Here also was a Chimærium, or Cimmerium, as Pomponius Mela* writes it, of the same nature with that in Epirus. There were moreover many sacred places bearing the appellation of Avernus, and which were all, more or less, considered as exhaling noxious vapours. Sometimes the name was given to lakes, as in the instances of the Hades in Campania, Spain, and Thesprotia. It was also conferred upon rocks and some of the most celebrated highplaces, which derived their origin from the same source, up to which all garden and grove worship is in fact to be traced. There was a famous rock of this name in India,† or as some authors think, more than one. It is mentioned, both by Strabo and Dionysius, and was situated near the source of the Indus, which river, as will be seen hereafter, was anciently called Phison or Pison, the immediate name of one of the rivers of paradise mentioned by Moses. Upon it, or in its neighbourhood, and perhaps surrounding it, was a sacred grove, which Alexander the Great caused to be cut down when he besieged the place, according to Curtius ; although the whole enclosure was looked

* Pomp. Mela, lib. i. cap. 19.

+ Strabo xv. p. 1008. Dionysius Perieg. v. 1151. Quint. Curt. viii. 11.

upon as so holy, that Hercules himself was said to have desisted from assaulting it, being deterred by an earthquake. Aristophanes* speaks of a consecrated eminence or high-place, which had the title of Acheron. He names

it « Αχεροντιος σκοπελος αιματοςαγης the rock of "Acheron dropping with blood;" the origin of which was, the cruelties practised by the priests in their offering human sacrifices;† and from whence that custom was derived will be ex

* Βατραχ 474.

+ One mode of their offering these human expiatory sacrifices, was by shoving off the victim headlong from the edge of the precipice. Possibly this may explain the story of Sisyphus, represented in Hades, as for ever rolling a stone up a high hill, the summit of which is no sooner apparently reached, than the burden is again tumbled to the bottom. Odyss. xi. 592. Rocks and eminences were sometimes called Patora, an Egyptian title of these sacred places. Mythology rendered the Patora, in this case, by a word somewhat similar in the Greek language, Terpa; and the poets represented it as a moving stone, broken perhaps from the verge of the precipice in hurling him off, and with the ghost of the victim eternally rolling down the mountain. We shall have occasion to notice hereafter these Terρaι more particularly, and demonstrate their connection with paradisaical rites. Not strangers, however, only were sacrificed on places of this nature, but also criminals; and Sisyphus might have been one of these, as he bears the character of a thief in the annals of antiquity.

plained in another place.

In fact all these

lakes, rivers, rocks, and sacred enclosures, connected as they were with the Hades, or future world of the ancients, which was mainly composed of traditions relative to the paradi saical state of innocence and bliss which mankind had forfeited, and to which it was naturally supposed a future state of things would be analogous, not only prove the vast extent to which memorials of the garden of Eden had prevailed; but likewise shew the extreme antiquity of those memorials, which thus furnish their collateral testimony to the truth and consistency of the history given by Moses.

We must not, however, omit noticing the Hades in Egypt, where was a lake Acherusia, on the south of Memphis, on the banks of which stood the shady temple of Hecate, with the ports of Cocytus and Lethe. When a person died, after many mysterious ceremonies had been performed upon his corpse, it was laid in a boat and wafted over the lake to the other side; here were certain judges, before whom it was solemnly arraigned, and a strict inquiry instituted into the life of the deceased. If the individual were condemned, it was denied a burial; but if otherwise, it was interred

in the Elysian fields.* The name of the ferryman was Charon, and those of the judges were Rhadamanthus and Minos, according to some authors, and hence many have thought Homer and Virgil borrowed the principal features of the eleventh Odyssey, and sixth Æneid. However, it is enough for us to observe the same traces of the same traditions as we have universally discovered elsewhere, even in places with which Egypt perhaps had little or no connection, or intercourse. Albricus,† in his picture of Hades, personifies it as a god sitting on a throne of sulphur, holding a sceptre in his right hand, and binding a soul with his left. From his feet issue four rivers, or rather "a "river parting into four heads;" while near them is represented a lake called Styx or Avernus. All around stand several compound figures, some winged and with the faces of virgins; these were conceived to be Harpies, Furies, and the Fates, the last of whom (or at least one of them) are employed in cutting short the life of man; probably a mutilated tradition of that awful truth, that with sin

Sandy's Travels, p. 136. Dacier sur. xi. Odyss. Strabo lib. iii. p. 223. Plutarch in Sertorio.

+ Albricus de deor. imag. x. 313.

"death entered into the world." The serpent, moreover, is not omitted in this hieroglyphic description.

There is a remarkable account in Elian of a wonderful continent, answering, in, some respects, to the vast Atlantic island mentioned by Plato, with its traditionary history, derived, as he affirms, from Egypt. It seems to represent to us another instance of their allegorical ideas of paradise, looked upon by the heathens as the future and invisible world. The historian informs us, from Theopompus, that upon the bounds of the happy region "there was a "place called Avoσrov Anoston, which signifies "sine reditu, or the abode from whence there "was no return. It was like a gloomy chasm "or cave, neither light nor dark, but sufficiently "obscure. Here were two rivers, the one “ ΗΔΟΝΗΣ καλεισθαι called the river of Eden, or "of pleasure; and the other, that of sorrow:"over against both of these, grew extraordinary "trees of the size of a mighty palm. Those "which overhung the river of Sorrow bore fruit, "which proved the source of endless tears to "those who tasted ;-but those which were by "the river of Eden had fruit, of which whosoever "ate were delivered from all other desires, and