In Phrygia, the lake and morass near Tyana were ascribed to the
wrath of Zeus and Hermes, who, having visited the cities which
formerly stood there, and having been refused shelter by all the
inhabitants save Philemon and Baucis, rewarded their benefactors,
but sunk the wicked cities beneath the lake and morass.
Stories of similar import grew up to explain the crater near
Sipylos in Asia Minor and that of Avernus in Italy: the latter came
to be considered the mouth of the infernal regions, as every
schoolboy knows when he has read his Virgil.
In the later Christian mythologies we have such typical legends as
those which grew up about the old crater in Ceylon; the salt water
in it being accounted for by supposing it the tears of Adam and
Eve, who retreated to this point after their expulsion from
paradise and bewailed their sin during a hundred years.
So, too, in Germany we have multitudes of lakes supposed to owe
their origin to the sinking of valleys as a punishment for human
sin.
Pages:
1080
1081
1082
1083
1084
1085
1086
1087
1088
1089
1090
1091
1092
1093
1094
1095
1096
1097
1098
1099
1100
1101
1102
1103
1104