"The sum of the statements" then, so regarded, is to confirm the tradition of the human race as recorded in Genesis, that they sprang from three brothers and their three wives, forming three monogamous pairs who accompanied their father Noah into the ark, with his wife; and who again were more remotely descended from a single pair. If, then, in the two most ancient traditions of which we have any record, we find concordance on some points and divergence on others, the circumstance of identity at all is so much more startling than the occurrence of discrepancy, that it will fairly be taken to warrant the presumption of a common origin; and this conformity will also be naturally claimed in support of our narrative as against the other on the points of disagreement, which will then be set down to the corruption of that which is deemed the most ancient and authentic. For those, therefore, who believe the Bible to be the revealed Word of God, and even for those who regard it as the most ancient record, the coincidences with Sanchoniathon will afford a striking testimony; whereas the coincidence of the fifth age of Sanchoniathon with Genesis (chap. vi. 1, 2, 4) and the tradition of Hesiod, must be an embarrassment to those who seek in this tradition evidence that what was characteristic of the fifth age, was true of the preceding and pristine ages. To take a second instance, more exactly in illustration of the quotation from F. Schlegel, _supra_, p. 124, there is no such barrier to tradition (regarded retrospectively) as the notion, if we accept it, which crept over many nations, that they were "autochthones." Like the sand-drifts known to geologists as dunes, such notions, if they had been received absolutely, would have involved all tradition in a general extinction. But as the dunes, when minutely measured and submitted to calculation, have afforded the best evidence in favour of what may be called the diluvian chronology, so will this notion that men sprang out of the soil in which they dwelt, when analysed, contribute fresh evidence to the truth and persistence of tradition. But first of all, will any one start with the theory--that any nation that had this notion about itself--the Greeks, for instance, were really autochthones? There is, then, simply a confusion of ideas, a difficulty which has to be unravelled; but seeing that the Greeks notoriously believed themselves to be autochthones, it becomes an obstruction in the main channel of tradition, and it is especially incumbent upon us to consider the facts. In the "Supplicants" of Æschylus--and I am not aware that the notion crops up at earlier date--Pelasgus is introduced as saying-- "Pelasgus bids you, sovereign of the land, My sire, Palæcthon, of _high ancestry, Original_ with this _earth_; from me, their king, The people take their name, and boast themselves Pelasgians." --v. 275.