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to offer up a solemn sacrifice, and clothes himself in a which he is familiar. In vain does he endeavour to robe dipped in the blood of the Centaur, whom he had reconcile the mythic legends of Greece with the foreign slain in crossing a river. The robe takes fire, and the dogmas that he encounters. After a scrupulous exhero perishes amid the flames, but only to resume his amination, and imploring the favour of the gods of his youth in the heavens, and become a partaker of immor- country, he declares that the name Herakles is origitality. The Centaur thus terminates the mortal career nally from Egypt, not from Greece. Hercules with the of Hercules; and in like manner the new annual period Egyptians was the sun of the spring in all his force, commences with the passage of the sun into Leo, an idea to which his very name alluded, which was marked by a group of stars in the morning, which in the Egyptian tongue Sem, Som, or Djom, "the glitter like the flames that issued from the vestment Strong." Sem-Herakles passed for a god of the secof Nessus. If Hercules be regarded as having actually ond class in Egypt. He was the type of the divine existed, nothing can be more monstrous, nothing more power, appearing with glory at the period of the spring, at variance with every principle of chronology, nothing after having conquered the gloomy winter. He was more replete with contradictions, than the adventures the sun traversing his celestial career, contending of such an individual as poetry makes him to have against the numerous obstacles with which his path is been. But, considered as the luminary that gives supposed to be strewed, and obtaining by his immortal light and life to the world, as the god who impregnates vigour a prize worthy of his numerous triumphs. On all nature with his fertilizing rays, every part of the le- the monuments of Egypt he was seen traversing the gend teems with animation and beauty, and is marked fields of air in the bark of the star of day (Plut., de by a pleasing and perfect harmony. The sun of the Is. et Os., p. 506, ed. Wyttenb.); at other times the summer solstice is here represented with all the attri-phoenix was placed in his hand, as a pledge of eternal butes of that strength which he has acquired at this victory, and a symbol of the great year, to which the season of the year. He enters proudly on his course, renewal of each solar year was supposed to allude.in obedience to the eternal order of nature. It is no From the Egyptian let us pass to the Phoenician Herlonger the sign Leo that he traverses; he combats a cules. Here he was denominated Melkarth, and befearful lion which ravages the plains. The Hydra is longed to the line of Bel or Baal, called Cronos by the the second monster that opposes the hero, and the Greeks. (Creuzer, Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 3, constellation in the heavens becomes a fearful animal p. 15.) Melkarth was the tutelary divinity of the powon earth, to which the language of poetry assigns a hun-erful city of Tyre, and the Tyrian navigators spread dred heads, with the power of reproducing them as his worship from island to island, and from shore to they are crushed by the weapon of the hero. All the shore, even to the farthest west, even to Gades, where obstacles that array themselves against the illustrious a flame burned continually in his temple, as at Olympia champion are gifted with some quality or attribute that on the altar of Jupiter. (Heeren, Ideen, vol. 1, p. 2, exceeds the bounds of nature the horses of Diomede seqq.) His name signified, according to some, "the feed on human fesh; the females rise above the timid- king of the city;" according to others, and with greater ity of their sex, and become formidable heroines; the probability, "the powerful king" (Bochart, Geogr apples of the Hesperides are of gold; the stag has Sacr., 2, 2.-Selden, de D. S., 1, 6), an idea closely brazen hoofs; the dog of Hades bristles with serpents; analogous to that intended to be conveyed by the Egypeverything, even down to the very crab, is formidable; tian appellation Sem. The King of the City, or the for everything is great in nature, and must, therefore, powerful King, was a true incarnation of the sun. be equally so in the various symbols that are used to He was the sun of spring, growing gradually more and designate her various powers. (Consult, on this whole more powerful as it mounts to the skies, sending rains subject, the remarks of Dupuis, Origine de tous les upon the earth, and causing the seed to shoot forth Cultes, vol. 2, p. 168, seqq.-Abrégé, p. 116, seqq.) from the ground. Hence the Phoenicians regarded The conclusion to which we have here arrived, will him as the god of harvests and of the table, the god appear still plainer if we take a hasty sketch of the Ori- who brings joy in his train. (Nonnus, Dionys., 40, ental origin of the fable of Hercules, and its passage from 418.) A mercantile and commercial people, they also the East into the countries of the West. And it will be made him (in a still more special sense, perhaps) the seen that the Greeks, in conformity with their national protector of commerce and colonies. It is to this idea character, appropriated to themselves, and gave a hu- that many seek to refer the etymology of the Greek man form to, an Oriental deity; and that, metamor- and Latin names Herakles and Hercules. Thus, some phosing the stranger-god into a Grecian hero, they assign as the root the Phoenician or Hebrew term took delight in making him an ideal type of that heroic Harkel, "circuitor," "mercator" (Munter, Relig. der courage and might which triumphs over every obstacle. Carthag, p. 41, ed. 2), but which applies equally well Hercules, the invincible Hercules, has strong analogies to the sun moving along in his celestial career (vewith the Persian Mithras, the type of the unconquered piwv). Others write the name Archles, which recalls su. (Creuzer, Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 1, p. the old Latin or Etrurian Ercle, Hercole. (Beller376, &c.) Mithras, Perseus, and Hercules the de-mann, 1, 22.) The perilous and fertilizing course of scendant of Perseus, connect together the two families the sun in the heavens may, in fact, have passed for a of Belus, that of Asia and that of Egypt. According natural type of those adventurous courses by land and to the Greek genealogies, the son of Amphitryon and sea which enriched the hardy navigators of Phoenicia Alcmena was of Egyptian blood both on the father's and beyond a doubt the mythus of Hercules borrowed and mother's side, while he was descended by Perseus more than one incident from their distant expeditions. from Belus, the solar god. (Consult the tables of ge- The ancient nations had a custom of loading with nealogy, X, Xa, and Xb, at the end of Heyne's Apol-chains the statues of their gods, when the state was lodorus.) But, added the tradition, the figure of Amphitryon only served as a mask to the king of gods and men when he wished to give birth to Hercules. The origin of the latter, then, was mediately and immediately divine, and we have a son of Jupiter in the Hellenic Hercules, as well as in the Sem-Hercules of Egypt. But, in every other respect, what a difference between the two. Herodotus, full of the ideas imbibed from the national poems on Hercules, the illustrious chief of the heroic races of Greece, arrives in Egypt. There he finds a Hercules quite different from the one with

