In the third age we are told--"Light, Fire, and Flame (conceived as persons) were begotten," which looks like a tradition of Vulcan, Tubalcain, &c. (_vide_ ch. xii. _infra_); and "in the fourth, giants appeared;" while in the fifth, the corruption of mankind is indicated, as is declared in Genesis vi. 4: "Now giants were upon the earth in those days. For after the sons of God went in to the daughters of men and brought forth children," &c., ver. 12, "and when God had seen that the earth was corrupted (for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth), ver. 13, He said to Noe," &c. "It was not till the twelfth generation that the gods appeared that figured most in the old mythologies," says Mr M'Lennan, quoting Sanchoniathon, or what is believed to be his testimony. I trust that this fragment of tradition may be remembered in connection with what I have written in chapters viii., ix., x. [107] [107] Compare ch. xiii. The successive ages of Hesiod, more especially the lines describing the iron age, parallel to the tradition, _supra_, "that in the fifth age _men were named from their mothers_." "No fathers in their sons their features trace, The sons reflect _no more_ their father's face; The host with kindness greets his guest no more, And friends and brethren love not as of yore." --HESIOD. President Goguet ("Origin of Laws," i. 21,) had noticed the ancient allusions to "kinship through mothers," and his statement that "women belonged to the man who seized them first.... The children who sprang from this irregular intercourse scarce ever knew who were their fathers. They knew only their mothers, for which reason they always bore their name." For this statement he also quotes Sanchoniathon, ap. Eus. p. 34, as his principal authority. But Sanchoniathon's statement, as we have seen, refers to the ante-diluvian period, in which it is borne out by Genesis vi. 4. There is one fact adduced by Goguet (i. 43), viz. that the _Assyrians_ had an analogous ceremony which must be decisive for us, though not, perhaps, for Mr M'Lennan, that the custom of seizure was ante-diluvian, since the commencement of the Assyrian monarchy in the times immediately following the flood, is one of the best established foundations of history. _Vide_ Genesis and Rawlinson. "This race of _many languaged_ man." To any one who rightly grasps the bearing of the argument, the appositeness of this quotation will, I think, be rather strengthened than diminished by the evidence that the lines of Hesiod plainly refer to post-diluvian times (_vide_ ch. xiii.)