This is Mr Kenrick's objection[193] (_vide_ Preface to Grote's "History of Greece," 2d ed.) The most direct, and, as it appears to me, sufficient answer, seems to be that it was necessarily so; since, _ex hypothesi_, the population itself came to Greece from Asia. Mr Kenrick says, "It is doubtful whether the tradition of Deucalion's flood is older than the time when the intercourse with Greece began to be frequent," _i.e._ about the fifth century B.C. (p. 31.) But as the Septuagint, according to Mr Kenrick himself, could not have influenced Greece till the third century, this tradition can only have been the primeval tradition. Mr Kenrick is a fair opponent, and I must do him the justice to add that he repudiates the Voltairean suggestion that this tradition originated in a Hebrew invention. If then the inhabitants of Greece, who came originally from Asia, had not the tradition, or had it imperfectly, when they arrived, it can only have been because they had lost it; but as admittedly they recovered it at a later period, the presumption, even on this showing, is, at least for those who can realise how difficult it would be to make a pure fiction, as distinguished from a corrupt tradition, run current, more especially among different nationalities and during a lengthened period,--that when circumstances brought them again into contact with Asia, they added fresh incidents, only because they found the tradition fresher there than among themselves. _Voila tout!_ for Mr Kenrick's whole argument depends entirely upon this--that "as we reach the time when the Greeks enjoyed more extensive and leisurely communication with Asia, through the conquests of Alexander ... we find new circumstances introduced into the story which assimilates it more closely to the Asiatic tradition." [193] "Essay on Primæval History." It has been allowed (_vide supra_) that the tradition of Deucalion is as old as the fifth century B.C., and, not to speak of the deluge of Ogyges, connected with what was earliest in Grecian history, the following passage from Kenrick seems to me in evidence of long antecedent traditions among the Greeks themselves, which they must have brought with them originally from Asia.[194]