"They confidered death not fo much an evil as an event of ordinary occurrence in the human state of being; not as a matter of grief, or to be lamented in public form or oftentatious mourning; as an event of courfe for which men fhould always be prepared and provided: they had, therefore, at their gates, ftanding always ready, two biers; one, in which the corpfe of the citizen, another, in which the corpfe of the flave, were put, to be carried in a waggon to the place of fepulture. No other ceremony of external forms of mourning was allowed than a domestic facrifice, and the attendant facrificial fupper; at which the immediate relations and friends of the deceafed affitted. "This peculiar manner of treating the event of death led to a curious and fingular cuftom, which was this. There was kept, under the public care, a poifon of the infufion of cicuta, which was administered to any citizen who could exhibit fufficient caufe to the fenate, as the reafon why he wished to put an end to his life; a cuftom in which, faith Valerius Maximus, benevolence was mixed with a proper regard to manly fortitude, that, on one hand, did not permit rafhnefs, and an impatient intemperance, to prefume to judge and act of itself under circunftances in which it was incompetent to judge and act; but, on the other hand, avowedly gave the public authority, and afforded a quick accefs of fare to those who acted on wifelygrounded reafons. "There was, as appears to my mind, more folid wifdom in this cuftom than at first strikes the eye. The public magiftrate, by thus becoming the confeffor, adviser, and friend of the miferable,' pitying the miferies, and feeling for the infirmities, of human nature, was enabled to give advice, confolation, and relief, which would fuperfede all thofe impatient wifhings for death, and reconcile the citizen again to life; but, in cafes where confolation and relief, of which the prudence of the public magiftrate, and not the feverish mind of the individual, was to judge, were defperate, and not poffible; in cafes where a man's misfortunes had rendered him a burthen to himself, and ufelefs to the public, they permitted the act of fuicide, as a public act, to be done under the public eye. There is no account in hiftory, or by any anecdotes, of the effect of this cuftom. But one might venture to say, that amongst a people of fuch temper and spirit, where regulations about fuicide were become neceffary, this was the mot effectual guard against it; and there would be very few inftances of felf-murder, where the poor wretch was thus permitted to reafon and advife with the public magiftrate about it. The fettlers and founders of this city, coming from a policied people, far advanced in fcience and in the arts, were coguifant in the one, and cultivated the other. They founded an academy, which, in the later time of the Romans, was a rival to that at Athens; fo that the very firft people of Rome, inflead of fending their children on their travels to Athens, fent them to Maffilia. Facts, as well as concurrent circumftances, mark the existence of the arts there. Paufanias mentions a brazen statue of Minerva at Delphos, fent as a prefent by the Maffilians. Strabo men tions a like ftatue fent from hence, and erected in the Mons Aventi nus; and even amongst the few K 4 re remains of those ruins and antiqui- feilles. the Levant trade, rendered this an opulent city. In fuch a city as this, there must have been, and in fact there were, many public edi. fices; fuch as temples, prætoria, baths, alfo an academy; every spe cies of houfhold furniture and domelic veffels, fuch as the arts, encouraged by the rich, fupply to the luxury or elegance of living. There must have been many ftatues of their gods; all the facred utenfils of their ritual. There muit have been many monuments erected to the honour of meritorious citizens, as alfo multitudes of sepulchral monuments confecrated to the manes of the dead; exemplars of most of these latter both in Greek and Latin still exist; yet fuch hath been the fate of this ancient Greek, and afterwards Roman city, that I may venture to fay, there is not in the known world a place, once fo replete with edifices, monuments, and every article of ancient fplendor and magnificence, fo abounding in commercial affluence, where there are, at the prefent day, fo few remains or exemplars of antiquity of any great merit or importance.' 