head of his own tribe... We learn this from observing that among the offences cognizable by the magistrate, the superstitious adoration of the Sun and Moon is enumerated (Ch. 31. v. 26-28.): no notice however is taken of other kinds of Idolatry, than this of Tsabaism. And I think we should be warranted, from this omission, in rejecting one great part of Mr. Faber's theory. So far from the book of Job containing a hint of uni versal defection from the knowledge and worship of Jehovah, it presents us with a most beautiful idea of the admirable opinions and sublime notions of God entertained by the patriarchal families. From the times of Job, we proceed to the age of Abraham. Idolatry had now made a great and melancholy progress; for Abraham travelled from Ur in Chaldea, through the whole of Palestine, to Egypt, and among nearly all the immediately surrounding nations, to recover and establish among them the knowledge of the true God. We are not informed in scripture of the nature of the idolatry thus prevalent; we know only that it still continued to increase till the period of the Exodus. At that time, the worship of images, the cruelty, obscenity, and abominations of every kind were fully established among the surrounding nations; though even then, the knowledge and worship of Jehovah had not been entirely resigned among seves ral of the neighbouring tribes: I refer to Jethro the Midianite; to the Kenites; and to the manner in which the God of the Hebrews seems to have been spoken of by many even of those who opposed the Israelites. I have not alluded to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, for though their crime was probably connected with, or as others suppose, originated in, the rites of Baal Peor, or Chemos, or some other obscene Deity, we have not sufficient documents to prove that this is more than mere supposition. It is singular that neither Mr. Bryant, Mr. Faber, Mr. Maurice, nor many of the early researchers into the remains of antiquity, have made much use of Homer. He seems to me to present a complete picture of the age when the more peculiar customs, and the religious or rather the moral notions of the Patriarchs had not yet become entirely extinguished by the grosser corruptions of Heathenism. He fills up the interval that elapsed from the times of Job, and in some measure the deficiency in the history of that period which elapsed between the origin or general prevalence of the worship of the heavenly host, and that system of infamy and crime, which degraded below the beasts of the field, the inhabitants of Canaan. It must be remembered here, that of the real author of the Iliad and Odyssey we know little or nothing. Pisistratus put the several books together, in their present order; before his time they were rhapsodised in every city of Ionia and Greece. The narratives contained in them were common to all the people of Asia Minor: they are found to this day among the stories of the Hindoos, whose curious legends are filled with the wars of the gods, and their assembling on Mount Ida. The rivers of the Troad are plainly described in the volumes of the Hindoos; and the reason why the author of the Iliad celebrated this siege rather than others, was, that the scene of the Troad so exactly corresponded with the imagined residence of the newly-worshipped gods. This, however, is mere conjecture; nor can it be insisted upon for one moment. reasons why Homer ought to be valued by the lovers of knowledge, as well as by the admirers of poetry, are of much more importance; particularly as Virgil has copied the manners, and described from tradition the same scenes, the same superstitions, gods, and heroes. The The most probable date of Homer, is that assigned him by Herodotus, about 884 years before the Nativity. About that time, the collections of the Iliad and Odyssey were, we may suppose, completed. Whether Homer, or the Homeri, who sang them among the cities of Asia Minor and Greece, composed them as one story, or what is their true history, is not at present to our purpose; I allude only to the internal evidence they bear of their great antiquity, and the assistance they render to our present enquiries. Lycurgus is said to have found the poems of Homer in Crete: they seem to have then formed merely a collection of ballads with their appropriate titles. In the 5th, 6th, and 7th volumes of the Asiatic Researches, the story of the Trojan war is given from original Sanscrit authors; its episodes, like those of Homer, are placed in Egypt; and the traditions of Laius, Labdacus, Edipus, and Jason, are all found among the same ancient compositions. The pages of Homer, it was observed, appear to describe the manners of that interval which elapsed between the origin of image worship, and the establishment of the grosser abominations of Paganism. I refer to such facts as the following. The chiefs in Homer were patriarchal heads of families. Thus Priam was considered as the father, as well as the ruler, of the Trojans. He was the priest, as well as king. Calchas is represented as possessing the gift of prophecy, which was undoubtedly the prerogative of the early priests among the first postdiluvian families. The characters of Homer seem to have been unacquainted with the use of money. We well know that the wealth of the first ages consisted in cattle oxen and sheep constituted of course the only measure of value. Glaucus and Diomed exchange armour; the poet tells us how many oxen were given for the respective suits. Now as this measure of value would soon be found to be very inconvenient, it would very soon happen that some more uniform, permanent, divisible, and generally esteemed standard must be adopted. We accordingly find, that even in the time of Abraham, silver was used for this purpose; and this useful and