BOOK V. sacred bed formed an important part of their apparatus. Clement of Alexandria tells us, that, in the formula used by one who had been initiated, he was taught to say, I have descended into the bed-chamber1. The ceremony here alluded to was doubtless the same as the descent into Hades and I am inclined to think, that, when the aspirant entered into the mystic cell, he was directed to lay himself down upon the bed, which shadowed out the tomb or coffin of the great father. This process was equivalent to his entering into the infernal ship: and, while stretched out upon the holy couch in imitation of his figuratively deceased prototype, he was said to be wrapped in the deep sleep of death. His resurrection from the bed was his restoration to life or his regeneration into a new World: and it was virtually the same as his return from Hades, or his emerging from the gloomy cavern, or his liberation from the womb of the ship-goddess.

3. We may now distinctly perceive the origin of that studied and palpable resemblance, which subsists between gentile places of literal sepulture and ancient temples devoted to the celebration of the funereal Mysteries.

Sometimes the dead were interred beneath artificial tumuli; which in form were precisely similar to the pyramidal imitations of Meru, at once the tombs and the temples of Buddha or Osiris or Jupiter or Bacchus. Sometimes they were deposited in vast excavated catacombs; which, both internally and externally, perfectly resembled the artificial consecrated grottos of the dying and reviving great father. And sometimes they were placed in subterraneous vaults; which were the very counterpart of those occasionally used for the purpose of initiation, where from the nature of the country the rocky cavern could not be employed. These different places of sepulture were often planted round with trees, in imitation of the sacred groves and the general similarity is so strong, that, in almost every book of oriental travels, temples are either pronounced to be tombs, or tombs confounded with temples, or temples declared to be more like tombs than religious edifices.

The grave of Cyrus affords a very curious exemplification of these remarks, while it may serve to throw additional light on the preceding observa

Clem. Alex. Cohort. p. 11.

tions respecting the sacred bed. When Alexander had destroyed Perse- CHAP. VII. polis, he visited the tomb of this renowned prince. It was a small pyramid in the midst of what the Persians denominated a Paradise. The lower part of it was solid: but above, in the heart of the building, there was a chamber with a very narrow avenue leading to it, exactly according to the plan of the Babylonic tower and the great pyramid of Egypt. When Aristobulus entered it by command of the Macedonian, he found it to contain a golden bed, a table provided with cups, a golden trough, an abundance of garments, and various ornaments decorated with precious stones. No body was found: but the inscription proved it to be the tomb of Cyrus'.

Strab. Geog. lib. xv. p. 730.

Pag. Idol.

VOL. III

2 R

CHAPTER VIII.

On the Origination of Romance from old mythologic Idolatry.

THE mythology of one age becomes the popular romance of another : and so completely have the minds of men been preoccupied with the ancient universal system of Idolatry, that almost every fictitious legend, whether ancient or modern, bears its unequivocal impress. On this singular subject it were easy to write a volume. Brevity however must be consulted. I shall therefore content myself with bringing together a few scattered notices respecting romance secular, romance ecclesiastical, and romance magical or necromantic.

I. Secular romance I do not confine solely to those chivalrous fictions, which ordinarily bear that name. I consider the substance, rather than the mere appellation: and, as with equal propriety Hercules may be styled a knight-errant and Amadis a hero', I scruple not to place together under the same division of my subject warriors of very different ages and countries; though it must be acknowledged, that, in generous courtesy at least, if not in martial prowess, the cavaliers of the middle ages far transcend their barbarous predecessors.

Bp. Hurd has a similar remark in his Letters on chivalry.

1. The entrance of the great father into the Ship formed a very promi- CHAP.VIII. nent feature of old mythology: and, as his liberation from it was esteemed his birth into the new World, he was often represented as a helpless infant exposed in a wooden ark. This ark is sometimes set afloat on the sea, while at other times it is mentioned simply without any specification of such a circumstance: and, though the great father himself is occasionally exhibited as an infant, yet we are not unfrequently told without any disguise that he constructed a ship and embarked in it with certain companions. All these various particulars have been duly transcribed into the page of romance both ancient and modern: and the channel of communication seems to have been a well preserved, though at length mistaken, remembrance of the diluvian Mysteries. Each aspirant was imitatively deemed an infant, and in the course of his initiation was committed to the sacred infernal boat. Hence originated the numerous tales of persons having experienced such a calamity during their childhood.

(1.) Let us first attend to legends of an exposure in an ark, either at sea or on the stream of a river. Of this it is easy to produce a considerable variety of examples.

The classical Perseus, and Telephus, and Anius, and Tennes, are all equally said, like the god Bacchus, to have been set afloat in an ark, during the period of their infancy, on the surface of the ocean, and to have all in due time come safe to shore 1. A precisely similar story is told respecting the British Taliesin, the Persian Darab, the Latin Romulus, the Indian Pradyumna, the Amadis of Gothic romance, and the Brahman and Perviz and Parizade of Arabic fiction. The child Taliesin is committed to sea in a coracle: the infant Darab is set afloat on the Gihon in a small wooden ark: Romulus and his brother are exposed in the same manner on the Tiber: Pradyumna is inclosed in a chest and thrown into the sea, is swallowed by a fish, and is ultimately brought safe to land: Amadis, while a child, is shut up in a little ark, and cast into the main ocean: and the two princes and their sister are successively placed in wicker baskets, and thus

1

Apollod. Bibl. lib. ii. c. 4. Strab. Geog. lib. x. p. 487. lib. xiii. p. 615. Tzetz. in Lycoph. ver. 570. Conon. Narrat. 29. Diod. Bibl. lib. v. p. 332. Cicer. 1 Orat. in Verr 19. Lycoph. Cassand. ver. 229. Tzetz. in loc. Nonni Dionys. lib. xxv. p. 425..

BOOK V. committed to a stream which flowed beneath the walls of their father's

palace'.

(2.) Sometimes we meet with a story of a person being inclosed within an ark, unattended by the circumstance of its being set afloat on the

water.

Thus Cypselus, an ancient prince of Corinth, is said to have been preserved in an ark, when his enemies sought his life: and this ark, which continued to be shewn in the days of Pausanias, was afterwards consecrated in Olympia by his posterity, who from him were denominated Cypselide. Thus Jason, the captain of the Argo, was inclosed in an ark during his infancy as one dead; and in that state was bewailed by the women of his family, precisely in the same manner as the females of Egypt and Phenicia lamented the untimely fate of the ark-concealed Osiris and Adonis. Thus Ion, the son of the Babylonic Xuth and the reputed ancestor of the Ionic Greeks, is fabled to have been exposed in an ark, which was decorated with an olive-branch. Thus the primeval Athenian prince Erechthonius, whose form was compounded of a man and a serpent, was inclosed in an ark by Minerva, and committed to the care of the three daughters of Cecrops who were certainly priestesses of the triplicated great

' Davies's Mythol. p. 230. Vallancey's Vindic. p. 226, 227. Asiat. Res. vol. iii. p. 183, 184. Amadis de Gaul. book i. c. 2. Concluding story. As for Romulus, Livy treats as fabulous all that

Plut. in vit. Romul. Arab. nights entert. preceded the building

of Rome: and Plutarch affords ample room for doubting at least, whether the whole tale of the two brothers be not mere mythologic romance. From him we learn, that the foundation of the city was ascribed to various persons at various periods, and that there was the same complete uncertainty respecting both the parentage and the epoch of Romulus. The most rational opinion is, that Rome was built by a colony of the Pelasgi or Cuthic Palli; for almost every particular in the early Latin history, if history it can be called, is built upon the prevailing popular theology. See Liv. Hist. Rom. lib. i. in præfat. Plut. in vit. Romul. Tzetz. in Lycoph. ver. 1226, 1232. The Scythic origin of the Romans has been ably demonstrated by Mr. Pinkerton. Dissert. on the orig. of the Scyth. p. 80. 2 Pausan. 1 Eliac. p. 319, 320.

3 Tzetz. Chil. vii. hist. 96. Schol. in Lycoph. ver. 175. Pindar. Pyth. iv. ver. 197. Natal. Com. lib. vi. p. 315.

4 Euripid. Ion. ver. 1434, 1587. Chron. Pasch. p. 49. Jamb. de vit. Pythag. c. 34.