that we fell upon the beasts and ate, and there remained nothing.  Upon this, therefore, I caused the wealth to be brought, and meted it with a measure, and sent it, by trusty men, who went about with it through all regions, not leaving unvisited a single large city, to seek for some food. But they found it not, and they returned to us with the wealth after a long absence.  So, thereupon we exposed to view our riches and our treasures, locked the gates of the fortresses in our city, and submitted ourselves to the decrees of our Lord; and thus we all died, as thou beholdest, and left what we had built and what we had treasured.”

{p. 275}

And this strange tale has relations to all the other legends.

Here we have the great demon, darting fire, blazing, smoking, the destructive one; the rebel against the good God.  He is overthrown by the bright-shining one, Dimiriat, the same as the Dev-Mrityu of the Hindoos; he and his forces are cut to pieces, and scattered over the land, and he, after being chased for months through space, is captured and chained.  Associated with all this is a people of the Bronze Age—­a highly civilized people; a people living on an island in the Western Sea, who perished by a calamity which came on them suddenly; “a summoner of death” came and brought disasters; and then followed a long period of terrible heat and drought, in which not they alone, but all nations and cities, were starved by the drying up of the earth.  The demon had devoured the cows-the clouds; like Cacus, he had dragged them backward into his den, and no Hercules, no Indra, had arisen to hurl the electric bolt that was to kill the heat, restore the clouds, and bring upon the parched earth the grateful rain.  And so this Bronze-Age race spread out their useless treasures to the sun, and, despite their miseries, they praise the God of gods, the Cause of causes, the merciful, the compassionate, and lie down to die.

And in the evil-one, captured and chained and sealed by Solomon, we seem to have the same thing prefigured in Revelation, xx, 2: 

“2.  And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.

“3.  And he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal upon him, that he should no more seduce the nations.”

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CHAPTER XII.

THE BOOK OF JOB.

WE are told in the Bible (Job, i, 16)—­

“While he [Job] was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, The fire of God is fallen from heaven and hath burned up the sheep, and the servants, and consumed them, and I only am escaped alone to tell thee.”

And in verse 18 we are told—­

“While he was yet speaking, there came also another, and said, Thy sons and thy daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house: