satisfied, and forgot the gods, to whom, in their confidence of
prosperity and com fort, they denied the reverence they owed. . . . Then
followed the Bronze Age, a period of constant quarrelling and deeds of
violence. Instead of cultivated lands, and a life of peaceful
occupations and orderly habits, there came a day when every where might
was right, and men, big and powerful as they were, became physically
worn out. . . . Finally came the Iron Age, in which enfeebled mankind
had to toil for bread with their hands, and, bent on gain, did their
best to overreach each other. Dike, or Astraea, the goddess of justice
and good faith, modesty and truth, turned her back on such scenes, and
retired to Olympus, while Zeus determined to destroy the human race by a
great flood. The whole of Greece lay under water, and none but Deucalion
and his wife Pyrrha were saved." (Murray's "Mythology" p. 44.)

It is remarkable that we find here the same succession of the Iron Age
after the Bronze Age that has been revealed to scientific men by the
patient examination of the relics of antiquity in Europe. And this
identification of the land that was destroyed by a flood--the land of
Chronos and Poseidon and Zeus--with the Bronze Age, confirms the view
expressed in Chapter VIII. (page 237, ante), that the bronze implements
and weapons of Europe were mainly imported from Atlantis.

And here we find that the Flood that destroyed this land of the gods was
the Flood of Deucalion, and the Flood of Deucalion was the Flood of the
Bible, and this, as we have shown, was "the last great Deluge of all,"
according to the Egyptians, which destroyed Atlantis.

The foregoing description of the Golden Age of Chronos, when "men were
rich and lived in plenty," reminds us of Plato's description of the
happy age of Atlantis, when "men despised everything but virtue, not