[194] "According to the calculations of Varro, the deluge of Ogyges occurred 400 years before Inachus, _i.e._ 1600 years before the first Olympiad, which would bring it to 2376 years before the Christian era; now, according to the Hebrew text, the Deluge of Noah took place 2349 B.C., which makes only a difference of 27 years. It is true that many other authors have reconciled these epochs." Hesiod and Homer are silent on the subject of both Deucalion and Ogyges.... "It results from these considerations that the traditions of the ancient nations of the world confirm the narrative of Genesis, _not only_ as to the existence, but even as to the _epoch_, of this catastrophe as fixed by Moses. Mersius (_apud_ Gronovium, iv. 1023) cites more than twenty ancient authors who speak of Ogyges as appertaining in their eyes to what was _most primitive_ in Greece. He is son of Neptune. He is the first founder of the kingdom of Thebes. Servius represents him _as coming immediately after Saturn and the golden age_ [which directly connects Noah with Saturn, and the golden age with Noah]. Hesychius says of Ogyges that he represented all that was most ancient in Greece. That, indeed, passed into a proverb; they said, 'old as Ogyges,' as if they said, 'old as Adam'" (Gainet, i. 229). Mr Kenrick says (p. 31):-- "The account of Deucalion, given by Apollodorus (i. 7, 2), bears evident marks of being compounded of two fables originally distinct, in one of which, and probably the older, the descent of the Hellenes was traced through Deucalion to Prometheus and Pandora, without mention of a deluge. In the other, the destruction of the brazen race by a flood, the re-peopling the earth by the casting of stones, is related in the common way. That these two narratives cannot originally have belonged to the same myths is evident from their incongruity; for as mankind were created by Prometheus, the father of Deucalion, there was no time for them to have passed through those stages of degeneracy by which they reached the depravity of the brazen age." Here are evidently two early traditions, ostensibly Greek, distinct, it is true, yet perfectly compatible. The one the tradition of Grecian descent through Noah to Adam and Eve, the other the tradition of the Deluge. But after what we have already seen (_vide supra_, pp. 157, 158) of reduplications and inversions, can a serious argument be based upon the expression that Deucalion (Noah) was the son of Prometheus (Adam)?[195] Is it not a most natural and inevitable _façon-de-parler_ to connect the descendant directly and immediately with his remote ancestor, _e.g._ "Fils de St Louis--fils de Louis Capet--montez au ciel!"