convenient metal has been uniformly employed as the common measure by all nations. The heroes of Homer, therefore, must have been earlier than the time of Abraham, or they lived within the few years which elapsed after that Patriarch, as they could not otherwise have been ignorant of this useful mode of conducting their commerce. The Iliad too could not in this case describe the manners of an age so late as that usually attributed to the supposed Priam. It is evidently a collection of early traditions. In addition to these remarks, it may be observed that the sentiments of the several characters of Homer are evidently derived from the confused remnant of ancient religion. We might instance the beautiful appeal of Hector to Paris: the reflections of Agamemnon on the treachery of Pandarus, when he pronounced the certain punishment and destruction of Troy; two lines of which speech were quoted by the philosophic Scipio over the ruins of Carthage. Instances of sublime addresses to the Deity; the punishment of the blasphemy of Asius; the perpetual completion of a truce or treaty by a sacrifice, a custom which was common to all the patriarchal nations, (whence the expressions in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, which are used to describe the making a treaty, are uniformly derived from the striking the fatal blow to the victim,) with some others, may be mentioned. The gods in Homer always partake of that mixed character which would naturally be the consequence of the deification of mortals, which we shall soon see was one of the primary sources of Idolatry. Jove is addressed in the most lofty strains, yet, like the Hindoo god, who corresponds to him in attributes and powers, he makes love, and sleeps, and is deceived. Apollo is a man, and the epithets by which he is described, are appropriated to the Sun: and so we might proceed with the rest. The confusion we are hinting at, is the complete picture of the language which must have been induced by the society of that age; when their ancestors began to be venerated as deities, and the knowledge of the true God to be obliterated. 11 MISCELLANEA CLASSICA. No. XII. [Continued from No. XLVI. p. 300.] 1. CLASS. Journ. XLII. p. 279, 1. 7, the sentence beginning "The glory attached" is a comment upon the quotation from Mitford, and not a continuation of it.-lb. p. 287, 1. 27, read, "some modern lecturer on poetry, or magazine critic." Same page, note, ad fin. "Virgil has defined Eneas a perfect hero, but he wanted power to describe him as such."-p. 288. l. 6, "the equable splendor."-p. 292, after the quotation from the Anti-Jacobin, there ought in fairness to have been cited a line from Southey's Thalaba, book x1., containing more than a precedent for Dr. Symmons's alliteration: + "Friend and sole solace of my solitude." No. XLIII. p. 172, 1. 17, for airou read airía.-On No. XXXVI. p. 330, art. 5, ("Apteμiv Õεäv ävaσσav, x. T. λ.) see the concluding note of Spanheim's Callimachus.-Ib. p. 331, art. 13, the following instance of imitation was quoted: Ως δ' ὅτε τίς τ ̓ ἐλέφαντα γυνὴ φοίνικι μιήνη Μηονὶς, δὲ Κάειρα, παρήϊον ἔμμεναι ἵππων, κ. τ. λ. εὐφυέες, κνῆμαί τε, ἰδὲ σφυρὰ κάλ ̓ ὑπένερθε. Π. iv. 141. Per liquidas succensa genas: castæque pudoris Claud. Pros. 1. 271. (where Heinsius, in addition to the other passages in his note, might have quoted Æn. 1. 592, and perhaps x. 132, sqq.) Thus a modern poet, describing the descent of Mercury: Trampling the slant winds on high With golden-sandalled feet, that glow Under plumes of purple dye, Like rose-ensanguined ivory, A shape comes now, Waving on high in his right hand A serpent-cinctured wand. Shelley's Prometheus Unbound, p. 35. In another number the following passage from Claudian was paralleled with one from Southey : Sic fatus (Sol), croceis rorantes ignibus hortos Subligat alipedum : gelidas hinc Lucifer ornat, De Primo Cons. Stilich. 11. 467. This fiction is much in the style of Darwin, between whom and Claudian there exists a considerable resemblance. It occurs in our modern Prometheus: My coursers sought their birth-place in the sun, The fantastic play of images occasioned by the confusion of fire and water in the passage of Claudian above quoted, occurs again in the redoubtable passage, Pros. 11. 314. Dominis intrantibus ingens Assurgit Phlegethon; flagrantibus hispida rivis 2. ΣΩΚ. "Αρτι δὲ ἥκεις, ἢ πάλαι; ΚΡ. Επιεικῶς πάλαι. ΣΩΚ. Εἶτα πῶς οὐκ εὐθὺς ἐπήγειράς με, ἀλλὰ σιγῇ παρακάθησαι ; ΚΡ. Οὐ μὰ τὸν Δία, ὦ Σώκρατες· οὐδ ̓ ἂν αὐτὸς ἤθελον ἐν τοσαύτῃ ἀγρυπνία καὶ λύπῃ εἶναι· ἀλλὰ καὶ σοῦ πάλαι θαυμάζω, αἰσθανόμενος ὡς ἡδέως καθεύδεις· καὶ ἐπίτηδες σε οὐκ ἤγειρον, ἵνα ὡς ἥδιστα διάγῃς· καὶ πολλάκις μὲν δή σε καὶ πρότερον ἐν παντὶ τῷ βίῳ εὐδαιμόνισα τοῦ τρόπου, πολὺ δὲ μάλιστα ἐν τῇ νῦν παρεστώσῃ ξυμφορᾷ, ὡς ῥᾳδίως αὐτὴν καὶ πράως φέρεις. Plat. Crit. 1. Glover evidently had the above passage before his eyes, when he wrote the beautiful description of the last sleep of Leonidas, with which his eleventh book commences, and to which the 'An interesting essay might be written on modern imitations of ancient poetry. "Prometheus" is not a revival of the lost drama of Eschylus; the catastrophe, as well as the scopus dramatis, is different. It involves the downfall of Jupiter, and the deliverance of the human race from his usurped dominion-in other words, the overthrow of law, custom, and religion, throughout the world; these being considered as the sources of human misery. In the boldness and crowd of his metaphors, the writer resembles Eschylus. The richness and intense beauty of his images is almost beyond example; they seem, as it were, entangled in their own magnificent luxuriance. Of his principles (which he promulgates more openly and undisguisedly than the rest of his confederacy) we judge it best to be silent in this place. |