25. As organic substance was represented by the symbol of the egg; so the principle of life, by which it was called into action, was represented by that of the serpent; which having the property of casting its skin, and apparently renewing its youth, was naturally adopted for that purpose. We sometimes find it coiled round the egg, to express the incubation of the vital spirit; and it is not only the constant attendant upon the guardian deities of health, but occasionally employed as an accessary symbol to almost every other god, to signify the general attribute of immortality. For this reason it served as a general sign of consecration;3 and not only the deified heroes of the Greeks, such as Cecrops and Erichthonius, but the virgin Mother of the Scythians, and the consecrated Founder of the Japanese, were represented terminating in serpents. Both the Scythians and Parthians, too, carried the image of a serpent or dragon, upon the point of a spear, for their military standard;5 as the Tartar princes of China still continue to do; whence we find this figure perpetually represented ou their stuffs and porcelaine, as well as upon those of the JapaThe inhabitants of Norway and Sweden continued to pay divine honors to serpents down to the sixteenth century; and almost all the Runic inscriptions, found upon tombs, are engraved upon the sculptured forms of them; the emblems of that immortality, to which the deceased were thus consecrated. Macha Alla, the god of life and death among the Tartars, has serpents nese. 4 βαρυ σαλεύομεν το περι του κοσμου της γενέσεως, απηγορευσε. - αεισω ξυνετοισι τον Ορφικον και ξερον λογον, δς ουκ ορνιθος μόνον το ωον αποφαίνει πρεσβύτερον, αλλά και συλλάβων ἅπασαν αυτῷ την ἅπαντων ὁμου πρεσβυγενειαν ανατίθησι και τ' αλλα μεν ευστομα κείσθω (καθ' Ηροδοτον), εστι γαρ μυστικωτερα. -όθεν ουκ απο τροπου τοις περι τον Διονυσον οργιασμοις, ὡς μιμημα του τα παντα γεννώντος και περιέχοντος εν ἑαυτῷ, συγκαθωσιωται.-ενεχεσθαι δογμασιν Ορφικοίς η Πυθαγορικοις, και το ωον,—αρχην ἡγουμενοις γενέσεως, αφοσιουσθαι. Plutarch. Sympos. 1. ii. q. iii. s. 1. I Δράκοντα αυτῳ τῳ Ασκληπιῳ) παριστώσι, ὅτι ὁμοιον τι τουτῳ πασχουσιν οἱ χρωμενοι τη ιατρική, κατα το οίονει ανανεάζειν εκ των νόσων, και αποδύεσθαι το γηρας. Phurnut. de Nat. Deor. c. xxxiii. 2 Παρ παντι των νομιζομενων παρ' ὑμιν θεων οφις συμβολον μεγα και μυστηριον αναγράφεται. Justin Martyr. Apol. ii. p. 70. 3 Pinge duos angues, pueri, sacer est locus. Pers. Sat. i. 4 Μυθολογουσι Σκυθαι γηγενη παρ' αυτοις γενεσθαι παρθενον· ταυτην δ' έχειν τα μεν ανω μερη του σώματος μεχρι της ζωνης γυναικεια, τα δε κατωτερα εχιδνης ταύτῃ δε Δια μιγεντα γεννησαι παιδα Σκύθην ονομα. Diodor. Sic. ii. 43. Kampfer, Hist. of Japan, b. ii. p. 145. 5 Arrian. in Præf. p. 80. Lucian. de Hist. conscrib. p. 39. 6 Serpentes ut sacros colebant;-ædium servatores atque penates existimantes ;reliquiæ tamen hujus superstitione culturæ-in nonnullis secretis solitudinum ædibusque perseverant; sicuti in septentrionalibus regnis Norvegia ac Vermelandiæ. Ol. Magn. de Gent. Septent. Hist. Epit. 1. iii. 7 Ol. Varelii Hunagr. Ol. Rudbeck. Atlant. No. iii. c. 1. entwined round his limbs and body, to express the first attribute, and human skulls and scalps on his head, and at his girdle, to express the second.' The jugglers and divines also, of North America, make themselves girdles and chaplets of serpents, which they have the art to tame and familiarise; and, in the great temple of Mexico, the captives taken in war, and sacrificed to the sun, had each a wooden collar, in the shape of a serpent, put round his neck while the priest performed the horrid rites.3 In the kingdom of Juida, about the fourth degree of latitude, on the western coast of Africa, one of these reptiles was lately, and perhaps is still, worshipped as the symbol of the Deity; and when Alexander entered India, Taxilus, a powerful prince of the country, showed him a serpent of enormous size, which he nourished with great care, and revered as the image of the god, whom the Greek writers, from the similitude of his attributes, call Dionysus or Bacchus.s The Epidaurians kept one in the same manner to represent Æsculapius; as did likewise the Athenians, in their celebrated temple of Minerva, to signify the guardian or preserving deity of the Acropolis. The Hindoo women still carry the lingam, or consecrated symbol of the generative attribute of the