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DISQUISITIONS 
 
 UPON THE 
 
 PAINTED GREEK VASES, 
 
 AND 
 
 THEIR PROBABLE CONNECTION WITH THE 
 
 SHOWS OF THE ELEUSINIAN AND OTHER 
 MYSTERIES. 
 
 By JAMES CHRISTIE, 
 
 A MEMBER OF THE SOCIETY OF DILETTANTI. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 PUBLISHED BY LONGMAN, HURST, REES, ORME, BROWN, AND GREEN. 
 
 PATERNOSTER-ROW. 
 
 1825 . 
 
London : 
 
 Printed by A. & R. Spottiswoode, 
 New- Street- Square. 
 
DISQUISITIONS 
 
 UPON THE 
 
 PAINTED GREEK VASES. 
 
 A aynpov aycov Quo; ayvov. OnoMACR. Hymn. v. vev. 8. 
 
 'Eoixi 
 
 yap o Aa[x.7iTYjp ru> 'srspie^ovr i rijv (rc “j«.aTJ ; $£>s yoip 
 
 svTog ^U^r r — Plutarch. Horn. Qycest. 72. 
 
 es-iv 
 

 
PREFACE. 
 
 As these disquisitions were not originally intended for the public 
 eye, the writer, several years ago, was induced to limit an im- 
 pression of them to a small number of copies, that he might have 
 the pleasure of placing them in the hands of a learned few, for 
 whom he entertained a particular affection or respect, and whom 
 he knew to be conversant with, or interested in, the subject of 
 his enquiry. While the book was confined to this circle, he felt 
 the less pain when he subsequently discovered its many imper- 
 fections, but he soon found with considerable regret, that by this 
 attempt at privacy, he had unintentionally stamped a price upon 
 it that was greatly beyond its merits. He has long wished to 
 correct this unfair estimate of its value ; and as many new dis- 
 coveries (if he may dare to term them such) have presented 
 themselves in the course of his further reading and reflection, he 
 now lays his disquisitions before the public, revised, and some- 
 what enlarged ; aware, however, that, in adding to the contents 
 of his work, he will have increased the occasion he had for the 
 reader’s indulgence. 
 
 He apprehends that few, since the time of D’Hancarville, 
 have been disposed to regard the embellishments of these vases 
 as fair specimens of the art of painting among the Greeks. Ne- 
 vertheless, he will venture to repeat on this occasion, an observ- 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 ation with which he had prefaced the former impression of his 
 work, as an answer to any who may still be found to advocate 
 this opinion. 
 
 In this work he has advanced an original supposition, and 
 as he conceives upon very sufficient grounds, that the paintings 
 upon the Greek vases were copied from transparencies. Should 
 this be denied, it will nevertheless be evident, that D’Hancarville 
 was not justified in reasoning upon the art from the paintings 
 upon Greek vases ; for we must admit, that unless better speci- 
 mens existed at the same early times, upon wood, or canvas, or 
 in fresco, the art of painting in Greece was very far behind that 
 of sculpture, and by no means entitled to high encomium, which 
 would involve a contradiction to many high authorities, and it 
 would follow, that the Greek painters were very deficient in com- 
 position* and colouring, at the same time that we acknowledge 
 they excelled in character and design. f If, on the other hand, it 
 be credible, that very skilful Greek artists were engaged in the 
 
 * Either the ground or the figures in these paintings being illumined, it be- 
 came necessary that the latter should be detached as much as possible from each 
 other, to prevent confusion. Hence the difficulty of grouping, otherwise than by 
 placing the figures upon different- elevations in the picture. A most valuable am- 
 phora, formerly in the possession of William Chinneryj and now in that of Thomas 
 Hope, Esq. is a notable instance. This vase is well known from the subject of the 
 painting, usually termed the death of Patroclus. It presents a complicated group of 
 figures designed with great spirit. These are placed, not on the same plane, but on 
 three tiers or stages, in defiance of the rules of perspective. 
 
 f This excellence may be particularly instanced in a lettered Campana vase of 
 the late James Edwards, Esq., the subject of which is the mysterious descent of The- 
 seus accompanied by Castor and Tydeus, to bring back Acteeon from the shades. 
 It is well known to the virtuosi in this country. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Vll 
 
 service of religion, to copy scenes from the temple at Eleusis, 
 and that those who executed them were on some occasions proud 
 of their work appears from their names being inscribed upon 
 them*, we shall be left to regret, that those who so employed their 
 pencils could never rise to a higher title than that of Ex&jyfetyo/, 
 or shadow painters ; for the nature of the subjects they had to 
 imitate necessarily limited their powers. 
 
 The credit, however, of the Greek painters has been vindi- 
 cated by several writers, particularly by the ingenious Mr. Webbe. 
 His evidences tend to prove that, except at least as to mixed com- 
 positions, the Greeks had attained a high degree of excellence in 
 every department of the art. However this may really have been, 
 the writer of this tract feels inclined to discourage any further 
 attempts, either to ascertain the progress of the art, or the perfec- 
 tion of it at any particular period, by such imperfect documents 
 as the Greek vases afford ; and he trusts the reasonableness of 
 his conjectures respecting their use will justify his dissent from 
 the opinions of D’Hancarville on this head. 
 
 That the paintings upon these Vases have an allegorical refer- 
 ence to the doctrines of the mysteries, is an opinion that has been 
 very tardily admitted by the learned on the Continent. But an 
 antiquary of superior intelligence, the Cav. Inghirami, with whose 
 work the writer has become acquainted only since he completed 
 the revision of his book for the press, (and the perusal of that work 
 
 * Thus, upon a vase in the collection of Thomas Hope, Esq. is inscribed 
 TA L.H I AE f EPotEJEy. This vase was found at Agrigentuny and is of 
 very early manufacture. 
 
via 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 has not induced him to alter or enlarge the contents of his own,) 
 has adopted this opinion, and maintained it ' with ingenuity and 
 success. By comparing together the paintings of many vases, 
 the Cav. Inghirami has discovered, in certain of them, allusions 
 to figures in the celestial sphere, to which the Mystse were 
 supposed to gain admission by initiation. He imagines that 
 these astronomical phenomena were descanted upon in the mys- 
 teries ; “ which,” he says, “ regarded the passage of souls from this 
 “ life to another state, and from another life back to this state of 
 “ mortality.” (Vasi Fittili, vol. v. p. 205.) In this view of the sub- 
 ject he has surmounted considerable difficulties. In explaining 
 also certain other paintings, in a moral and religious sense, by 
 the doctrines of the Platonists, he has gone very much farther 
 than the writer of these disquisitions, and he has given many lu- 
 minous expositions, that must be deemed, if not always, yet most 
 frequently, satisfactory and convincing. 
 
