they endured, the miracles which they wrought, and the relics which they left for the edification of the faithful and the emolument of their teachers. 210. As the heroes of the Iliad were as familiar to the Greek navigators, as the saints of the Calendar were to the Spanish and Portuguese, and treated by them with the same sort of respect and veneration, there can be little doubt that they left the same sort of memorials of them, wherever they made discoveries or piratical settlements; which memorials, being afterwards found among barbarous nations by succeeding navigators, when the discoverers were forgotten and the settlers vanished, they concluded that those heroes had actually been there and as the works of the Greek poets, by the general diffusion of the Greek language after the Macedonian conquest, became universally known and admired, those nations themselves eagerly cooperated in the deception by ingrafting the Greek fables upon their own, and greedily catching at any links of affinity which might connect them with a people, from whom all that was excellent in art, literature, and society, seemed to be derived. 211. Hence, in almost every country bordering upon the Mediterranean Sea, and even in some upon the Atlantic Ocean, traces were to be found of the navigations and adventures of Ulysses, Menelaus, Æneas, or some other wandering chieftain of that age; by which means such darkness and confusion have been spread over their history, that an ingenious writer, not usually given to doubt, has lately questioned their existence; not recollecting that he might upon the same grounds have questioned the existence of the Apostles, and thus undermined the very fabric which he professed to support: for by quoting, as of equal authority, all the histories which have been written concerning them in various parts of Christendom during seventeen hundred years, he would have produced a medley of inconsistent facts, which, taken collectively, would have startled even his own well-disciplined faith. Yet this is what he calls a fair Metrodorus of Lampsacus anciently turned both the Homeric poems into Allegory; and the Christian divines of the third and fourth centuries did the same by the historical books of the New Testament; as their predecessors the eclectic Jews had before done by those of the Old. Metrodorus and his followers, however, never denied nor even questioned the general fact of the siege of Troy, (as they have been mis-stated to have done) any more than Tatian and Origen did the incarnation of their Redeemer, or Aristeas and Philo the passage of the Red Sea. Tasso in his later days declared the whole of his Jerusalem Delivered to be an allegory; but without, however, questioning the historical truth of the crusades. mode of analysing ancient profane history; and, indeed, it is much fairer than that which he has practised: for not content with quoting Homer and Tzetzes, as of equal authority, he has entirely rejected the testimony of Thucydides in his account of the ancient population of Greece; and received in its stead that of Cedrenus, Syncellus, and the other monkish writers of the lower ages, who compiled the Paschal and Nuremberg Chronicles. It is rather hard upon our countrymen Chaucer and Lydgate to be excluded; as the latter would have furnished an account of the good king Priam's founding a chauntry in Troy to sing requiems for the soul of his pious son Hector, with many other curious particulars equally unknown to the antiquaries of Athens and Alexandria, though full as authentic as those which he has collected with so much labor from the Byzantine luminaries of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.' 212. A conclusion directly contrary to that of this ingenious gentleman was drawn by several learned writers of antiquity, from the confusion in which the traditions of early times were involved: instead of turning history into mythology, they turned mythology into history; and inferred that, because some of the objects of public worship had been mortal men, they had all been equally so; for which purpose, they rejected the authority of the mysteries; where the various gradations of gods, dæmons, and heroes, with all the metaphysical distinctions of emanated, personified, and canonised beings, were taught; and instead of them, brought out the old allegorical genealogies in a new dress, under pretence of their having been transcribed from authentic historical monuments of extreme antiquity found in some remote country. 213. Euhemerus, a Messenian employed under Cassander king of Macedonia, seems to have been the first who attempted this kind of fraud. Having been sent into the Eastern Ocean with some commission, he pretended to have found engraven upon a column in an ancient temple in the island of Panchæa, a genealogical account of a family, that had once reigned there; in which were comprised the principal deities then worshipped by the Greeks.3 The theory, which he formed from this pre 1 See Bryant on Ancient Mythology. 2 Περι μεν ουν των μυστικών, εν οἷς τας μεγιστας εμφάσεις και διαφασεις λαβειν εστι της περι δαιμονων αληθειας, ευστομα μοι κείσθω, καθ' Ηροδοτον. Plutarch. de Orac. Defect. p. 417. 3 Euseb. Præp. Evang. lib. ii. c. 2. -Μεγαλας μεν τῳ αθεῷ λεῳ κλισιαδας ανοιγοντας, και εξανθρωπίζοντι τα θεια, λαμπραν δε τοις Ευημερού του Μεσσηνιου φενακισμοις παρρησίαν διδοντας, ός αυτος αντιγραφα συνθεις 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 ανυπαρκτου μυθολογιας, πασαν αθεότητα κατασκεδάννυσι της οικουμενης, τους νομιζόμενους θεους παντας ὁμαλως διαγραφων εις ονοματα στρατηγων και μουναρχών και βασιλέων, ὡς δη παλαι γεγονοτων εν δε Παγχαια γραμμασι χρυσοις αναγεγραμμένων, εἰς ουτε βαρβαρος ουδείς, ούτε Έλλην, αλλα μόνος Ευήμερος, ὡς ἔοικε, πλευσας εις τους μηδαμόθι γης γεγονοτας, μηδε οντας Παγχαιους και Τριφυλίους, εντετυχηκει. Plutarch. de Is. et Osir. * Αλλ' οἱ μεν νεωτατοι των ἱερολόγων τα μεν γεγονοτα πραγματα εξ αρχής απεπεμψαν το, αλληγορίας και μυθους επινοησαντες, και τοις κοσμικοις παθήμασι συγγένειαν πλασαμενοι, μυστηρια κατεστησαν· και πολυν αυτοις έπηγον τύφον, ὡς μη ῥᾳδίως τινα συνορων τα κατ' αληθειαν γενομενα. Philon. Bybl. apud Euseb. Præp. Evang. 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 Ægyptian 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.2 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, Il. r. 276, &c. 3 Schol. Ven. in II. O. 36. 2 Θεσμοφ. 315, &c. 4 Demosthen. I Tiμoxpat. apud eund. |