He lived
before the Trojan war; and of his writings but fragments
survive--quotations in the writings of others.
[1. "The Theogony."
2. Faber's "Origin of Pagan Idolatry," vol. i, p. 255.
3. Cory's "Fragments," p. 298.]
{p. 209}
He tells us that--
"The beginning of all things was a condensed, windy air, or a breeze
of _thick_ air, and a _chaos turbid and black as Erebus_.
"Out of this chaos was generated M?t, which some call Ilus," (_mud,_)
"but others the putrefaction of a watery mixture. And from this
sprang all the seed of the creation, and the generation of the
universe. . . . And, when the air began to send forth light, winds
were produced and clouds, and very great defluxions and _torrents of
the heavenly waters_."
Was this "thick air" the air thick with comet-dust, which afterward
became the mud? Is this the meaning of the "_turbid_ chaos"?
We turn to the Babylonian legends. Berosus wrote from records
preserved in the temple of Belus at Babylon. He says:
"There was a time in which there _existed nothing but darkness_ and
an _abyss of waters_, wherein resided _most hideous beings_, which
were produced of a twofold principle.
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