menaced with danger, in order to prevent their flight. Among the Phoenicians, the idol Melkarth was almost constantly chained. In the same manner, the nations of Italy chained their Saturn every year until the tenth month, and at his festival in December they gave him his freedom. (Macrob., Sat., 1, 8.) The fundamental idea of this symbolical usage was originally the same among all these nations, though afterward differently expressed, and variously modified in various sys. tems of religion. In the infantine conceptions of the earliest times, it was believed that the course of the

feeble at the period of the winter solstice, which in some sense turns his back upon the earth, and shows his obscurer parts. (Compare the literal meaning of Mehάurvуos, and the note of Guigniaut, vol. 3, p. 182.) As long as the solar god abandons himself to an inglorious life, and divides his attention between the pleasures and the servile employments of women, that is, during the entire winter solstice, the Cercopes, who are the divisions of this period of languor, crowd around and insult him with impunity. But no sooner does the approach of the vernal equinox reinvigorate the solar luminary, than Hercules, coming forth from degrading repose, attacks and subjugates his revilers. Jupiter, placed in opposition to the same creatures, so full of artifice and so fair a symbol of it, may equally be explained in an astronomical and calendary sense. This god was the sun of suns; the supreme force that combats, subdues, and dissipates whatever tends to obscure the light and disturb the harmony of the universe. The Cercopes are here opposed to him in the same manner as in other legends the Titans.-It may be as well, before leaving this part of the subject, to remark, that the monkey, and also various other animals or natural objects, consecrated in public worship both among the Egyptians and elsewhere, were rethe stars, their revolutions, and the periods of the year. Apes appear to have been honoured with a species of worship, not only in India and Egypt, but also along the northern coast of Africa, perhaps even at Carthage itself. (Guigniaut, vol. 3, p. 183.)-Hercules, according to the traditions of Lydia, became the father, in this country, by a female slave, perhaps the same with Omphale, of the chief of a new dynasty of kings. The dynasty preceding this had in like manner for its with the solar god of Phrygia and Lydia. The second royal race was that of the Heraclidæ, or rathe: of the Candaulidae; for, according to some, the Lydı. an Hercules was named Candaules. (Hesych., s. v. Kavdav2ns.) This name recalls to mind the last monarch of the race, who, like his divine progenitor, fell into the snare laid for him by an artful woman, and, still more unfortunate than he, lost at one and the same