 To have been mentioned by this learned foreigner in flatter- 
 ing terms must necessarily be a gratification to the writer of the 
 present work ; and although such favourable expressions have 
 been qualified by others, discrediting the writer’s general views 
 upon this subject, yet he is contented to have gone before this 
 learned foreigner in many opinions which the Cav. Inghirami 
 has adopted. If this ingenious antiquary had been acquainted 
 with the writer’s opinions, otherwise than through the imperfect 
 medium of the Magazin Encyclopedique, he must have seen, 
 that however they might have trodden a different path in pursu- 
 ing their several enquiries, their conclusions were frequently the 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IX 
 
 same, and that the researches of both had one ultimate object. 
 At the same time he thinks he has some cause to complain of this 
 learned foreigner, for condemning in the gross, before he had him- 
 self perused the original work of the author ; and for advancing 
 a complaint of a paucity of proofs adduced, and those partially 
 selected, to the exclusion of a greater number that would, as he 
 imagined, have controverted the author’s scheme. The Cav. 
 Inghirami, however, has had the candour to quote a passage from 
 another distinguished antiquary, Mr. Vermiglioli, who had re- 
 proved the learned foreignerfor having attached himself to what he 
 terms the “ Sistema emanato dal Christie”* This, then, is sufficient 
 for the author. It is possible that he may have erred, by adher- 
 ing too closely to the Horatian precept respecting brevity f ; but, 
 if from a small selection of proofs, which were designed by him 
 as illustrations of so many different classes dependent upon them, 
 and with a scanty proportion of letter-press, he has obtained 
 results that do not differ widely from those which the Cav. 
 Inghirami has arrived at, in a quarto volume of no ordinary bulk, 
 he presumes this learned foreigner will allow him the merit of 
 having turned his materials, such as they were, to a good account, 
 with as little inconvenience as possible to the reader. He is 
 content with such an acknowledgment, that this systematic view 
 of the subject had been long ago adopted by him, and he very 
 cheerfully leaves the defence of the system to so powerful a cham- 
 pion as the Cav. Inghirami. 
 
 * Yasi Fittili, vol. v. p. 488. Mr. Vermiglioli does the writer too much honour. 
 It was Charles Towneley, Esq. who first observed a mystic theology in works of 
 Grecian art. He, jointly with the late R. P. Knight, Esq., furnished D’Hancarville 
 with a great part of the materials of his quarto work on the Esprit des Arts dela Grece. 
 
 f Quicquid praecipies, esto brevis. De Arte Poet. 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 Believing, then, that whatever new light may be further 
 thrown on the allegorical paintings of the Greek vases will be 
 reflected upon them by the labours of such a writer as the 
 Cav. Inghirami, the author of the present work does not regret 
 that he has added very little to this part of his enquiry. He has 
 left what had occurred to him on the subject more than nineteen 
 years ago, nearly as he then represented it.* He gladly turns 
 from these to other more agreeable and consolatory considera- 
 tions ; and he has been irresistibly led to point to them in the 
 conclusion of his work, and in the Appendix. In the latter he 
 has also broached some novelties, that he hopes may prove useful 
 or entertaining. His Systematic Classification of Vases, what- 
 ever may be thought of the grounds on which it rests, may be 
 found useful to those who regard these vessels merely for the 
 beauty of their forms, and to others, who may have occasion to 
 describe them in large collections. 
 
 In attempting to trace the influence of the mystic theology 
 of the ancients upon their sacred architecture, and the imitation of 
 that practice by the Christians in the early centuries, in illustra- 
 tion of more genuine truths, he has produced some novel observ- 
 ations and conjectures, which may not be generally approved, 
 because they differ from received opinions. 
 
 If these shall not be thought of the value which he himself 
 attaches to them, they may serve at least to give a new train of 
 thought to more judicious enquirers. He merely desires that they 
 may be weighed and considered ; since it cannot be denied, that 
 the information we possess respecting the origin of Gothic archi- 
 tecture is far from satisfactory or conclusive. 
 
 * The former impression of his work was given in 1806. 
 
ERRATA. 
 
 Page 5 . note, for lxv., read xlv. 
 
 5. for Nafepacos, read Nafapaios. 
 
 55. for airotTftrj^as, read inrofffiri^as. 
 
 47. for Heraclium , read Heracleum. 
 
 105 . for Choreeous, read Chorcebus. 
 
 104 . for page 455 ., read page 485 . 
 
 131. line 2. after incurved, read lip reflected. 
 
 Accents misplaced. — Title-page, for yl ip er tv ri, read ydpestv -q : — page 18. for 
 Se nva, read Se nva : — page 19. for -wapapl>Srp.oi, read -vrapdpvSriJ .01 : — page 35. for avyy 
 read uiiyfi : ■ — page 115. for xaubs, read kuk6s : — page 121. for &v shj, read av e%. 
 

 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. I. 
 
 Of the painted Greek Pottery found in the Tombs of Magna Graecia Use of these 
 
 Vessels, as conjectured from a Passage in Pindar, — As proved by a Passage in 
 Aristophanes. — Their Connection with the Greek Mysteries inferred from Apu- 
 leius. — Mazzocchi’s Explanation of the Inscription KA AOS confuted. — That these 
 Vessels were symbolical Records of religious Doctrines and Opinions. Page 1 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 Origin of these Vases considered from an Examination of the Paintings upon 'them. — 
 An early Sicilian Cup illustrated by a Phoenician Coin. — Origin of the Statues 
 and Symbols of Minerva, and the Meaning of the latter explained. - 10 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 The Devices of the Apulian Vases derived from Sparta and Phoenicia. — Imported 
 from Magna Graecia to Rome. — Digression respecting the Games of the Roman 
 Circus. — Of the Olive Wreath on the Campanulate Vases. — Banquet of the 
 Blessed. - - - - - - -- -16 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 An Exposure of the Mysteries by Clemens Alexandrinus. - - - 26 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 Of the Scenery of the Eleusinian Mysteries. — The Paintings on the Greek Vases 
 copied from them. — Eastern Illuminations and the Eleusinian Shows compared. 34 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 Of the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries. — The Vase and the Lantern comparatively 
 
 considered as Symbols. — Various other Symbols explained Use of the Intaglio. 
 
 — The Descent of Bacchus, uijder different Characters, ad Inferos , his Voyage over 
 the Styx, and Re-ascent, exhibited as a Mystical Drama, in a Succession of transpa- 
 rent Scenes, selected chiefly from antique Gems. 43 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 The Ceremonies peculiar to each Day of the Greater Mysteries, as enumerated by 
 Meursius, and an Attempt to explain the Exhibitions in the Propylaea. — Cha- 
 
Xll 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 racters assumed by the Priests. — These Characters discovered on a Sicilian Vase, 
 
 illustrating the Mysteries of the Idaei Dactyli. - - Page 58 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 Harmonious Arrangement of the Universe. - - - 68 
 
 CHAP. IX. 
 
 Attributes of the Deity variously personated on Vases. — Of Shields, and their 
 Devices. ___ - - - - 71 
 
 CHAP. X. 
 
 Temporary Repose of Nature. — Of the Egyptian Horus in the torpid State. — 
 
 Mutes on the Reverse of Vases. — Figures draped and naked. - 74 
 
 CHAP. XI. 
 
