the edifice, to shadow out, not so much the earth, or Vesta, considered in that character, as the WHOLE UNIVERSE; in the centre of which the Pythagoreans placed FIRE, which they called VESTA and UNITY."* Upon this account it was that the ancients so frequently represented the world by the apt symbol of an egg: and the reader will find that idea most remarkably exemplified and illustrated in the temple of the serpent CNUPHIS, which the reader has already been informed, was an oval building, resembling, in form, many of the Indian temples, and to which, in our progress up the Nile, we shall presently arrive. In the course of this extensive review of the origin and progress of Architecture in Asia, I have observed that convenience first, and superstition afterwards, gave the earliest edifices of the world a pyramidal form. Of these, the pyramids of Egypt, and the pyramidal temples of India have been referred to as striking and memorable proofs. A more extensive acquaintance with physics, added to the speculations of astronomy, was the occasion of their afterwards assuming the quadrangular shape, allusivė to the four cardinal points and the four elements of nature. It only remained for the piety of * Plutarch de Iside et Osiride, p. 67. theologians and the fancy of philosophers to unite in the invention of a form of building like that recently described, and upon such a comprehensive scale as might seem to render it an epitome of the universe itself, in which all the phenomena of nature should be exhibited at one glance to the astonished spectator: and all the deities adored in that universe, superior or subordinate, receive at once his profound adoration. Among supernal temples, it was to be exactly similar to what the cave of Mithra, in >the Median mountains was among subterraneous shrines. That cave, Porphyry acquainted us, resembled the world fabricated by Mithra; a cave, in the lofty roof of which the signs of the Zodiac were sculptured in golden characters; while through its spacious dome, represented by orbs of different metals, symbolical of their power and influences, the sun and PLANETS performed their ceaseless and undeviating revolutions. From an extensive and accurate examination of the systems of Asiatic theology, descending down through various ages and by various channels to the ancient people of Italy, I think I may safely venture to assert that the grand PANTHEON, or ROTUNDO, of Rome, was a temple of this distinguished kind, and I proceed to prove the assertion, by the strong internal THE GRA To the PYRAMIDAL, and QUADRANGULAR est in antiquity was the PANTHEON of Rome, of which the immen of HEAVEN. I.Prattent fi evidence which that fabric exhibits, that it was neither more nor less than a stupendous Mithratic temple. Mark how the dread Pantheon stands How simply, how severely great! This vast edifice, this most august, most venerable, and most perfect, relic of antiquity remaining in the world, according to the more common opinion among antiquaries, was built by Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus, in his third consulate, about twenty-five years before Christ. However, Dion Cassius informs us that Agrippa only repaired the building, and adorned and strengthened it with that admirable portico, which, indeed, is scarcely less an object of wonder than the fabric itself, consisting of sixteen pillars of Oriental granite of prodigious magnitude, yet each composed of only a single stone. These pillars are of the Corinthian order, and are ranged in two rows of eight columns each. one in the front, and the other rising to a great height behind them. The conjecture founded on the assertion of Dion Cassius, that the date of its fabrication was considerably more ancient than the era of Agrippa's conM VOL. III. |