sun could be retarded by chaining his image, and accelerated by removing the fetters. Hence, in this way, they wished to represent his strength and his weakess.-The worship of Hercules prevailed also in Phrygia. Hercules, according to Eusebius (Chron., 1, p. 26.-Bochart, Geogr. Sacr., p. 472), here bore the name of Diodas, or, as the Latin version gives it, Desanaus, which last Vossius makes equivalent to strong," "powerful," an idea conveyed also by the Tyrian appellation of Melkarth. (Voss, de Idolol., 1, 22.)-As a colony from Tyre had carried the worship of Hercules into Boeotia by the way of Thasus, so another colony conveyed it to the Ionians of lower Asia. At Erythra, on the coast of Ionia, was to be seen a statue of Hercules, of an aspect completely Egyptian. The worship of the god was here celebrated by certain Thracian females, because the females of the country were said to have refused to make to the god an offering of their locks on his arrival at Erythræ. (Pausan., 7, 5.) The females of Byblos sacrificed to Adonis their locks and their chastity at one and the same time, and it is probable that the worship of Hercules was not more exempt, in various parts of the ancient world, from the same dissolute offerings. In Lydia, particularly, it seems to have been marked by an almost delirious sensuality. Married and unmar-garded as having a direct and permanent relation to ried females prostituted themselves at the festival of the god. (Herodot., 1, 93.-Compare Clearch., ap. Athen., 12, p. 416, ed. Schweigh.) The two sexes changed their respective characters; and tradition reported that Hercules himself had given an example of this, when, assuming the vestments and occupation of a female, he subjected himself to the service of the voluptuous Omphale. (Creuzer, Fragm. Hist. Antiq., p. 187.) The Lydian Hercules was named Sandon, after the robe dyed with sandyx, in which Om-founder a chieftain of the name of Atys, homonymous phale had arrayed him, and which the females of the country imitated in celebrating his licentious worship. (I. Laurent. Lydus, de Mag. Rom., 3, 64, p. 268.) This Sandon reappears in the Cilician Sandacus, subjected to his male companion Pharnaces, as the Lydian Hercules was to Omphale. (Creuzer, Symbolik, par Guigniaut, vol. 3, p. 179.) We find here, as in the religion of Phoenicia, the same opposition, the same alternation of strength and weakness, of voluptuous-time his throne and his life. (Herodot., 1, 12.) Withness and courage. Hercules with Omphale, is the solar god descended into the omphalos, or "navel" of the world, amid the signs of the southern hemisphere; and it was the festival of this powerful star, enervated in some degree at the period of the winter solstice, which the Lydian people celebrated by the changing of the vestments of the weaker and the stronger sex.The fable of Hercules Melampyges and the Cercopes has a similar reference. According to Diodorus Siculus (4, 31), the Cercopes dwelt in the vicinity of Ephesus, and ravaged the country far and wide, while Hercules led a life of pleasure and servitude in the arms of Omphale. In vain had their mother warned them to beware of the powerful hero: they contemned her exhortations, and Melampyges, in consequence, was sent to chastise them. He soon brought them to the queen, loaded with chains. A different tradition places the Cercopes in the islands that face the coast of Campania. Jupiter, says the legend, being involved in war with the Titans, came to these islands to demand aid from the people called Arimi. But the Arimi, after having promised him assistance, refused to fulfil that promise, and trifled with the god. As a punishment for this conduct, Jove changed them into monkeys, or, according to others, into stones, and from this period the isles of Inarime and Prochyta have taken the name of Pithecusa, or "Monkey Íslands." (Ilonkovcal, from TiOnkos, "a monkey.") We have here the Cercopes, both in Asia Minor and in the volcanic islands of Campania. The meaning of the fable is evident. The Lydian Hercules is the sun, pale and

out speaking of the marvellous incidents with which
the later accounts of this work are adorned, such, for
example, as the magic ring of Gyges, the narrative of
Herodotus alone evidently shows a mythic side in the
whole history of the kings of Lydia: the very fall of
the monarchy is related with accompanying circum-
stances that bear the imprint of old religious symbols.
If King Meles, said the legend, had carried the lion,
which one of his concubines brought forth, all around
the walls of Sardis, that city never would have fallen
into the hands of Cyrus. (Herodot., 1, 84.) We have
here a royal lion, born of a young female, in the fam-
ily of the Heraclida; and the lion was always a sym-
bol of the valiant and victorious Hercules, an em-
blem of the sun in its protecting force. It remained
the sacred attribute of the monarchs of Lydia. Among
the rich offerings which Croesus sent to the temple of
Apollo at Delphi, the principal one was a golden lion.
(Herodot., 1, 50.) Even Sardis itself was, as the very
name denoted, the city of the year, and, under this ap-
pellation, consecrated to the god who directed the
movements of the year. (Xanthus, ap. 1. Lyd. de
Mens., p. 42.) It was the city of Hercules, as the
Egyptian Thebes was the city of Ammon; Babylon,
the city of Belus; Ecbatana, with its walls of seven
different colours, the city of the planets-India had
also her Hercules, if we credit the ancient writers,
though their accounts are of a date comparatively re-
cent. He was named Dorsanes or Dosanes (Hesy-
chius, s. v. Dopo.-Alberti, ad loc.), an appellation
which recalls the Desanaus of Phrygia. The account