 Of Fish, and the Allegory of Angling. - - - 81 
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 Of Old Age, Wine, Music, and Rhetoric. - - - 85 
 
 CHAP. XIII. 
 
 Of the dotted Chaplet, Girdle, and Scarf. — The Fate of Cassandra, and the Flight 
 of iEneas mystically treated. - - - - - - 89 
 
 CHAP. XIV. 
 
 Of Solstitial Fountains. - ------ 97 
 
 CHAP. XV. 
 
 Of the Window and the Ladder, and the Banqueting Chamber of the Blessed. — 
 Singular Customs of the Oriental Buddhists explained. - - 101 
 
 CHAP. XVI. 
 
 Extinction of Heathen Rites in Greece and Italy. — Eleusinian Mysteries inade- 
 quate to the End proposed in them. — Conclusion. - - 107 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Section I. — Classification of the Greek Fictilia. - - - - 119 
 
 Section II. — Of the Water Lilies of Egypt and Greece. — Of the Cibotium and 
 Cibotus, or Ark of the Covenant. — Mysterious Allusions in the Nymphasa Lotus. 
 — These Allusions discoverable in the Grecian, Moorish, and Gothic Architecture. 
 The latter probably derived from Alexandria in Egypt. - - 135 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 Of the painted Greek Pottery found in the Tombs of Magna Grcecia. — 
 Use of these Vessels, as conjectured from a Passage in Pindar, — As 
 proved by a Passage in Aristophanes. — Their Connection with the Greek 
 Mysteries inferred from Apuleius. — Mazzocchi’ s Explanation of the In- 
 scription KAAOS confuted. — That these Vessels were symbolical Re- 
 cords of religious Doctrines and Opinions. 
 
 The antiquary, who has investigated Pagan customs and 
 opinions in very early times, when the field of his enquiry has 
 extended beyond those periods- to which the events of history 
 can be traced with accuracy, has usually had little more than tra- 
 ditions to consider, etymologies to sift, and allegories to reduce 
 to some consistent meaning ; and much has been effected by men 
 of learning in this way. If it has been said, that deductions from 
 such imperfect premises are little to be depended upon, yet must 
 it be better to approximate to the truth by such means, than 
 to reject them, because we may not be able to show that they lead 
 us precisely to it. Nay, many have wandered much farther from 
 the truth by declining such aid. They who shrink from the dif- 
 ficulties presented by these studies, and who will not exercise 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 their judgment upon them, are apt to take the «V of the 
 
 ancients in too literal a sense ; and unbelievers have gladly availed 
 themselves of their errors, which enabled them to set at nought 
 the chronology of Scripture. 
 
 But there is another class of materials of a more substantial 
 nature, that seem calculated to supply the void occasioned by the 
 want of records and authentic dates, in the early ages. The 
 analogies of symbols furnish conclusions that, on some occasions, 
 amount almost to certainty. If allegory was the style that pre- 
 vailed in the first languages, symbols were the characters in which 
 they were noted down. Many of these are confessedly national 
 signs. The concurrence of them in distant situations, proves a 
 connection no less clearly than the page of history could have 
 transmitted it. The means of explaining them one by another 
 may be attained by a careful examination ; and, by beginning with 
 the more obvious and simple, and proceeding upward to the more 
 intricate and obscure, it is not impossible that the studious en- 
 quirer may eventually succeed in penetrating the engraven records 
 of Egypt, and in extorting from them all the information they 
 conceal. 
 
 On these analogies I shall very much rely, in my present 
 enquiry respecting the ancient earthen vessels, which have been 
 discovered at different times and in great numbers, chiefly in the 
 tombs of Lower Italy. 
 
 So various have been the rites of sepulture among the nations 
 of antiquity, that their languages scarcely present a stronger cha- 
 racteristic of each individual people. While the Egyptian filled 
 the corpse with gums, and swathed it in asphaltus, the Jew 
 contented himself with a more superficial mode of embalmment. 
 Both deposited their dead in caves, or subterranean recesses. The 
 Romans burnt their dead, having received the custom from their 
 Trojan ancestors. The Heracleidas introduced it into Greece, from 
 the example of the founder of their race, who constructed for 
 
3 
 
 himself a pile upon Mount (Eta. Burning and interment were, 
 indeed, long and indiscriminately practised in Greece ; but I sus- 
 pect that the former custom became less frequent, as the doctrines 
 of Eleusis obtained a stronger influence on the public mind. The 
 notion of combustion was inconsistent with the doctrines alluded 
 to on the painted vases. A presumed connection between these 
 vessels and the mysteries of Eleusis, may both account for the 
 use of them as a funeral rite, and for the very scanty allusion 
 made to them by Greek authors. 
 
 This custom of depositing vases in sepulchres, is supposed to 
 have been introduced into Sicily and Magna Graecia by the 
 early Greek colonists from Greece Proper, and into Etruria, by 
 emigrants from the same country. The term Etruscan, indeed, 
 applied to these vases, seems to be now generally abandoned. 
 Nevertheless the early use of them by the Tuscans is established 
 by the discoveries of the late Mr. Wilcocks at Civita Turchino, 
 in Italy. * The Cav. Bossi in his history of Italy, claims the first 
 manufacture of these vessels for the Tuscans : — “ Di quest’ arte, 
 “ siccome di molte altre, furono maestri gli Etruschi ai Romani, e 
 “ fors’ anche ai Greci .” — Istoria <T Italia , vol. i. p. 286. But this, 
 I apprehend, will scarcely be conceded. The manner in which 
 these vessels are disposed in tombs is well represented in an en- 
 graving, introduced into the second volume of the great work of 
 D’ Hancarville, p. 57, that illustrates the first collection of vases 
 formed by the late Sir William Hamilton. The body of the 
 deceased was deposited in the centre of the vault, or upon an 
 embankment raised against a side wall of the structure. It was 
 surrounded by these painted earthen vessels, some of which had 
 particular positions assigned to them, one being placed upon the 
 
 * See the interesting account of some subterraneous apartments with Etruscan 
 inscriptions and paintings explored at his expense, in the preface to his Roman Con- 
 versations, vol. i. p. lxv. 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 chest of the corpse, and another between the legs, and (occasionally 
 at least) a lamp near the crown of the head. The most curious 
 kinds of vases are found in the tombs in Sicily, those of finest 
 manufacture near Nola in Campania. A different description of 
 vessel seems to have been peculiar to different districts, yet some 
 of almost every kind are found in the same tomb, which may be 
 accounted for by a passage in Apuleius to be hereafter noticed. 
 As they vary likewise considerably in their forms, and in the style 
 of the painting, I have imagined that a certain classification of 
 them might be adopted, by which, upon examining any large 
 collection of them, individual specimens might be briefly and 
 expeditiously distinguished. This I will lay before my reader 
 hereafter*', and in the mean time consider, for what use these 
 vases were designed, and the reason of their having been de- 
 posited in tombs. The most probable conjecture on the first 
 head, is that of Lanzi and Visconti, grounded on a passage in the 
 10th Nemean Ode of Pindar, v. 62, & c. that these vessels were 
 awarded as prizes to winners in the several contests of the Pana- 
 thenaean festival. In this ode, Pindar says of Thiaeus, that twice 
 (or a second time after some intermission) he was the subject of 
 Athenian hymns ev reXeTaTg in their perfectory rites, and that the 
 produce of the olive was borne by him to Argos, lv dyyeuv e^xe<nv 
 7rotfji,TToiiu\oic } “ enclosed in vessels very variously ornamented.” 
 Now, although TmpnonciXotg may admit of different significations, 
 yet, as the painted portico at Athens was named ttomiXyi from the 
 paintings it contained, the word must here also be accepted in 
 the same sense. It is observable that Pindar attributes to the 
 Panathenaea a mystic signification, by terming them TcXtru), and 
 Theodoret also designates them by the same word. I therefore 
 willingly subscribe to the conjecture of Lanzi and Visconti, if it 
 should be further supposed, that the winners at these contests 
 
 * See the Appendix. 
 