'OBSERVATIONS RELATIVE to the HISTORY of SERAPIS. [From the fame Work.] W pleted the city of Alex- had received the divine command HEN Ptolemy had com- tended, like a wife prince, that he andria, had girt and fortified it with walls, and found that it became the refidence of people of all nations, languages, and religions; he withed to erect fome comprehending fymbolic idol, which might become a general object of worship to all people refiding there. He pre to do this. He was converfant in all the phyfiologic mythology of Afia, and acquainted with the na ture of the mixed fymbolic idols. Any local one, whofe numen and worship was known, and was al ready eftablished as local, would not do. Fle was to look for fome idol of a god, fuch a fymbolic mixed one as might be comprehenfively catholic, which was not known, but which was willing to be eftablished at Alexandria. He there fore pretended that a god, fuch as he defcribed, clothed in flame, had vifited him in a dream, and ordered him to establish his idol at Alexandria. Whatsoever it was that he defcribed, he, upon founding the Egyptian priests on the matter, could not induce them to underftand what God he meant, nor where fuch God dwelt. He wifely dropped the bufinefs for the prefent; but fome time after pretended a fecond dream, wherein the god appeared to him in a terrific form. As the god had in the former vifion promifed all profperity to his kingdom if he established his idol at Alexandria, he now threatened deftruction to it if he did not fet it up and establish its worthip there. The king affected to learn from an Athenian that which the Egyptians pretended to be ignorant of, the place where this god dwelt, namely, at Sinope, in Pontus in obedience, therefore, to the divine command, he fent a fhip and ambaffadors to fetch the idol of this god; but, to engage and add a corroborating authority to this embaffy, he ordered the ambaffadors to confult the Pythian Apollo on the fubject. This god added his fanction, in confirmation of the command of the vifion. They proeeeded to Sinope; but the king of the Sinopians would not liften to the request of the ambaffadors. However, at length, won by the irrefiftible bribes and prefents of the Alexandrians, he agreed to fell his god. The people, however, would by no means agree to it, and became fanatically frantic, in oppofition to the parting with their god, fo that the king was not capable to fulfil his engagement. During thefe embroil, the god, not regarding the zeal and religious love which the people bore to him, fo as to be ready to facrifice thenfelves to him, fiole off, and in a miraculous manner not only conveyed himfelf on board the fhip, but by like a miraculous interpoli tion accelerated the fhip's way fo as to make its paffage from Sinope to Alexandria in three days. This idol, thus imported, was fet up in all the pomp and circumftance of idolatry, and was, I believe, the fi:ft miraculous idol fet up as a comprehenfive object of general worthip. The religious policy of Ptolemy had its effect; for all people, of all nations and religions, refiding at or coming to Alexandria, joined in the common wo fhip of this catholic object. The Egyptian priests, who could not, white Ptolemy defcribed it as a fpe culation, understand what god he could mean, very prudently and wifely, as foon as it was fet up, and its worship established at Alex andria, found out that it was a ancient Egyptian numen worshiped at Memphis of old time. His "To understand what this idol was, and what the numen which it was the fymbol of, we will first examine what Tacitus, who gives the history of its eftablishment, fays of it, when the ambaffadors confulted the Apollo Pythius. anfwer was, that they might go and fetch the idol of his father, but that they must leave his fister. In another part of this narrative Tacitus fays, that the Athenian high priest of the Eleufinian myfteries, whom Ptolomæus confulted, told him, there was at Sinope in Pontus, a temple of Jaodis; and that a female idol fat beside the god of the temple, whom they, the Greeks, fuppofed to be Proferpine. Thefe two are the father and fitter of Apollo, to whom the Pythian oracle refers. "In Macrobius we read a defcription and phyfiologic explanation of a like group of idols in Hierapolis, a country holding and obferving the fame ritual as the Phrygians and Paphlagonians. "The Hierapolitani, of the Affyrian race, reduce all the powers and effects of the fun to one fymbolic idol, and call it