given by Megasthenes (ap. Arrian, Ind., c. 8, seqq.), | them. Besides, it was on the solar year, and its sev. is in many respects so very similar to that which has eral subdivisions and periods, that the ordinances already been stated with regard to the Lydian Hercu- the earliest social state were based. In maintaining les, as to lead to the belief that the legends of Lower this sacred order, they only imitated the god of the Asia had emanated in some degree from the plains of year, at once the author of it and of their race. It is the Indian peninsula. The Rama of Hindustan, with for these reasons that we find, throughout all antiquity, his warlike apes, reminds us, under various striking a solar hero at the head of royal dynasties. This soaspects, of Hercules and the Cercopes.-The religion lar hero is Hercules, who is everywhere found to be of Hercules, passing from the East like the god whom the same personage, though under different appellait was intended to commemorate, made its way to the tions.-In Greece, the painful and protracted delivery farthest limits of the then known West. The Phoeni- of Alcmena, the mother of Hercules, already announces cians, and after them the Carthaginians, extended on the god of light, destined to struggle painfully against every side the worship of Melkarth, the divine pro- the powers of darkness. Ilithyia herself, the light tector of their colonies. It was from them that the coming forth from the bosom of night, sits with folded nations of Spain, after those of Africa, learned to re- arms before the door of Amphitryon, and the couravere his name; and, not content with placing his col-geous mother is a prey to cruel pangs until the cause umns at the entrance of the Atlantic, the Phoenician of her anguish is removed by the artifice of GalanHercules undertook, on this vast extent of ocean, long this. (Vid. Alcmena.) Long did Juno, according to and perilous expeditions. Pursuing also another di- the early traditions, put every obstacle in the way of rection, he crossed the barriers of the Pyrenees and the birth of the hero. (I., 19, 119.) This hostile the Alps he and his descendants founded numerous power persecutes the son after the mother, and her obcities, both in Gaul and in the countries adjacent to it. stinate hatred becomes the means that enable him to He was here styled Deusoniensis, an appellation which develop in all its splendour the divine power with again recalls that of Desanaus. Indeed, the occiden- which he is endowed. Thus the oracle gave him the tal mythology seems here to correspond in every par- name of Herakles ('Hpakλñç), because by means of ticular with that of the East. The cup of the sun, in Juno ("Hpa) he was destined to gain immortal glory which Hercules traverses the ocean for the purpose of (kλéoç), and live in the praises of posterity. (Diod. reaching the isle of Erythea, represents the marvellous Sic., 4, 10.-Schol. ad Pind., Ol., 6, 115.-Compare cup of the Persian Dschemschid. Under the empire Macrobius, Sat., 1, 20, who makes Hercules the glory of the latter, no corruption or decay of any kind pre- of Hera, or the lower air, the native darkness of vailed; and the columns of wood in the temple of which is illumined by the sun.) False as this etymolHercules at Gades were never carious. The Dschem- ogy undoubtedly is, it still proves that the Greeks schid of Persia and the Sem of Egypt gave health to themselves attached to their Hercules the fundamental their votaries; the Romans recognised the same power idea of a hero constantly at variance with a contrary in their victorious Hercules. (I. Lyd. de Mens., p. power. As regards the name itself, it may be re92.) Rome herself counted among her citizens cer- marked, that it is most probably of Oriental origin, tain individuals who claimed to be his descendants. though various attempts have been made by different The heroic family of the Fabii, for example, traced scholars to trace it to a Grecian source. The Latin their origin to the son of Alcmena. (Plut., Vit. Fab. Hercules, (Hercole, Ercle) is, to all appearance, a more Max., c. 1.) The Latins, as well as the Lydians, as- ancient form than the Greek 'Hpakλns. (Lennep, signed various concubines to this powerful deity, Etymol. L. G., p. 245.-Lanzi, Saggio di Ling. among whom are mentioned Fauna, and Acca Laren- Etrusca, vol. 2, p. 206, seqq.) Hermann considers tia, the nurse of Romulus. (Macer, ap. Macrob., Hercules as virtue personified, and carrying off glory Sat., 1, 10.-August., de Civ. Dei, 6, 7.) Thus, then, and praise ('Hрaкλñç, ôç прато Khéos. Briefe über at the same time that we find even in the West the Homer und Hesiod, p. 20), while Knight gives to the traces of a sensual worship rendered to Hercules, we fable of the hero a physical basis, borrowed from the see reproduced that peculiar tendency, so prevalent in worship of the sun ("the glorifier of the earth," from the East, of making heroes and kings the descendants ëpa and xλéos. Enquiry into Symb. Lang., § 130). of the divine sun; the children of that victorious and For other theories relative to Hercules, consult Mülbeneficent star, which continually brings us both the ler, Dorians, b. 2, c. 11, seq., and Buttmann, Mythoday and the year as the prizes of his glorious combats. logus, vol. 1, p. 246, seqq. And, indeed, what idea can be more natural than this? Is not the sun himself a powerful king, a hero, placed in a situation of continual combat with the shades of darkness and with the evil spirits to which they give birth? His numerous adversaries, in the career of the zodiac which he traverses, are principally the signs of winter. The solemn rites offered to him, such as the games celebrated at Chemmis and Olympia; the chains with which the statue of the Tyrian Hercules was loaded; the circle of female figures surrounding his statue at Sardis, were intended to represent the alternations of strength and weakness, of victory and defeat, which mark the course of this courageous wrestler of the year, whose very death is a triumph. Hence, among the numerous incarnations of the star of day, the warlike spirit of the earlier nations of antiquity would, in order to propose it as an example to chiefs and monarchs, give a preference to that one which represented the sun under the character that we have just been considering. Nor could the heads of communities have a nobler model. If their origin was regarded as divine, it imposed upon them the obligation of a continual struggle, in order to render manifest to all eyes the principle of light, of strength, and of goodness, which they were supposed to have within