5 
 
 (which consisted of flinging the torch in a horse race, of athletic 
 exercises, a musical competition, and a galley race off Cape 
 Sunium,) were bound to preserve the vases won by them until 
 their dying day, to be then buried with them : for, that the vases 
 found in tombs were painted expressly for the dead, is declared 
 by Aristophanes. In the comedy of the ’EtckXijcnctgcutrx/, a young 
 man, jeering an abandoned old woman, and reminding her how 
 near she was to her grave, says : — 
 
 Y. But, you wretch, I am afraid of that lover of yours. 
 
 O. What lover? 
 
 Y. Why, of him, the first of artists. 
 
 O. Who is he? 
 
 Y. He who paints the lecythi for the dead. * 
 
 Hence it appears, that there was a class of painters at Athens, 
 wholly employed in painting the vases that were deposited with 
 the dead, and that these vases were manufactured expressly for 
 this purpose. For, hear again the same dramatic author : — 
 
 Away you went, and left me like a corpse ; 
 
 Except that you neither crowned me, nor laid upon me the lecythus. f 
 
 The scholiast acquaints us, that the lecythus denoted both a lamp 
 and an oil vase for filling it ; and as I have noticed the custom of 
 placing a lamp in the tomb near the head of the deceased, the 
 several vases surrounding the body, if viewed as so many emblem- 
 
 * N. ’AXX’, to peeXe, oppwtiw tov spu?r\V <rov. TP. T/vot ; 
 
 N. Tov tcov ypuipewv «gi<JT 0 v. TP. Ovtos 8’ IV* tij; 
 
 N. "Os to~is vexpoltri %coypx<psii txs AijJcuSaj. 
 
 ’ExxA. v. 986-7-8. 
 
 -f JcaraXiTrsV, wo-zepu OTgojcs/pt-evov, 
 
 Movova' or s^avcocatr’ a8’ I7n3e7era \r}xv§ov. 
 
 ’Exx\. v. 533-4. Ed. Kusteri. 
 
 A singular coincidence between ancient and modern customs may be collected 
 from the £e Voyages deTournefort”, who, describing the ceremonies of a modern Greek 
 funeral, observes, “ Un des Papas mit sur l’estomac de la morte un morceau de pot 
 “ cass6, sur lequel on avoit grave avec la pointe d’un couteau, une croix, et les 
 “ caracteres ordinaires, INBI. ’Irjo-aj NaJJapaTof /3acnXeiij Ts8aic«v.” — Vol. i. p. 154. 
 
6 
 
 atical reservoirs of oil for keeping alive that lamp, might very 
 well imply the hope, that the flame of life would be rekindled in 
 a future state. But whatever mystic meaning was attached to the 
 Panathenaean, or to any other vases, it was only at Eleusis (as I 
 suspect) that their secret allusions were explained : for, however 
 the Panathenasa were termed T6Xsr«», or perfectory rites, yet we 
 hear of no pvmns or initiation preceding or accompanying them ; 
 and yet Aristophanes has said : — 
 
 As7 yap fju)r)$rjvx! p,e 7rp)v TeSvYjxsvai. * 
 
 I must needs be initiated before I die. 
 
 It is to Eleusis, therefore, that we must direct our regard, in 
 order to obtain a full explanation of this interesting subject. 
 
 Now, as these vessels are found only in Greek tombs, they 
 may be supposed to have been deposited there, as a tessera, or 
 mark that the deceased had been initiated, by commemorating 
 the particular scenes at Eleusis, of which he might have been 
 ’EttcV/w, or spectator. These painted vases, then, and the crepun- 
 dia of diminutive pottery, we may conclude, were the memorials 
 of initiation spoken of by Apuleius, which he had received from 
 the priests, and preserved with devout secrecy in the penetralia 
 of his dwelling. — •“ Vin’ dicam, cujusmodi illas res in sudario 
 44 obvolutas, laribus Pontiani commendarim ? Mos tibi geretur. 
 44 — Sacrorum pleraque initia in Grascia participavi. Eorum 
 44 quasdam signa et monumenta tradita mihi a sacerdotibus seduld 
 44 conservo. Nihil insolitum, nihil incognitum dico : vel unius 
 44 Liberi Patris symmistae, qui adestis, scitis, quid domi conditum 
 44 celetis, et absque omnibus profanis tacite veneremini.” — And 
 again : - — 44 Etiamne cuiquam mirum videri potest, cui sit ulla 
 44 memoria religionis, hominem tot mysteriis Deum conscium, 
 44 quaedam sacrorum crepundia domi adservare ?” — Apologia. 
 
 E IpYjV. v. 37 4. 
 
7 
 
 It is here observable, that Apuleius had not been initiated 
 at Eleusis only, but in various parts of Greece, and had received 
 these trinket's from the initiators ; we may therefore conclude, 
 that there were various religious theatres where mystic shows 
 were exhibited, and although Greek writers have not spoken of 
 them, that there may have been Agrigentine, Nolan, and other 
 mysteries, equal in point of splendour to those at Eleusis ; which 
 may account for vases of different manufactures being frequently 
 found in the same sepulchre. 
 
 If a computation were to be made of all the prizes delivered 
 in the lesser annual, and in the greater quinquennial Panathenaea, 
 from the first invention of the art of painting down to the 
 Christian sera, or to the final extinction of that Athenian festival, 
 the quantity of ancient Jictilia preserved in the collections in this 
 country and on the Continent, would infinitely outnumber them ; 
 so that even the hypothesis of Lanzi and Visconti would be in- 
 sufficient to account for the almost infinite number found. The 
 Grecian mysteries alluded to by Apuleius might have very well 
 supplied them. 
 
