seed of the creation, and the generation of the universe. . . . And, when the air began to send forth light, winds were produced and clouds, and very great defluxions and _torrents of the heavenly waters_." Was this "thick air" the air thick with comet-dust, which afterward became the mud? Is this the meaning of the "_turbid_ chaos"? We turn to the Babylonian legends. Berosus wrote from records preserved in the temple of Belus at Babylon. He says: "There was a time in which there _existed nothing but darkness_ and an _abyss of waters_, wherein resided _most hideous beings_, which were produced of a twofold principle." Were these "hideous beings" the comets? From the "Laws of Menu," of the Hindoos, we learn that the universe existed at first in darkness. We copy the following text from the Vedas: "The Supreme Being alone existed; _afterward there was universal darkness;_ next the watery ocean was produced by the diffusion of virtue." We turn to the legends of the Chinese, and we find the same story: