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N° 125. Januarius from bifrons Janus, one of whose faces was supposed to look towards the past, and the other towards the succeeding year; the other new month he called Februarius, from Februus, the deity presiding over lustrations; this being the month for the religious rites of the Dii Manes, it was made to consist of twenty-eight days, being an even number; all the others, conformably to the superstition of the times, consisted of odd numbers as more propitious, and accordingly Martius, Maius, Quintilis, October, had each thirty-one days, and the other seven, twenty-nine days, so that the year thus regulated, had 355 days, and it was left to the priests to make up the residue with supplementary days.

This commission became a dangerous prerogative in the hands of the sacerdotal order, and was executed with much irregularity and abuse; they lengthened and shortened the natural period of the year, as interest influenced them to accord to the prolongation or abbreviation of the annual magistracies dependent thereupon. In this state things were suffered to remain till Julius Cæsar succeeded to the pontificate; he then undertook a reform of the calendar, being in his third consulate, his colleague being Emilius Lepidus. Assisted by the best astronomers of the time, particularly the philosopher Sosigenes, he extended the year of his reform to 442 days, and thenceforward ordained that the year should consist of 365 days, distributed into months as it now stands, except that he added one day to February every fifth year, and not every third.

Thales died in the fifty-eighth Olympiad in extreme old age: the famous philosopher Pherecydes died a few years before him of that horrible distem

per called the Morbus Pediculosus, and in his last illness wrote, or is supposed to have written, to Thales as follows:

PHERECYDES TO THALES.

"May your death be easy, when the hour shall come! for my part, when your letter reached me, I was sinking under the attack of a most loathsome diseasc, accompanied with a continual fever. I have therefore given it in charge to my friends, as soon as they shall have committed my remains to the earth, to convey my manuscripts to your hands. If you and the rest of your wise fraternity shall on perusal approve of making them public, do so; otherwise let them not see the light; certainly they do not satisfy my judgment in all particulars; the best of us are liable to error; the truth of things is not discoverable by human sagacity, and I am justly doubtful of myself: upon questions of theology I have been cautious how I have committed myself: other matters I have treated with less reserve; in all cases however I suggest rather than dictate.

6

Though I feel my dissolution approaching and inevitable, I have not absolutely dismissed my physicians and friends; but as my disease is infectious, I do not let them enter my doors, but have contrived a signal for informing them of my condition, and have warned them to prepare themselves for paying the last offices to my corpse to-morrow. Farewell for ever!*

nificence. A tomb was erected to his memory near one of the city gates, which was thenceforward called the gate of Stesichorus; this tomb was composed of eight columns, had eight steps and eight angles after the cabalistical numbers of Pythagoras, whose mysterious philosophy was then in general vogue; the cubic number of eight was emblematic of strength, solidity, and magnificence, and from this tomb of Stesichorus arose the Greek proverb Пáva Oxl, by which was meant any thing perfect and complete. Phalaris of Agrigentum erected a temple to his name, and decreed him divine honours; all the cities in Sicily conspired in lamenting the death of their favourite poet, and vied with each other in the trophies they dedicated to his memory.

Epimenides of Crete, the epic poet, was contemporary with Solon, and there is a letter in the life of that great man inserted by the sophists which is feigned to have been written by Solon in his exile to Epimenides: this poet, as well as his contemporary Aristmas, is said to have had the faculty of stopping the functions of life and recalling them at pleasure: Aristmas wrote a poem entitled Arimaspea, containing the history of the northern Arimaspeans, a people of Scythia, whom he de. scribes as the fiercest of all human beings, and pretends that they have only one eye; he also composed an heroic poem on the genealogy of the deities: Strabo says, if ever there was a quack in the world, this Aristmas was one. Simonides the poet lived in the court of Hipparchus, and was much caressed by that elegant prince; he was a pleasing courtly writer, and excelled in the pathetic. Al. cæus was poet, musician, and warrior; Quintilian gives him great praise for the boldness of his satire

against tyrants, and occasionally for the moral tendency of his writings, but admits that sometimes his muse is loose and wanton: it appears from some fragments preserved by Athenæus, that he wrote several poems or sonnets in praise of drinking; there is also a fragment in the martial style, describing the variety of armour, with which his house was adorned. Callimachus, Theocritus, Anacreon and Sappho, are to a certain degree known to us by their remains: Every branch of poetry, but the drama, was at this æra at its greatest perfection.

NUMBER CXXV.

THERE is a considerable fragment in Athenæus of a love-poem written by Hermesianax of Colophon to his mistress Leontium; the poet recommends his passion by telling her how love has triumphed over all the great geniuses in their turns, and begins with the instances of Orpheus and Musæus, and brings them down to Sophocles, Euripides, Pythagoras, and Socrates. This Hermesianax must have been a contemporary of Epicurus, forasmuch as Leontium was the mistress of that philosopher as well as of his disciple Metrodorus: it is plain therefore that the learned Gerard John Vossius did not advert to this circumstance, when he puts Hermesianax amongst the poets of a doubtful age. Leontium was an Athenian courtezan, no less celebrated for science than beauty, for she engaged in a philosophical controversy with Theophratus, of

which Cicero takes notice [lib. 1. de Nat. Deor.] Pliny also records an anecdote of her being painted by Theodorus sitting in a studious attitude.

This fragment may not improperly be called the amours of the Greek poets, and as it relates to many of whom we have been speaking, and is withal a very curious specimen of an author very little known even by name, I have inserted the following translation in the hope that it will not be unacceptable to my readers.

Οιὴν μὲν φίλος γὸς ἀνήγαγεν Οἰάγροιο,
Αἰγριόπην θρήσσαν δειλάμενος κιθάρη

&c.

Athen. lib. xiii.

SUCH was the nymph, whom Orpheus led,
From the dark mansions of the dead,
Where Charon with his lazy boat
Ferries o'er Lethe's sedgy moat;

Th' undaunted minstrel smites the strings,
His strain thro' hell's vast concave rings:
Cocytus hears the plaintive theme,
And refluent turns his pitying stream;
Three-headed Cerberus, by fate
Posted at Pluto's iron gate,
Low-crouching rolls his haggard eyes
Ecstatic, and foregoes his prize.
With ears erect at hell's wide doors
Lies listening as the songster soars;

Thus music charm'd the realms beneath,
And beauty triumph'd over death.

The bard, whom night's pale regent bore,
In secret on the Athenian shore,

Musæus, felt the sacred flame,

And burnt for the fair Theban dame

Antiope, whom mighty Love

Made pregnant by imperial Jove;
The poet plied his amorous strain,
Press'd the fond fair, nor press'd in vain,

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