tended discovery, was soon after attempted to be more fully established by a Phoenician history, said to have been compiled many centuries before by one Sanchoniathon from the records of Thoth and Ammon; but never brought to light until Philo of Byblos published it in Greek with a prooem of his own; in which he asserted that the mysteries had been contrived merely to disguise the tales of his pretended Phoenician history,' notwithstanding that a great part of these tales are evidently nothing more than the old mystic allegories copied with little variation from the theogonies of the Greek poets, in which they had before been corrupted and obscured.

214. A fragment of this work having been preserved by Eusebius, many learned persons among the moderns have quoted it with implicit confidence, as a valuable and authentic record of very ancient history; while others have as confidently rejected it, as a bungling fraud imposed upon the public by Philo of Byblos, in order to support a system, or procure money from the founders of the Alexandrian Library; who paid such extravagant prices for old books, or for (what served equally well to furnish their shelves) new books with old titles. Among the ancients there seems to have been but one opinion concerning it; for, except Porphyry, no heathen writer has deigned to mention it; so contemptible a performance, as the fragment extant proves it to have been, seeming to them unworthy of being rescued from oblivion even by an epithet of scorn or sentence of reprobation. The early Christian writers, however, took it under their protection, because it favored that system, which by degrading the old, facilitated the progress of the new religion: but in whatever else these writers may have excelled, they certainly had no claim to excellence in either moral sincerity or critical sagacity; and none less than Eusebius; who, though his authority has lately been preferred to that of Thucydides and Xenophon, was so differently thought of by ecclesiastical writers of the immediately subsequent ages, that he is one of

απιστου και ανύπαρκτου μυθολογιας, πασαν αθεοτητα κατασκεδαννυσι της οικουμενης, τους νομιζομενους θεους παντας ὁμαλως διαγραφων εις ονοματα στρατηγων και μουναρχων και βασιλεων, ὡς δη παλαι γεγονότων· εν δε Παγχαια γραμμασι χρυσοις αναγεγραμμένων, εἷς ουτε βαρβαρος ουδεις, ουτε Ελλην, αλλα μονος Ενημερος, ως εοικε, πλεύσας εις τους μηδαμοθί γης γεγονοτας, μηδε οντας Παγχαιους και Τριφυλίους, εντετυχηκει. Plutarch. de Is. et Osir.

1 Αλλ' οἱ μεν νεωτατοι των ἱερολόγων τα μεν γεγονοτα πραγματα εξ αρχης απέπεμψαν το, αλληγορίας και μυθους επινοησαντες, και τοις κοσμικοις παθήμασι συγγένειαν πλασαμενοι, μυστηρια κατέστησαν και πολυν αυτοις επηγον τύφον, ὡς μη ῥᾳδίως τινα συνοραν τα κατ' αληθειαν γενομενα. Philon. Bybl. apud Euseb. Præp. Eyang. lib. i. c. 9.

those, by whose example they justified the practice of holy lying,* or asserting that which they knew to be false in support of that which they believed to be true.

215. Among the numberless forgeries of greater moment which this practice poured upon the world, is one in favor of this system, written in the form of a letter from Alexander the Great to his mother, informing her that an Egyptian priest named Leo had secretly told him that all the gods were deified mortals. Both the style and matter of it are below criticism; it being in every respect one of the most bungling counterfeits ever issued from that great manufactory of falsehoods, which was carried on under the avowed patronage of the leading members of the Church, during the second, third, and fourth centuries. Jablonski only wasted his erudition in exposing it ;3 though Warburton, whose multifarious reading never gave him any of the tact or taste of a scholar, has employed all his acuteness and all his virulence in its defence.4

216. The facility and rapidity, with which deifications were multiplied under the Macedonian and Roman empires, gave considerable credit to the system of Euhemerus; and brought proportionate disgrace on religion in general. The many worthless tyrants, whom their own preposterous pride or the abject. servility of their subjects exalted into gods, would naturally be pleased to hear that the universally recognised objects of public worship had no better title to the homage and devotion of mankind than they themselves had; and when an universal despot could enjoy the honors of a god, at the same time that consciousness of his crimes prevented him from daring to enter a mystic temple, it is natural that he should prefer that system of religion, which decorated him with its highest honors, to that which excluded him from its only solemn rites.5

217. This system had also another great advantage: for as all persons acquainted with the mystic doctrines were strictly bound to secresy, they could not of course engage in any controversy on the subject; otherwise they might have appealed to the testimony of the poets themselves, the great corrupters and disguisers of their religion; who, nevertheless, upon all great and solemn occasions, such as public adjurations and invocations, resort to its first principles, and introduce no fabulous or histo

Pro libro adv. Jovinian.