 But not only do I believe, that the paintings on these Jictilia re- 
 presented the scenery of the Eleusinian shows, but that the certifi- 
 cate of initiation to them was expressed on these memorials ; as in 
 the words, KAA.QC or KAAOC inscribed in transparent characters 
 on the vases of Nola. Thus KAINIAC KAAflC, sc . IrsWr^o-s, “ Cli- 
 “ nias died in the good hope upon one of this description in 
 the possession of Samuel Rogers, Esq. : KAITAPXOC KAAOC in 
 opaque letters on the famous Agrigentine vase of Thomas Hope, 
 Esq., — KAAG AOKGC* declared of a female upon a vase cited by 
 the Abbe Zarillo in his two letters to the late Mr. Millin, wherein 
 the Abbe proved with considerable neatness of remark, as well 
 as erudition, that <Wr? does not so much imply “ you appear,” 
 
 * As if for KAAH A0KE12. 
 
8 
 
 as “ you appear in the judgment of,” “ you are considered which 
 gives fresh colour to my explanation of the words inscribed : that 
 the person had been approved by the initiator, and by him pro- 
 nounced perfect. From these considerations, I feel inclined to 
 disbelieve that anecdote which Clemens has reported (Protrept. 
 p. 47. Ed. Potter), so injurious to the credit of Phidias, that the 
 artist designed to celebrate the beauty of a favourite by the words 
 inscribed on the finger of his Olympian Jupiter. I rather appre- 
 hend that proud of his performance, Phidias gave the challenge 
 to criticism, by declaring in the language of Eleusis, nANTAPXHS 
 KAAOX, that his figure of the all-sufficient Deity was a perfect 
 work. 
 
 This injurious illustration of the word KAAOL upon Greek 
 vases was first made by Mazzocchi, and Count Caylus, and has 
 been from them adopted by almost every antiquary upon the 
 Continent, with the exception of the honest Targioni, who revolts 
 fromso base an application of the term. Hevery judiciously observes, 
 that the A0HNAIOI KAAOI in Aristophanes could never have been 
 a term of amatory affection. It was in truth, what in English we 
 should express, in the warmth of political feeling, by “ Athenians 
 “ for ever /” But it is needless for me to engage in any controversy 
 on this subject, when the passage I have already adduced from 
 Aristophanes to prove that these vases were painted for the dead, 
 presents an argument unanswerable. 
 
 Let those who prefer the opinion of Mazzocchi and Caylus 
 reflect, that if these vases were manufactured expressly for the 
 tomb, the compliment conveyed by the word KAAOS must have 
 come too late. If therefore it alludes to beauty, it must be to 
 spiritual, and not corporeal beauty. 
 
 The mystic doctrine of the immortality of the soul imparted 
 at Eleusis, being allegorically expressed by an elegant group on 
 the side of the vase, the painting itself was put for the religious 
 opinion of the person, and the person was in some degree repre- 
 
9 
 
 sented by the vase. This idea may be illustrated from Plutarch, 
 who, in his tract de hide et Osiride, furnishes a very probable ac- 
 count of the manner in which these scenic shows originated, and 
 for the custom of depositing vases in tombs : I may therefore 
 properly conclude this portion of my disquisition by adducing it. 
 
 It seems that the veils or sacred garments, with which the 
 statues of the Egyptian Deity Isis were apparelled, were partly 
 black and partly white, for which Plutarch gives the following 
 reason : xcti TB-egKTTeXXovreg, ra fjceXotvcc xcti (rxi'ufiv], ret fie, QctveQoL* 
 xoi) Xctfjnr^oi, rvjg Sreuv v%0fii]XoovTCit olvjtreug, oiot xcti rvjv ecr&vjTot 
 
 T'fiv lego&v d7ro(poiiveToii. fiio xcti to xocfteTcr^xi roinoig rovg otTCO^ocvovTug 
 ’Icrictxou g,crv y,Co\ov Ictti tootov rovXoyov eivxt ust uvtmv, xxi toutov eyovTxg, 
 a.XXo fie [tvjfiev, exei (3xfii£eiv. — Sect. iii. 
 
 44 Moreover, by clothing the statues with apparel, partly 
 44 black or shady, partly light and brilliant, they indicate their 
 <£ notions of the Deity, and profess to think of his nature, as of 
 44 this sacred clothing ; and the dressing the votaries of Isis, 
 44 when dead, in the same apparel, is a sign that these opinions are 
 44 still with them, and that they departed from life in the full 
 44 persuasion of this, rejecting every other doctrine.” 
 
 * The first scene ever used was, perhaps, the sacred jpejplus. The mere display 
 of this to the people by torch-light, would have produced the effect of a transparency. 
 
 C 
 
10 
 
 CHAP. II. 
 
 Origin of these Vases considered , from an Examination of the Paintings 
 upon them. — An early Sicilian Cup illustrated by a Phoenician Coin. — 
 Origin of the Statues and Symbols of Minerva, and the Meaning of the 
 latter explained. 
 
 It may now be interesting to consider, what information respect- 
 ing the origin of these vases may be derived from the paintings 
 upon them. Of the purple-figured vessels, supposed to be the 
 earliest in point of antiquity, and of Carthaginian manufacture, 
 I have very little to observe, except that I have met with one of 
 these of oblate spheroidal form*, which exhibited, in purple lines 
 round the orifice at top, an allusion to the eight petals of the 
 Nymphma Lotus of Egypt. The painted ornaments upon them, 
 in general, present no great variety of objects beyond animals 
 and flowers, and occasionally armed figures with ttieir circular 
 
 * The consideration of the forms of these vessels, and the origin of them from 
 the fruits of the different kinds of water-lily, is fully stated in my Appendix. 
 
11 
 
 shields. Upon a vessel approaching to the urceolate shape, one 
 of a pair in the collection of Thomas Hope, Esq., seven of these 
 warriors surround the bulb of the vase. We dare not term them 
 the seven chiefs before Thebes, because their shields are deficient 
 of the necessary symbols, and I venture to assert, that attempts 
 to illustrate history by the paintings upon Greek pottery will 
 generally be labour misapplied. 
 
 The large Sicilian lachrymatories, evidently of somewhat 
 later manufacture than the preceding, are of a more interesting 
 class, but the paintings upon them are very difficult to explain. 
 The grim military characters represented on them, remind us of 
 the <ra.\Tny[o\oyx\)7rv\vu<$a.i i “The bearded-spear-and-trumpet-men” of 
 iEschylus *, and they cannot be much later than his time. Among 
 the allegories they exhibit, we sometimes observe Minerva with 
 her arms extended, separating four fighting warriors, which may 
 perhaps denote mind, putting asunder and composing the four 
 other first conflicting elements. Sometimes Hercules, or Divine 
 Power, is destroying the bull-man Minos, who is probably the 
 representative of terrestrial beings in general. I shall venture to 
 select the allegory of the sea-horse, as I find it expressed on a 
 vessel in the collection of Thomas Hope, Esq. ; believing that it 
 admits of more particular illustration, and that it may serve to 
 direct us to the quarter from whence the doctrine it records was 
 transmitted to the Mystagogues in Sicily. The vase to which I 
 allude is a large two-handled cup with a painting on the front 
 (and the same device is repeated on the reverse of it), represent- 
 ing a bearded figure with a trident, borne on a marine monster, 
 and emerging from the ocean, f The hinder part of the composite 
 figure that bears him is fashioned as a fish, which has been 
 assisted in its passage through the water by a pair of ponderous 
 
 * Aristophanis Ranse, v. 997. 
 f See the Vignette prefixed to this chapter. 
 
 c 2 
 
12 
 
 wings ; the head and fore quarters are those of a horse : a swan, 
 standing on the front ground, and drying its extended wings, 
 shows that the chimaera is on the point of setting its hoofs upon 
 firm land. 
 
