Chapter XV. How They Mention the Flood

WHEN Moses had laid down a plan of legislating for men, he thought that he must have in his preface an account of ancient times: and he makes mention of the Flood, and of the subsequent life of mankind, and then he describes the social life of the men of old among the Hebrews who were friends of God, and also of those who were proved otherwise in offences, because he considered that the narration of these things would be a parallel to his legislation.

And in like manner Plato also, when he proceeds to write down laws, affects the same method with Moses. In the preface, for instance, of the Laws,he has made use of his account of ancient times, making mention of a flood, and of the mode of life after the flood. Listen at least to what he says at the beginning of the third Book of the Laws:[1]

‘Do you think then that there is any truth in the ancient traditions?

‘What traditions?

‘That mankind has often been destroyed by floods and diseases and many other calamities, in which only some small portion of the human race was left.

‘Certainly every one thinks all this very probable.

‘Come then, let us consider one of the many destructions, namely this which was caused by the flood.

‘What point are we to observe in regard to it?

‘That those who escaped the destruction at that time would be chiefly mountain-shepherds, small sparks of the human race preserved on the hill-tops.

‘Evidently.

‘Moreover such men must necessarily be unacquainted both with other arts and especially with the devices of men in towns against each other with regard to selfish advantage and rivalry, and all other evil deeds which they contrive one against another.

‘Certainly it is probable.

‘Let us suppose then that the cities settled on the plains and by the sea were utterly destroyed at that time.

‘Suppose so.

‘Must we not say then that all implements were lost, and every excellent invention connected with art, whether of political or any other kind of wisdom, must all have perished at that time? ‘

And further on he says: [2]

‘Let us say then that, at the time when the destruction had just taken place, the condition of mankind was this, a boundless and fearful desolation, and a very great expanse of fertile land.’

After these and other such statements, he goes on to describe the lives of mankind after the flood, and then, just as Moses appends to the history after the flood the civil state of the godly Hebrews of old, in like manner Plato also, next to the lives of those who followed the flood, tries to describe the ancient times of Greek history, as Moses does of the Hebrews, mentioning the Trojan war, and the first constitution of Lacedaemon, and the Persians, and those who had lived among these events whether well or ill: and then after the narration of these things he begins his arrangement of the laws, following Moses in this also.