Apollo. The face of this image is formed with a long pointed beard; has a calathus, or recolt basket, on the top of its head. The bufto of the image is armed with a thorax. hath, in its right hand, a fhaft of a fpear, on the top of which is placed the common figure of victory; its left holds forth a bouquet of flowers. A Gorgonian mantle, reaching from the fhoulders downwards, and tied with ferpents, forms its fcapula; the figure of an eagle, in the act of flying, accompanies it. Before this ftatue fits a female idol, in whofe hands, the right and left, are two female figures. A dragon ferpent is wound round her with its finu ous folds." It would be tire fome to read, and more tirefome to tranforibe, the childish explanations which Macrobius gives of this. It is enough to the purpose for which I cite this defcription to remark, that in general this group corref ponds with that defcribed by Timotheus in Tacitus; and to obferve, by the bye, that this group reprefented the fun and moon; or rather, as the Pythian oracle explains it, the father of the fun and the moon. The male ftatue appears, by the calathus on his head directly, as well as by the other fymbolic accompaniments, to be Serapis, or what was afterwards fo called in Egypt. The female one nearly the figure of Artemis or Ifis, as we have seen above; the male idol migrated (not indeed carrying his temple with him) to Alexandria. "When the Egyptians faw the god, they faid it was Jao-Dis, whom the Greeks call Pluto, to whom was inmate the feraph ferpent, whom the Greeks expreffed by the word Serapis. Before I proceed to defcribe the ftatue of Serapis at Alexandria, or this fruftum of an idol at Arles, I beg it may be obferved, that the idol brought from Pontus was the father of Apollo; and was called by fome Pluto, to whom was conjoined Serapis. Various are the idols of this fymbolic numen. Some, a beau tiful young perion with four wings, furrounded by the convolutions of a ferpent; others, bear the cha racter of the terrific figure which formed the vition in the second Macrobius dream of Ptolemy. gives another defcription of Serapis, and fays, "that the idol was tymbolic of the fun, appears in that they placed the calathus on its head, and that they grouped with this image a beast with three heads, round which a dragon ferpent twined, ending in convolu tions at the right-hand of the hu man perfon who fed it." There are various forms of this fymbolic idol given both in ftatues and in book defcriptions; but all coinciding in the characteristic parts; that of a human figure, to whom is conjoined a dragon ferpent, twining either round his imme diate perfon, or round a holy staff, or round fome strange beaft (as in Macrobius), which ferpent is fup ported and fuftained by that hu man man perfon. This characteristic feature of the fymbol is uniformly univerfal in all the mixed idols of Babylon, Pertia, Syria, Pontus, and Egypt. "We have feen above, that a ferpent was the emblem of the fun. It has appeared, that Mithras, reprefenting the fun, was not the fupreme God: this was Mithres. In the Pertian mixed idol the ferpent reprefented Mithras; the human figure Mithres. This Alexandrian ftatue is fometimes called Pluto and Dis, and at other times Serapis. Now this is explained above by Porphyrius, who fays they conjoined Serapis to Pluto. This pluto is Jao-Dis, and the father of Apollo, according to the Pythian oracle itself. This idol therefore, as the Perfian idol did, reprefents, in a mixed fymbol, the firit intelligent caufe, the father, fupported and fuftained by whom the feraph ferpent, fymbol of the fun, called by the Greeks Serapis, winds his courfe through the heavens, which the Gorgonian, or flame-coloured veil of the human figure, reprefents. To this fymbolic idol, therefore, the vulgar idolaters, the worshippers of the fun, and thofe who carried their views of worship to a firft intelligent caufe, might and did equally look up. This, therefore, miraculous image, which brought itfelf, by its divine power, to Alexandria, and was there fet up by divine command, would of natural confequence, as in fact it did, become a kind of catholic general object of worship to all nations and all religion, not even the Jews and fome heretical fect of Chriftians excepted, if Hadrian's letter is to be believed." Of the STATE of the SOVEREIGN in the PRIMITIVE ANGLOSAXON GOVERNMENT. [From an Historical View of the English Government, By JOHN MILLAR, Efq.] |