BOOK II.

THE SECOND AGE OF THE WORLD.

B.C. 2448-1921.

THE DELUGE-THE DESCENDANTS OF NOAH-THE DIVISIONS OF THE NATIONS-THE REIGNS OF BELUS, SEMIRAMIS, NINUS, ASTYAGES, CYRUS, DARIUS-THE DIVISIONS OF THE WORLD INTO EUROPE, ASIA, AND AFRICA-THE COLONIZATION OF EUROPE-THE TOWER OF BABEL.

CH. I.-The Deluge, and Life and Death of Noah. IN the hundredth' year of his life, Noah, now that the flood covered the earth, entered the ark with seven souls, which ark he had finished twenty years before, as God had conversed with him for a hundred years. And the waters increased upon the earth for a hundred and fifty days, the Lord raining upon it for forty days and nights; when, on the twenty-seventh day of the seventh month, the ark rested on the mountains of Armenia; after forty days, Noah sent out a raven, and after that a dove bearing an olive branch, and at last, on the twenty-seventh day of the second month, he went forth out of the ark, the year having come round again to the very same day on which he had entered it; when the moon had entered the seventeenth day of the second month.

And the sacrifice of Noah was accepted, and he received permission to eat flesh, provided it was without blood; and the rainbow was placed in heaven, as a covenant the deluge

1 This clearly means the hundredth year of Noah's life, after the birth of Shem, Ham, and Japhet; that is to say, when he was six hundred years old. See, however, note on chap. vii.

2 Our author is not quite correct here; the flood began on the seventeenth day of the second month (Gen. vii. 11), and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark rested on Ararat (Gen. viii. 4). On the twenty-seventh day of the second month he left the ark (Gen. viii. 14). Moreover, he did not send out a dove bearing an olive branch; but he sent forth the dove, and she returned to him in the evening, “And lo, in her mouth was an olive leaf plucked off" (Gen. viii. 11).

was passed and should not return, and that what should hereafter come was a conflagration.

He got drunk with wine, of which he was the first inventor, and was mocked by Ham; on which account he cursed him, but blessed his other sons. And so he died.

CH. II.-The Generations of Noah.

THERE are seventy-two generations catalogued of the three sons of Noah. To wit, fifteen of Japhet, thirty of Ham, and seventeen of Shem. And these men were scattered over the world. Shem obtained Asia, Ham Africa, and Japhet Europe; and the ancients distinguish their genealogies in this manner. Shem, the eldest of the family, came into Asia, and arranged the provinces in this manner.

CH. III.-The Divisions of the Nations-the Reigns of Belus, Semiramis, Ninus, in Assyria; Astyages, Cyrus, and Darius in Persia.

As the people increased after the flood, there arose four principal kingdoms; that of the Assyrians in the East, where the first king was Belus; that of the Sicinii in the West, where the first king was Egialeus; that of the Scythians in the North, where the first king was Tanus; that of the Egyptians in the South, where the first king was Myneus. Belus was succeeded by his wife Semiramis, who made the district of Babylon the metropolitan district of her kingdom. She was succeeded by Ninus, who was the inventor of idols, making an image in honour of his father Belus. At length came Sardanapalus, from whom Arbaces wrested the kingdom and transferred it to the Medes. And after a time, Astyages becoming king of the Medes, gave his daughter to a prince of the Persians, who became the father of Cyrus, by whom

3 There is again some error here. Fifteen, thirty, and seventeen make sixty-two, not seventy-two; nor do the numbers exactly coincide with the list of names given in the Bible, where (Gen. x.-1 Chron. i.) we find the names of fourteen descendants of Japhet, thirty of Ham, and twentyseven of Shem.

4 Our author is mistaken here. Cambyses, the father of Cyrus, was not a prince, though of a good family (oiking ȧyalñs. Hdt. i. 107). And Darius did not reign as the colleague of Cyrus, but succeeded to the kingdom on the death of Smerdis the Magus, seven or eight years after the death of Cyrus (B C. 36), and he was the son of Hystaspes, not of Astyages (Hdt. iii. 75).

B.C. 2250.

DIVISIONS OF THE WORLD.

Astyages was conquered; and when he died, the sovereignty was transferred to the Persians, and Darius, the son of Astyages, reigned with this same Cyrus as his colleague.

CH. IV.-The Divisions of the World; Europe, Asia, and Africa-The Colonization of Europe.

THIS habitable world of ours, which is surrounded on all sides by the ocean, has three principal divisions. To wit, Asia, Africa, and Europe; but Asia is the largest. In it there are the following countries :-India, Parthia, Syria, Persia, Media, Mesopotamia, Cappadocia, Palestina, Armenia, Cilicia, Chaldæa, Biffamia, Lydia. In Africa there are these provinces :-Lybia, Cyrene, Pentapolis, Æthiopia, Tripolitania, Egypt, Gætulia, Natabria, Numidia, the greater and the lesser Syrtes.

In Europe there are these countries :-Italy, Spain, Germany, Macedonia, Thrace, Dalmatia, Pannonia, Gaul, Achaia, the greater and the lesser Britain, Ireland, and the Northern Isles beyond the ocean.