 The painting further bears an inscription, but in characters 
 not easy to decipher * ; and I regret to be debarred the inform- 
 ation, which a perfect knowledge of them might have thrown 
 upon the subject of the painting. 
 
 The latter seems to prove the introduction of religious in- 
 formation into Magna Grascia, through the medium of a people 
 not usually resorted to for that purpose in enquiries of this 
 nature. 
 
 Upon a Phoenician coin ascribed by the late Mr. Dutens to 
 Gaza in Palestine, and engraved in his work on the coins of that 
 country, a figure armed with a bow is mounted on a sea-horse ; 
 while the reverse exhibits an owl, between the Egyptian em- 
 blems — the pastoral crook and the winnowing fan of Osiris. 
 
 Now it is to be remembered, that the ’AQ^vj of the Greeks 
 was the same as the Neith of Egypt, and the latter was an emblem 
 of their fifth element (their quinta essentia ), Spirit ; and hence 
 Athene among the .Greeks became the goddess of wisdom. This 
 subject is so interesting, that I shall venture to discuss it more at 
 large. 
 
 When Danaus emigrated from Egypt to Greece, which seems 
 to have happened soon after the Exodus, statues were not known 
 in the latter country, nor, as we may presume, in Egypt, f It is 
 credible that living animals were at that time adopted in Egypt, 
 
 * The characters seem to express the word irovcro, “ go forth,” from a verb 
 much used by ZEschylus ; but in this I may very probably be mistaken. 
 
 f The use of idol images in Egypt at that time is not necessarily to be inferred 
 from the fashioning of the golden calf. The graving tool had been used for cutting 
 names and not figures upon signets. Exodus xxviii. v. 11. The skill of Bezaleel was 
 divinely imparted. Exodus xxxi. v. 2, 3. 6, 7, and the second commandment gave a 
 warning against the misapplication of such skill. 
 
13 
 
 as symbols of the elements worshipped there. The ox, from 
 its having directed the founders of colonies to streams and pas- 
 tures, was viewed as a symbol of the earth, and especially of the 
 soil of Egypt : for it was this which the Israelites longed for, 
 when, parched in the sultry desert, they called for leading gods 
 to go before them, or in other words, when they wished for the 
 glad sight of oxen, streams, and fertile pastures. These were the 
 ©sot ofyyo), which pointed out to Cadmus the future site of Thebes*, 
 and which appear on coins as oxen with human heads, as on 
 those of Gela, Neapolis, and others ; nay, perhaps the represent- 
 ations, on Sicilian vases, of Theseus slaying the Minotaur may 
 partially refer to the successes of Greek colonists, who over- 
 powered the aborigines, and planted themselves in their room, 
 as premises that led to certain mystic conclusions. Crocodiles 
 and fishes were adopted as symbols of water, from which the 
 family of the great ancestor of the Egyptian colony had been 
 preserved during the flood. The ibis represented air, and the 
 hawk, as we may collect from Porphyry, denoted fire. But the 
 elements reverenced in Egypt were five in number, and Neith 
 was a representative of the last of them. By an incident in the 
 history of Danaus, we are informed how Neith must have been 
 symbolised in Egypt. Eusebius in his elaborate work, “ A Pre- 
 “ paration for the Gospel,” lib. iii. c. 8., has adduced a fragment of 
 an epigram ascribed to Callimachus. It requires some emend- 
 ations, which an experienced critic might easily supply, but the 
 sense of it is sufficiently clear : — 
 
 “ No images were yet, — but on its base, 
 
 A fresh hewn plank supplied the statue’s place, 
 
 Such were their gods; and Lindian Pallas stood, 
 
 By Danaus fix’d, a polish’d stem of wood.” 
 
 * See the Chorus to the Phoenissae of Euripides, v. 651. et seq.: — 
 K«S/ 40 f I'ju-oAs t«v8e y«v, 
 
 # # * 
 
14 
 
 We learn from this, that upon the arrival of Danaus at Lindus 
 in the island of Rhodes, he set up a plank or the stump of a tree, 
 to represent Minerva. We may hence conclude, that in Egypt 
 also, from whence he came, a tree, as the symbol of Neith, denoted 
 air, or spirit. This leads us up to the worship of patriarchal 
 times, when symbols and figurative rites appear to have been in- 
 nocently used, although they were afterwards perverted by the 
 Gentiles ; as the oaks in Mamre : and these, perhaps, may be 
 referred to the Mosaic account of the first pair hearing the voice 
 of the Lord God, walking in the garden, in the cool of the day. 
 If we trace the misapplication of this tradition downwards, we 
 may be led by it to account for the worshipping in groves, and 
 for Minerva under her Grecian name Athene (which is but the 
 Egyptian Neith reversed), being distinguished by her peculiar 
 emblem of the tree ; that tree too, the olive, which produces oil : 
 for oil had been symbolically used in patriarchal times, to feed 
 that light which indicated the presence of the Deity, and to 
 render his Spirit abiding, as when poured by Jacob on the stone 
 in Beth-el. For as the Spirit in Scripture is likened to fire, so 
 unction denotes the abiding of it, and this has been the real 
 meaning of anointing in various ceremonies of the Christian 
 churches. 
 
 This will serve to explain the meaning of the owl, the olive 
 tree, and the amphora, on the coins of Athens, where they are 
 used as symbols of the intellectual goddess Minerva; and I appre- 
 hend that the caput acris equi (Virg.), combined with the palm- 
 tree on the coins of Carthage, was intended to denote the move- 
 ment or procession of spirit. 
 
 On the Phoenician coin above cited, the owl was the emblem 
 of chaotic night, and spirit. The pastoral crook and the winnow- 
 ing fan implied alternately collecting and dispersing. These 
 were the supposed modes of the proceeding of that spirit, which, on 
 the obverse of the same coin, is represented moving on the waters, 
 
15 
 
 after the first raj of light, implied by the bow, had gleamed forth ; 
 when the dry land, of which we have an indication on this vase, 
 appeared ; and when the several parts of the creation, man and 
 animals , and fishes, and fowls, had their habitations assigned to 
 them, whether on the land or in the waters. 
 
 The subject of this painting, therefore, alludes either to the 
 first movement of Spirit upon water, or to the renovation of 
 created beings after the destruction of them by the waters of the 
 deluge. 
 
