eparate family received a language of
its own.

Such explanatory myths grew or spread widely over the earth. A
well-known form of the legend, more like the Chaldean than the Hebrew
later form, appeared among the Greeks. According to this, the Aloidae
piled Mount Ossa upon Olympus and Pelion upon Ossa, in their efforts to
reach heaven and dethrone Jupiter.

Still another form of it entered the thoughts of Plato. He held that in
the golden age men and beasts all spoke the same language, but that
Zeus confounded their speech because men were proud and demanded eternal
youth and immortality.(413)

(413) For the identification of the Tower of Babel with the "Birs
Nimrad" amid the ruins of the city of Borsippa, see Rawlinson; also
Schrader, The Cuneiform Inscriptions and the Old Testament, London,
1885, pp. 106-112 and following; and especially George Smith, Assyrian
Discoveries, p. 59. For some of these inscriptions discovered and read
by George Smith, see his Chaldean Account of Genesis, new York, 1876,
pp. 160-162. For the statement regarding the origin of the word Babel,
see Ersch and Gruber, article Babylon; also the Rev. Prof. A. H. Sayce
in the latest edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; also Colenso,
Pentateuch Examined, part iv, p. 302; also John Fiske, Myths and
Myth-makers, p. 72; also Lenormont, Histoire Ancienne de l'Orient,
Paris, 1881, vol. i, pp. 115 et seq. As to the character and purpose of
the great tower of the temple of Belus, see Smith's Bible Dictionary,
article Babel, quoting Diodorus; also Rawlinson, especially in Journal
of the Asiatic Society for 1861; also Sayce, Religion of the Ancient
Babylonians (Hibbert Lectures for 1887), London, 1887, chap. ii and
elsewhere, especially pages 96, 397, 407; also Max Duncker, History
of Antiquity, Abbott's translation, vol. ii, chaps. ii, and iii.
For similar legends in other parts of the world, see Delitzsch; also
Humboldt, American Researches; also Brinton, Myths of the New World;
also Colenso, as above. The Tower of Cholula is well known, having
been described by Humboldt and Lord Kingsborough. For superb engravings
showing the view of Babel as developed by the theological imagination,
see Kircher, Turris Babel, Amsterdam, 1679. For the Law of Wills and
Causes, with deductions from it well stated, see Beattie Crozier,
Civilization and Progress, London, 1888, pp. 112, 178, 179, 273. For
Plato, see the Politicus, p. 272, ed. Stephani, cited in Ers