The first man of the race of Japhet who came to Europe was named Alanus, and he came with his three sons, whose names are as follows: Isicion, Armenion, and Negno. Isicion had four sons; they are these: Francus, Romanus, Alemannus, and Brito. Armenion had five sons, as follows: Gothus, Valagothus, Cæbidus, Burgundus, and Longobardus. Negno had four sons, whose names are these: Wandalus, Saxo, Bogarus, and Targus. From Isicion, the first-born of Alanus, sprang four nations: the Latins, the Franks, the Germans, and the Britons. From Armenion, the second son, are descended the Goths, the Valagoths, the Cæbidi, the Burgundians, and the Lombards. From Negno, the third son, are derived the Bogari, the Vandals, the Saxons, and the Tharinci. And these nations are scattered over the whole of Europe.

But Alanus was, as they say, the son of Frethevit, the son of Ogomun, the son of Thay, the son of Boyb, the son of Simeon, the son of Mayr, the son of Athach, the son of Aurtaach, the son of Cephet, the son of Cozech, the son of Abrech, the son of Ra, the son of Ezra, the son of Isram, the son of Bach, the son of John, the son of Jabach, the son of Japhet, the son of Noah.

Of Asia and Africa we will speak in another place.

CH. V.-The Tower of Babel-The Descendants of Shem, down to Thare or Terah.

SHEM was a hundred years old when he begat Arphaxad, which happened two years after the flood. Arphaxad begat Sale, or Cainan. Sale founded a city, which he called after his own name, Salem, and he was the father of Heber, from whom the Hebrews (Hebræi) derive their name, or else they are called so from Abraham, as if they were Abrahai. Heber begat Phaleg, in whose time the sons of the sons of Noah, not having faith in the covenant of God which he had made with Noah, to the effect that there should not again be a flood, put together bricks for stones, and bitumen for cement, in order to build a tower, the height of which should reach to heaven; in order that if a flood should inundate the earth, they might remain safe on its summit. And since they thought that they might be able by their own skill to escape all danger, from either flood or fire, there was caused in that very place, to wit, in the land of Shinar, a division or confusion of tongues, so that no one of them could understand the language of his neighbour; therefore the Lord scattered them over divers countries, and they left off building the tower. And the name of that place was called Babel, that is to say, confusion, because there the language of the whole earth was confused.

And Phaleg, in whose family the Hebrew language remained, which is the most ancient of all languages, was on that account called Phaleg, that is to say, divided from the others. Phaleg begat Ragau, Ragau begat Saruch, who begat Nachor; that Nachor, when he had departed from Chaldæa, married a wife named Melcha, the daughter of his brother who was dead, and dwelt in Charran of Mesopotamia. His father having died there, and Abraham having taken up his abode as a sojourner in Canaan, Nachor begat these three brothers: Huz, Buz, and Bathuel, with five others, from one of whom, namely, Buz, was descended Balaam, who, according to the Hebrews, is the same person spoken of in Job as Elihu the Buzite.5

That Nachor begat Thare, who, not being able to bear the injuries that were inflicted on him in the matter of adoring

5 Job xxxii. 6.

B.C. 2075. REIGN AND CHARACTER OF SEMIRAMIS.

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fire in Chaldæa, where they put to death his first-born son, Aran, travelled away with Abraham and Nachor, and the family of Aran, to Charran in Mesopotamia, where Thare died, at the end of two hundred and five years.

CH. VI.-The Reign and Character of Semiramis—Duration of the Assyrian Monarchy.

IN the times of Thare reigned Ninus, the most powerful king of the Assyrians, the son of queen Semiramis. She, a woman of manly strength of mind, governed the kingdom of the Assyrians with great power, for two and thirty years. And in order to resemble a man more closely, she clothed her legs and arms in the dress of a man, and wore a tiara on her head. And that she might not by any chance be supposed to conceal any secret design under this unusual garb, she ordered the people in general to wear the same dress, and ever since the whole nation retains that fashion.

She performed great exploits; and as she was a woman of manly courage, she was not content with the boundaries of her dominions, which had been acquired by her husband, and to which she had succeeded, but she overwhelmed Ethiopia with war. She carried her arms into India; a country which no one before her had ever subdued.

She it was who built the city of Babylon, and surrounded it with a wall, and appointed it to be the metropolis of the kingdom of the Assyrians. At last she was slain by her own son; and when he had succeeded his mother, he, being content with the kingdom as it had been made by his parent's toil, laid aside all thoughts of war; and, as if he had changed sexes with his mother, seldom came into the sight of men, but grew old amid the bands of women. And his posterity followed his example so far, as to give their answers to people by the intervention of messengers.

After Ninus, thirty-six kings, in continual succession, possessed the monarchy of the Assyrians, for a period of thirteen hundred years, down to the time of Sardanapalus.

CH. VII.-Generations from Noah to Abraham.

BUT Noah lived after the deluge eight hundred and fifty • Called Terah, in Genesis.

7 There is a difficulty here: if he means that Noah lived after the