 The assertion of Herodotus (lib. ii.), that Poseidon and the 
 Dioscuri were not admitted among the gods of Egypt, and that 
 the Egyptians were even unacquainted with their names, prevents 
 our deriving from thence the doctrine as recorded by this vase. 
 The Phoenician coin first noticed, exhibits that enterprising people 
 in a new commercial point of view, as giving and receiving reli- 
 gious opinions, adopting symbols intelligible to the Egyptians, with 
 whom they trafficked on the one hand, and to the Athenians on 
 the other, and combining them with notions of their own. It may, 
 therefore, be concluded, that the Phoenicians imported much 
 information of a mixed nature into Sicily, and that “ Punic” 
 applied to the earliest Greek pottery, is not absolutely an in- 
 appropriate term. 
 
16 
 
 CHAP. III. 
 
 The Devices of ilie Apulian Vases, derived from Sparta and Phoenicia. — 
 Imparted from Magna Grcecia to Rome. — Digression respecting the 
 Games of the Roman Circus. — Of the Olive Wreath on the Campanulate 
 Vases. — Banquets of the Blessed. 
 
 Dismissing for the present, the campanulate and other vases of 
 the illumined class, which exhibit very little, either in the 
 allegories depicted upon them, or in the ornaments, that can 
 throw light upon their origin, I will proceed to notice those 
 vessels, which in my Appendix I have ventured to term of a 
 composite character, and of which I consider that the egg com- 
 bined with the fruit of the water lily, furnished the original 
 model. 
 
 They correspond in their general form with those vases 
 which may be seen on the coins of Thebes, and the similarity of 
 the handles of the two, is particularly remarkable. But I am 
 disposed to believe, that it was the allusion made to the history 
 of Castor and Pollux, in the paintings on these vases, which 
 occasioned the device of the swans’ heads and necks, which are 
 
17 
 
 looped upon them. They direct us to the fable of Leda and her 
 progeny, Castor and Pollux, each of whom was feigned to have 
 sprung from an egg ; hence the intention of those who manufac- 
 tured vases in that fashion, is very plainly declared. 
 
 The egg of Leda being the subject of a Spartan fable, it 
 affords ground for conjecturing, that the manufacture of these 
 vases, which are particularly found in Apulia, and the doctrines 
 they illustrate, must have been introduced into Magna Graecia, 
 by Spartan colonists ; for we know that Tarentum (styled by 
 Florus “ Apulia totiusque Calabria caput,”) was taken possession 
 of, and enlarged by the Partheniae, under Phalanthus, after the 
 Messenian war: this Phalanthus, therefore, was a Spartan 
 emigrant*, and probably other settlements in that quarter were 
 of Spartan origin. 
 
 The Dioscuri (as Castor and Pollux were termed) were par- 
 ticularly reverenced in the parent country. The continuance of 
 their worship was specified in an oracle delivered to Lycurgus, 
 to be one of the conditions on which the prosperity of their 
 country, under the protection of Jupiter, was promised, f 
 
 These are the dulpoveg dyrriXtoi — mentioned in the Agamem- 
 non of iEschylus, v. 502, which are improperly explained by 
 the Scholiast, and by Hesychius, and Eustathius, to be those gods, 
 whose statues were exposed to the sun, or in the open air ; and 
 Potter, misled by these critics, has thus embellished their com- 
 mentary ; 
 
 Ye Gods, 
 
 That to the golden sun before these gates 
 Present your honoured forms. 
 
 * He is termed Ledaean, by Martial, Ep. 28. 1. 8. 
 
 f It is therefore, that the equestrian figures of the two Dioscuri, or their semiovi- 
 form bonnets, surmounted by their appropriate asterisms, appear on the coins of 
 Lacedaemon ; and what is particularly to the purpose of these inquiries, one of 
 these coins bears for its device, two vases, each enveloped by a serpent, as the 
 
 D 
 
18 
 
 whereas the true meaning of the words is : “ Gods, which, like two 
 suns, are in opposite hemispheres ?” For these twin stars, which 
 were the real objects of adoration at Argos, (while the figures 
 of Castor and Pollux were only poetical representations of them,) 
 were observed at the time of their rising and setting to be, though 
 for a very short interval of time, the one above, and the other be- 
 neath the horizon;* * they were therefore styled by fEschylus, * 
 
 dvTTjXlOI. 
 
 The rising and setting of the heavenly bodies, directed the 
 attention of observers in early times to the correspondent vicissi- 
 tudes of natural objects, and their alternate decay and reproduc- 
 tion ; hence we may understand, what Sanchoniatho, in his 
 Phoenician theology, intended to describe by saying ; “ there 
 were certain brute animals, from which other sensible ones were 
 generated, and they were called Zophasemin, that is, contempla- 
 tors of heaven, and they were fashioned in the form of an egg 
 vi v Je riva, hk e^ovru caoSviiriv, s£ uv eyevsTo voe^d, Koii SKXvjd?] Zu- 
 (pa,<rvi[div i Tax’ tgiv dgavov Ka,TO J Tf\ai i j cod dv£7T\dcr§vi opolug (dot/) tr^vj^oiTt (as 
 the passage is corrected by Bishop Cumberland,) Euseb. Pra?p. 
 Ev. p. 33 . ; merely perhaps implying, that these lofty speculations 
 were originally suggested by observations upon inanimate objects. 
 But not to pursue this subject, which would lead me upon 
 ground already too well beaten, I will observe, that agreeably 
 with the foregoing remarks, the devices pictured on the front 
 of the Apulian vases, are all allusive to day and life, those on the 
 reverse to night and death. On the neck is frequently seen the 
 chariot of Aurora, preceded by Lucifer the morning star, with a 
 torch, and various scenes of action occur on the obverse below ; 
 while on the reverse appears Castor with his horse bearing a 
 
 Agathodsemon, with its head extended over the brim, as if drinking ; and another 
 coin represents two such vases, on the bulb of which is impressed a serpent. — 
 Pelerin Medailles des Peuples, et des Villes, vol. i. plate xix. fig. 42-3. 
 
 * See a good note by Ruseus in his Delphin Virgil, on v. 121. of the sixth book 
 of the iEneid. 
 
19 
 
 corslet, (the symbol of inaction) standing under the shelter of a 
 sepulchre, while four figures surround it, bearing those fercula 
 which Tournefort has described as offered even in his time in 
 Greece, by survivors to their deceased relatives under the name 
 of the Colyva. * Upon the handles of these vases also are masks 
 of Medusa, as they are termed, but allusive to the disk of the full 
 moon. ^The pair of disks which thus surmount the front of the 
 vase, are invariably painted white, and the correspondent pair on 
 the reverse, are coloured red, to represent the moon obscured in 
 the time of an eclipse. 
 
