Homer (Iliad, book xviii.)
describes Tethys, "the mother goddess," coming to Achilles "from the
deep abysses of the main:"
"The circling Nereids with their mistress weep,
And all the sea-green sisters of the deep."
Plato surrounds the great statue of Poseidon in Atlantis with the images
of one hundred Nereids.
16. in the Deluge legends of the Hindoos (as given on page 87 ante), we
have seen Manu saving a small fish, which subsequently grew to a great
size, and warned him of the coming of the Flood. In this legend all the
indications point to an ocean as the scene of the catastrophe. It says:
"At the close of the last calpa there was a general destruction, caused
by the sleep of Brahma, whence his creatures, in different worlds, were
drowned in a vast ocean. . . . A holy king, named Satyavrata, then
reigned, a servant of the spirit which moved on the waves" (Poseidon?),
"and so devout that water was his only sustenance. . . . In seven days
the three worlds" (remember Poseidon's trident) "shall be plunged in an
ocean of death." . . . "'Thou shalt enter the spacious ark, and continue
in it secure from the Flood on one immense ocean.
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