2 Hieronym. ibid. Chrysostom. de Sacerdot.

3 Prolegom. s. 16. It is alluded to in the Apology of Athenagoras, and therefore of the second century.

4 Div. Leg. vol. i, p. 213.

5 See Sueton. in Ner.

rical personages: not that they understood the mystic doctrines, or meant to reveal them; but because they followed the ordinary practice of the earliest times; which in matters of such solemn importance was too firmly established to be altered. When Agamemnon calls upon the gods to attest and confirm his treaty with Priam, he gives a complete abstract of the old elementary system, upon which the mystic was founded; naming first the awful and venerable Father of all; then the Sun, who superintends and regulates the Universe, and lastly the subordinate diffusions of the great active Spirit, that pervade the waters, the earth, and the regions under the earth. The invocation of the Athenian women, who are introduced by Aristophanes celebrating the secret rites of Ceres and Proserpine, is to the same effect, only adapted to the more complicated and philosophical refinements of the mystic worship. First they call upon Jupiter, or the supreme all-ruling Spirit; then upon the golden-lyred Apollo, or the Sun, the harmoniser and regulator of the world, the centre and instrument of his power; then upon Almighty Pallas, or the pure emanation of his wisdom; then upon Diana or nature, the manynamed daughter of Latona or night; then upon Neptune, or the emanation of the pervading Spirit, that animates the waters; and lastly upon the Nymphs or subordinate generative ministers of both sea and land. Other invocations to the same purport are to be found in many of the choral odes both tragic and comic; though the order, in which the personifications are introduced is often varied, to prevent the mystic allusions from being too easily discernible. The principles of theology appear to have been kept equally pure from the superstructures of mythology in the forms of judicial adjuration; Draco having enacted that all solemn depositions should be under the sanction of Jupiter, Neptune, and Minerva ;3 whilst in later times Ceres was joined to the two former instead of Minerva.*

218. The great Pantheic temples exhibited a similar progression or graduation of personified attributes and emanations in the statues and symbols which decorated them. Many of these existed in various parts of the Macedonian and Roman empires; but none are now so well known as that of Hierapolis,

1 Il. r. 276, &c.

3 Schol. Ven. in II. O. 36.

2 Θεσμοφ. 315, &c.

4 Demosthen. Tiμoxpaт. apud eund.

or the holy city in Syria, concerning which we have a particular treatise falsely attributed to Lucian. It was called the temple of the Syrian goddess Astartè; who was precisely the same as the Cybelè, or universal mother, of the Phrygians; whose attributes have been already explained, and may be found more regularly detailed in a speech of Mopsus in the Argonautics of Apollonius Rhodius.1 "She was," as Appian observes, "by some called Juno, by others Venus, and by others held to be Nature, or the cause which produced the beginnings and seeds of things from Humidity;" so that she comprehended in one personification both these goddesses; who were accordingly sometimes blended in one symbolical figure by the very ancient Greek artists.3

219. Her statue at Hierapolis was variously composed; so as to signify many attributes like those of the Ephesian Diana, Berecynthian Mother, and others of the kind. It was placed in the interior part of the temple, accessible only to priests of the higher order; and near it was the statue of the corresponding male personification, called by the Greek writers Jupiter; which was borne by bulls, as that of the goddess was by lions, to signify that the active power or ætherial spirit is sustained by its own strength alone; while the passive or terrestrial requires the aid of previous destruction. The minotaur aud sphinx, before explained, are only more compendious ways of representing these composite symbols.

220. Between them was a third figure with a golden dove on its head, which the Syrians did not choose to explain, or call by any name; but which some supposed to be Bacchus, others

I Lib. i. 1098.*

2 Oi μεν Αφροδίτην, οἱ δε Ηραν, οἱ δε τας αρχας και σπέρματα πασιν εξ ύγρων παρα. σχουσαν αιτίαν και φυσιν νομίζουσιν. de Bello Parth. Plutarch describes her in the same words, in Crasso, p. 271,

3. Ξοανον αρχαιον καλούσι (Λακωνες) Αφροδίτης Ήρας. Pausan. lib. iii. p. 240. Την Hear Exel (Tuppпvoi) Kuπρav nahovo. Strabon. lib. v. p. 369.

4 Εχει δε τι Αθηναίης, και Αφροδίτης, και Σεληναίης, και Ρεης, και Αρτεμιδος, και Νεμέσιος, και Μοιρεων. Lucian. de D. S.

· αμφώ έζονται· αλλα την μεν Ηρην λεοντες φορούσιν, ó Sε ταυροισιν εφέζεται.

Lucian. de D. S.

Λεοντες μιν φορεουσι, και τυμπανον εχει, και επι τη κεφαλη πυργοφορεει, ὁκοιην Ρεην Audor TOLEOUσt. Lucian. de Syr. Dea. s. 15.

Και δητα το μεν του Διος αγαλμα, ες Δια παντα όρη, και κεφαλην και εἱματα και ἕδρην· και μιν ουδε εθελων αλλως εικασεις. Lucian. de Syr. Dea. s. 31.

It was therefore the same figure as that on the Phoenician medal with the bull's head on the chair; and which is repeated with slight variations on the silver coins of Alexander the Great, Seleucus I. Antiochus IV. &c.

Deucalion, and others Semiramis.' It must, therefore, have been an androgynous figure; and most probably signified the first-begotten Love, or plastic emanation, which proceeded from both and was consubstantial with both; whence he was called by the Persians, who seem to have adopted him from the Syrians, Mithras, signifying the Mediator." The doubt expressed concerning the sex, proves that the body of the figure was covered, as well as the features effeminate; and it is peculiarly remarkable that such a figure as this with a golden dove on its head should have been taken for Deucalion; of whom corresponding ideas must of course have been entertained: whence we are led to suspect that the fabulous histories of this personage are not derived from any vague traditions of the universal deluge; but from some symbolical composition of the plastic spirit upon the waters, which was signified so many various ways in the emblematical language of ancient art. The infant Perseus floating in an ark or box with his mother, is probably from a composition of the same kind; Isis and Horus being represented enclosed in this manner on the mystic or Isiac hands; and the Ægyptians, as before observed, representing the Sun in a boat instead of a chariot; from which boat being carried in procession upon men's shoulders, as it often appears in their sculptures, and being ornamented with symbols of Ainmon taken from the ram, probably arose the fable of the Argonautic expedition; of which there is not a trace in the genuine parts of either of the Homeric poems. The Colchians indeed were supposed to be a colony of Ægyptians, and it is possible that there might be so much truth in the story, as that a party of Greek pirates carried off a golden figure of the symbol of their god but had it been an expedition of any splendor or importance, it certainly would have been noticed in the repeated mention that is made of the heroes said to have been concerned in it. . 221. The supreme Triade, thus represented at Hierapolis, assumed different forms and names in different mystic temples. In that of Samothrace it appeared in three celebrated statues of Scopas, called Venus, Pothos, and Phaethon," or Nature,

ουδε τι ουνομα ιδιον αυτῷ έθεντο, αλλ' ουδε γενεσιος αυτου περι και είδεος λεγουσι. και μιν οἱ μεν ες Διονυσον, αλλοι δε ες Δευκαλεωνα, οἱ δε ες Σεμιράμιν αγουσι. Ibid. s. 16.

2 Μεσον δ' αμφοιν τον Μιθρην ειναι· διο και Μιθρην Περσαι τον μεσι την ονομάζουσι. Plutarch. de Is. et Osir. p. 369.

3 La Chausse Mus. Rom. vol. ii. pl. 11 and 13.

4 The four lines in Odyss. M. 69-72. are manifestly interpolated.

5 Herodot. lib. ii. c. 104.

6 Plin. lib. xxxiv. c. 4.