"Thereupon, one of the priests, who was of very great age, said, 'O Solon, Solon, you Hellenes are but children, and there is never an old man who is an Hellene.' Solon, hearing this, said, 'What do you mean?' 'I mean to say,' he replied, 'that in mind you are all young; there is no old opinion handed down among you by ancient tradition, nor any science which is hoary with age. And I will tell you the reason of this: there have been, and there will be again, many destructions of mankind arising out of many causes. There is a story which even you have preserved, that once upon a time Phaëthon, the son of Helios, having yoked the steeds in his father's chariot, because he was not able to drive them in the path of his father, burnt up all that was upon the earth, and was himself destroyed by a thunder-bolt. Now, this has the form of a myth, but _really signifies a declination of the bodies moving around the earth and in the heavens, and a great conflagration of things upon the earth_ recurring at long intervals of time: when this happens, those who live upon the mountains and in dry and lofty places are more liable to destruction than those who dwell by rivers or on the sea-shore."' {p. 166} CHAPTER VI. OTHER LEGENDS OF THE CONFLAGRATION. THE first of these, and the most remarkable of all, is the legend of one of the Central American nations, preserved not by tradition alone, but committed to writing at some time in the remote past. In the "Codex Chimalpopoca," one of the sacred books of the Toltecs, the author, speaking of the destruction which took place by fire, says: "The third sun" (or era) "is called _Quia-Tonatiuh_, sun of rain, because there fell a _rain of fire; all which existed burned; and there fell a rain of gravel_." "They also narrate that while the sandstone, which we now see _scattered about_, and the _tetzontli_ (_amygdaloide poreuse_--trap or basaltic rocks), '_boiled with great tumult_, there also rose the rocks of vermilion color.'" That is to say, the basaltic and red trap-rocks burst through the great cracks made, at that time, in the surface of the disturbed earth. "Now, this was in the year _Ce Tecpatl_, One _Flint_, it was the day _Nahui-Quiahuit_l, Fourth Rain. Now, in this day, in which men were lost and destroyed _in a rain of fire_, they _were transformed into goslings_; the _sun itself was on fire_, and everything, together with the houses, was consumed."[1] [1. "The North Americans of Antiquity," p. 499.] {p. 167}