Deity, in solemn procession between two serpents; and, in the sacred casket, which held the egg and phallus in the mystic processions of the Greeks, was also a serpent. Over the porticoes of all the ancient Egyptian temples, the winged disc of the sun is placed between two hooded snakes, signifying that luminary placed between its two great attributes of motion and life. The same combination of symbols, to express the same attributes, is observable upon the coins of the Phoenicians and Carthaginians;10 and appears to have been anciently employed by the Druids of Britain and Gaul, as it still is by the idolaters of China." The Scandinavian goddess Isa 6 1 Voyage en Sibérie par l'Abbé Chappe d'Auteroche, pl. xviii. The figure in brass is in the collection of Mr. Knight. 2 Lafitau Mœurs des Sauvages, t. i. p. 253. 3 Acosta's History of the Indies, p. 382. 4 Hist. gén. des Voyages, t. iv. p. 305. 6 Liv. Hist. lib. xi. epitom. 5 Max. Tyr. Dissert. viii. c. 6. 7 Herodot. lib. viii. 41. 8 Sonnerat Voyage aux Indes, t. i. p. 253. 9 See the cista mysticæ on the nummi cistaphori of the Greek cities of Asia, which are extremely common, and to be found in all cabinets and books of ancient coins. 10 Médailles de Dutens, p. 1. Mus. Hunter. tab, 15. fig. v. and viii. I See Stukeley's Abury; the original name of which temple, he observes, was the snake's head and it is remarkable the remains of a similar circle of stones in Boeotia had the same name in the time of Pausanias. Κατα δε την ες Γλισαντα ευθειαν εκ Θηβων λιθοις χωριον περιεχομενον λογασιν Opews kaλovσiv oi Onẞaloi kepaλŋv. Pausan. Boot. c. xix. s. 2. or Disa was sometimes represented between two serpents;' and a similar mode of canonization is employed in the apotheosis of Cleopatra, as expressed on her coins. Water-snakes, too, are held sacred among the inhabitants of the Friendly Islands; and, in the mysteries of Jupiter Sebazius, the initiated were consecrated by having a snake put down their bosoms.3 26. The sort of serpent most commonly employed, both by the Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Hindoos, is the hooded snake: but the Greeks frequently use a composite or ideal figure; sometimes with a radiated head, and sometimes with the crest or comb of a cock; accessary symbols, which will be hereafter further noticed. The mystical serpent of the Hindoos, too, is generally represented with five heads, to signify, perhaps, the five senses: but still it is the hooded snake, which we believe to be a native of India, and consequently to have been originally employed as a religious symbol in that country; from whence the Egyptians and Phoenicians probably borrowed it, and transmitted it to the Greeks and Romans; upon whose bracelets, and other symbolical ornaments, we frequently find it. 27. Not only the property of casting the skin, and acquiring a periodical renovation of youth, but also that of pertinaciously retaining life even in amputated parts, may have recommended animals of the serpent kind as symbols of health and immortality, though noxious and deadly in themselves. Among plants, the olive seems to have been thought to possess the same property in a similar degree; and therefore was probably adopted to express the same attribute. At Athens it was particularly consecrated to Minerva; but the statue of Jupiter at Olympia was crowned with it ; and it is also observable on the heads of Apollo, Hercules, Cybele, and other deities; the preserving power, or attribute of immortality, being, in some mode or other, common to every 'Ol. Rudbeck. Atlant. pt. iii. c. 1. p. 25., and pt. ii. p. 343, fig. A., and p. 510. 2 Missionaries' first Voyage, p. 238. 3 Arnob. lib. v. p. 171. Clein. Alex. Cohort. ad Gentes, p. 14. Jul. Firmic. c. 27. 4 See La Chausse Mus. Rom. vol. ii. tab. xiii. and xiv. The radiated serpent is common on gems. 5 Virgil Georgic. ii. v. 30. and 181. Εκβλαστάνει δε μαλιστα τα ελαινα, και αργα κειμενα και εργασμενα πολλακις εαν ικμάδα λαμβανη, και εχη τοπον νοτερον, ὥσπερ ηδη τις στροφευς της θύρας εβλάστησε, και ἡ κυλιου πλινθίνου κωπη τιθείσα εις πηλον. Theophrast. Hist. Plant. lib. v. c. ix. 6 Στέφανος δε επίκειται οἱ τῇ κεφαλῇ μεμιμημενος ελαιας κλωνας. Pausan. m Eliac. 1. c. xi. s. 1. 