HERCULEUM, I. Promontorium, a promontory in the Bruttiorum Ager, forming the most southern angle of Italy to the east, now Capo Spartivento. (Strabo, 259.-Cluver., Ital. Antiq., 2, p. 1300-Romanelli, vol. 1, p. 140)-II. Fretum, the strait which forms the communication between the Atlantic and Mediterranean. (Vid. Abila, Calpe, and Herculis Columnæ.)

HERCULIS, I. Columnæ, or Columns of Hercules, a name given to Calpe and Abila, or Gibraltar on the Spanish, and Cape Serra on the African, shore of the straits. Hercules was fabled to have placed them there as monuments of his progress westward, and beyond which no mortal could pass. (Vid. Calpe, Abila, and Mediterraneum Mare.)--II. Monaci Portus, or Arx Herculis Monaci, a town and harbour of Liguria, near Nicæa. The surname of Monæcus, given to Hercules, who was worshipped here, shows, as Strabo observes, the Greek origin of this place. Fabulous accounts attributed its foundation to Hercules himself. (Am. Marcell., 15.) The harbour is well described by Lucan (1, 405). It is now Monaco.-III. Liburni Portus, now Livorno or Leghorn, a part of Etruria, below the mouth of the Arnus. Cicero calls it Portus Herculis Labronis (ad Quint. Fratr., 2, 6).—IV. Portus, a harbour of Etruria, now Porto d'Ercole. It was situate

HERMEUM, I. Promontorium, or Promontory of HERMIAS, a Christian writer towards the close of the Mercury (Epuhs, Mercurius), on the southern shore second century, and a native of Galatia, who has left of Crete, between the Promontory Criu Metopon and us a short but elegant discourse in ridicule of the pagan Phoenix.-II. A promontory of Sardinia, on the west-philosophers, entitled Aiaovpμòs twv č§w piłoσóówv. ern shore, a little to the north of Bosa, now Capo della Cacca.-III. A promontory of Africa, in the district Zeugitana, now Cape Bon. (Polyb., 1, 29.-Plin., 5, 4.—Mela, 1, 7.-Liv., 29, 27.)

HERMOPOLIS, or the city of Hermes (Mercury), the HERMODORUS, a philosopher of Ephesus, who is said name of two towns of Egypt. The first was in the to have assisted, as interpreter, the Roman decemvirs Delta, east of the Canopic branch of the Nile, and in the composition of the ten tables of laws which northeast of Andropolis. For distinction' sake, the ephad been collected in Greece. (Cic., Tusc., 5, 36.) ithet Mixpá (Parva) was added to its name. Ptolemy "An ancient tradition mentions," observes Niebuhr, makes it the chief city of the nome in which Alexan"as an auxiliary to the Decemviri, in this code, Her-drea was situate. (Mannert, Geog., vol. 10, pt. 1, p.