Now, I submit that this is not a greater distortion of the classical stories of OEdipus, Adrastus, &c., than are the classical legends of the biblical traditions of Cain and Lamech. For further trace read Bunsen, iv. 235, also, 253, 254. Mr Cox ("Mythology of Aryan Nations") says:--"_The names Theseus_, _Perseus_, _Oidipous, had all been mere epithets_ of one and the same being; but when they ceased to be mere appellatives, these creations of mythical speech were regarded not only as different persons, but as beings in no way connected with each other.... Nay, the legends inter-change the method by which the parents seek the death of their children; for there were tales which narrated that Oidipous was shut up in an ark which was washed ashore at Sikyon," p. 80. Sicyon was the oldest Greek city. Compare p. 157 of this ch., and ch. on Deluge. This was merely the traditional record that the tradition was preserved in the Ark, and subsequently emanated from Sicyon. II. PROMETHEUS AND HERCULES OR HERAKLES. I have elsewhere (p. 202) alluded to the confusion of Prometheus, as the creator of man, with Prometheus, the first man created. But the most curious instance of reduplication is the further confusion of what I may call the human Prometheus, with his deliverer Hercules,--Hercules and Prometheus both in different ways embodying traditions of Adam! Prometheus is the Adam[144] of Paradise and the Fall, Hercules is Adam the outcast from Paradise, with his skin and club sent forth on his long labours and marches through the world. But how can Hercules, who frees Prometheus from the rock, be the same as Prometheus who is bound to the rock? If, however, we are entitled to hope that Adam in the labour of his long exile worked off the sentence and expiated the guilt on account of which Adam, the culprit, was sentenced, may we not accept this as an adequate explanation? Is it a forced figure that he should be said to unbind him from the rock, to drive off the vulture which preys upon him, and thus finally liberate him? [144] On this point, that Prometheus is Adam, _vide_ M. Nicolas' "Etudes Philos. sur le Christ.," 1. ii. ch. v. 30 (19th edit.) This disjunction of Adam and separate personification in the two periods of his life, _before_ and _after_ the Fall, will accord well enough with the addition in some legends of a brother Epimetheus, and I submit that this explanation is as good as that (_vide_ Smith's "Myth. Dict.") which regards the legend as purely allegorical, and _Pro_metheus and _Epi_metheus as signifying "forethought" and "afterthought."