7 See coins of Rhegium, Macedonia, Aradus, Tyre, &c. personification of the divine nature. The victors in the Olympic games were also crowned with branches of the oleaster or wild olive; the trunk of which, hung round with the arms of the vanquished in war, was the trophy of victory consecrated to the immortal glory of the conquerors :2 for as it was a religious, as well as military symbol, it was contrary to the laws of war, acknowledged among the Greeks, to take it down, when it had been once duly erected. 28. Among the sacred animals of the Egyptians, the bull, worshipped under the titles of Mnevis and Apis, is one of the most distinguished. The Greeks called him Epaphus,3 aud we find his image, in various actions and attitudes, upon an immense number of their coins, as well as upon some of those of the Phoenicians, and also upon other religious monuments of almost all nations. The species of bull most commonly employed is the urus or wild bull, the strongest animal known in those climates, which are too cold for the propagation of the elephant; a creature not known in Europe, nor even in the northern or western parts. of Asia, till Alexander's expedition into India, though ivory was familiarly known even in the Homeric times. To express the attribute strength, in symbolical writing, the figure of the strongest animal would naturally be adopted; wherefore this emblem, generally considered, explains itself, though, like all others of the kind, it was modified and applied in various ways. The mystic Bacchus, or generative power, was represented under this form, not only upon the coins but in the temples of the Greeks: sometimes simply as a bull; at others, with a human face; and, at others, entirely human except the horns or ears. The age, too, is varied; the bull being in some instances quite old, and in others quite young; and the humanised head being sometimes bearded, and sometimes not.8 5 Pausan. lib. i. c. 12. This proves that the coins with an elephant's skin on the head, are of Alexander II., king of Epirus, son of Pyrrhus. 6 Taupa, i. e. Alovvoq. Lycophr. 209. Ταυρομορφον Διονυσον ποιουσιν αγαλματα πολλοι των Ἑλληνων· αἱ δ ̓ Ηλείων γυναίκες και παρακαλουσιν ευχομεναι, ποδι βοειῳ τον θεον ελθειν προς αυτας. Αργείοις δε Βουγένης Διονυσος επικλην εστι. Plutarch. de Is. et Osir. Εν δε Κυζικῳ και ταυρομορφος ίδρυται (ὁ Διονυσος.) Athen. Deipnos. lib. xi. p. 476. 7 Bronzi d' Ercolano, t. i. tav. 1. Coins of Camerina, and plate ii. of the 1st volume of "the Select Specimens.' 8 Coins of Lampsacus, Naxus, and plates xvi. and xxxix. of vol. i. AN INQUIRY into the Opinions of the ancient Hebrews, respecting a future immortal Existence. PART III-[Continued from No. XLIII. p. 129.] WE collect from the clear manner, in which this doctrine is delivered in the New Testament, as a fundamental part of religion, both by our Saviour and his apostles, that it was presupposed to have existed in the Mosaic and Prophetic Dispensations. It was practically exemplified at Christ's transfiguration; and the persons, who appeared on that occasion, were Moses and Elijah. Hence Huet remarks, "Rabbinorum etiam multorum constans est doctrina, pios homines post mortem in beatas quasdam sedes longe a cœlo positas recipi. Sub solio gloriæ ligatas esse proborum hominum animas tradit Cabala. Quem locum, si sibi consentire velint, Abrahamo quoque assignȧre debent, non eum ad Dei dextram collocare. Legatur super hoc argumento Sepher et Emana; res egregie confirmata reperietur.' In the parable, likewise, of Dives and Lazarus, we find the connexion between the two Testaments maintained, by the introduction of Abraham. Παλαιὸς μὲν οὖν ἐστί τις ὁ λόγος οὗτος (says Plato in the Phædo ') οὗ μεμνήμεθα, ὡς εἰσιν ἐνθένδε ἀφικόμεναι ἐκεῖ (ψυχαί). Nor did a nation ever exist that had not some idea of the immortality of the soul; and if such a knowledge be traced among Heathen worshippers of the Deity, can we suppose that those, whom he favored with an express revelation, were left in total ignorance of a subject so intimately connected with morality, and so well calculated to advance the performance of religious duties? The doctrine of the Pagan. philosophers, who believed in a resurrection, may be summed up in these words: ἔστι καὶ τῷ ὄντι καὶ τὸ ἀναβιώσκεσθαι, καὶ ἐκ τῶν τεθνεώτων τοὺς ζῶντας γίγνεσθαι, καὶ τὰς τῶν τεθνεώτων ψυχὰς εἶναι, καὶ ταῖς μὲν ἀγαθαῖς ἄμεινον εἶναι, ταῖς δὲ κακαῖς κάκιον. From the book of Job we infer, that when God shall gather to himself man's breath, he shall exists; and the I VOL. XXIII. 'Plato in Phædone. NO. XLV. B |