 To such mysteries as may have been celebrated in Apulia, 
 the titles given to the Curetes in the Orphic hymns, xxxi. and 
 xxxviii. seem applicable. They are hailed as eua'g'^eg, favourable 
 stars, and Tgofihg re ku) cZt oXer^sg, “ by turns who cherish and 
 “ destroy.” Nor need we hesitate to believe, that other astrono- 
 mical speculations were there admitted respecting the movements 
 of the planets, and their occasional deaths or obscurations, for 
 such must be the meaning of the K^atnXb^at, TzugagvSpoi, of Onoma- 
 critus, “ who play in discords on your sounding lyres.” These 
 
 * “ Neuf jours apres, (l’enterrement)” says Tournefort, “ on envoya le colyva (xoXuSec) 
 a l’Eglise. C’est ainsi qu’ils appellent un grand bassin de froment bouilli en grain garni 
 d’amandes pelees, de raisins secs, de grenades, de sesame, et borde de Basilic, ou de 
 quelques autres plantes odoriferantes. Le milieu du bassin s’^leve en pain de sucre, 
 surmont6 d’un bouquet de fleurs artificielles, que l’on fait venir de Venise, et l’on 
 range en Croix de Malte sur les bords du bassin quelques morceaux de sucre ou de 
 confitures sdches. Voila ce que les Grecs appellent l’offrande du Colyva, (xoXvSaiv 
 z 7 porr<popx) etablie parmi eux, pour faire souvenir les fiddles de la resurrection des 
 morts, suivant ces paroles de Jesus Christ, en St. Jean : “ En verity, en verite, je 
 « vous le. dis, si le grain de froment ne meurt apres qu’on l’a jette en terre, il demeure 
 « seul ; mais quand il est inort, il produit beaucoup de fruit.” Le fossoyeur porte 
 sur sa tete le bassin du colyva, precede d’une personne qui tient deux gros flam- 
 beaux de bois dore garnis par etages de rubans fort larges, bordes d’une dentelle de fil 
 de demi-pied de hauteur: Ce fossoyeur est suivi de trois personnes, l’une porte deux 
 grandes bouteilles de vin, l’autre deux paniers de fruits, la troisieme un tapis de Tur- 
 quie, que l’on £tend sur le tombeau du mort, pour y servir le colyva et la eolation.” — 
 Voyages de Tournefort, vol. i. 155-6. 8vo. 
 
 D 2 
 
20 
 
 discords in the harmony of the sphaeres, can be understood only 
 by reference to such phaenomena. Thus also would I explain a line 
 in a hymn to Cyrbas, one of the three Corybantes,who, I doubt not, 
 were designed to personate the sun, moon, and earth, in the con- 
 test between which one of the three was figuratively said to be 
 slain by the other two. 
 
 <!>oivigv, alf^a^devToc, aoctri'yvriTuv V7T0 Sicnruv. H. 39. V. 6. “ stained 
 “ with blood, and falling by the hands of two relative celestial 
 “ bodies with allusion to the bloody appearance of the moon 
 in eclipse, as also to her temporary obscuration, followed by a re- 
 novation of her light. Such I conceive to be the meaning of the 
 combat of the three Curetes, which serves as a vignette to this 
 chapter. It is from a Sicilian Lachrymatory, now in the collection 
 of Thomas Hope, Esq. 
 
 It was from Chaldaea, that parent of astronomical science, 
 and of its bastard associate, astrology, that Phoenicia must have 
 derived a taste for such speculations. It is interesting to trace 
 them downwards through Lacedaemon to Magna Graecia, and 
 thence to Rome itself, where these doctrines were embodied 
 under symbols, that were' publicly exhibited, but which the 
 learned only in those times could explain. The curiosity of the 
 subject, and the instruction to be derived from this inquiry, will, 
 I hope, be accepted as excuse for the following digression. 
 
 OF THE ROMAN CIRCENSIAN GAMES. 
 
 The Circensian Games, originally termed Consualia *, were 
 instituted in honor of Neptune, who was styled Consus, the god 
 of secret counsels. That they had an astronomical and secret 
 religious allusion is very evident, and hence we may collect the 
 true meaning of the term consualia. 
 
 * They were celebrated about the 18th of August. 
 
21 
 
 The principal erections in the centre of the area, and the num- 
 ber of the circuits performed by the chariots in the race * * * § , denoted 
 the solar system f, and possibly the passage through the several 
 parts of that system, which individuals were supposed to ex- 
 perience in a future state ; for such was the fixed hope of the 
 more enlightened in Magna Grsecia, whom Romulus professed to 
 imitate in establishing these games ; a scheme that never entered 
 into the imagination of the vulgar. 
 
 On the spine, as it was termed, or that elevated bank between 
 the metes, was erected in the centre, one great obelisk in honour 
 of the sun, and the spine itself was sacred to Cybele, or the earth. 
 Upon the circular plinth at each end of the spine, were three 
 conical obelisks called Ova Castoris, the eggs of Castor and Pollux J, 
 which obelisks were considered in the place of altars to six 
 planets ; the one group to Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars ; the other to 
 Mercury, Venus, and the Moon. The use of them in the race was 
 this : at the completion of every circuit by the chariots round the 
 spine, one of these obelisks was thrown down, and the whole 
 were levelled in succession. By these means the competitors 
 could better reckon the number of circuits made. In a mystical 
 sense, the candidates had thus passed through each planet in suc- 
 cession, and the last circuit was accordingly performed round the 
 
 * The number of the circuits performed was seven, 
 f “ Solis honore novi grati spectacula Circi 
 Antiqui sanxere patres.” — coripp. African. 
 
 t Seven eggs occurred likewise on the top of a colonnade dedicated to Castor upon 
 the spina, as also seven dolphins on a temple or colonnade dedicated to Consus. 
 
 Both of these seem to be alluded to by Juvenal, Sat. 6. lib. 2. v. 588. “Consulit ante 
 “ Falas, Delphinorumque columnas.” Nevertheless Vitruvius asserts that these 
 falce § were round towers, egg-shaped at top, the same as the woeiSJj 8rjjt4<ougy^j«.aT«, 
 ovales fabrics , of Dio, which Agrippa is said to have first constructed, to mark 
 the number of circuits made. Whether the eggs upon the colonnade, or the towers 
 last mentioned, were the objects displaced, it is very difficult to determine. In the 
 latter case, the cones upon the plinths of the Metse may be understood with no great 
 impropriety. 
 
 § A word apparently derived from (-aXe'w, Coacervo, to heap up. 
 
22 
 
 obelisk of the sun. It was then that the emblems of victory were 
 conferred upon the winner ; while the losers were left to pay 
 their vows to the Murcida Dea , or Venus, the goddess of sloth, who 
 for this reason had a temple dedicated to her upon the spina. 
 
 The Ova Castoris were sacred to the Dioscuri, the repre- 
 sentatives of two equal portions of the universe, the higher and 
 nether poles, the upper and lower halves of one great sphere. 
 The rising and setting in succession of the twin stars, Castor and 
 Pollux, by which the one was left for a while above, and the other 
 below the horizon, a phagnomenon perpetually resorted to by the 
 ancients to illustrate the alternate rise and decay of material 
 bodies, according to their religious speculations, was expressed 
 by the approach of the contending charioteers to either Meta, as 
 we are apprised by an ancient poet respecting these goals. 
 
 — “ Namque axes gemini ortum obitumque docent, 
 
 Atque his Euripus, quasimagnum interjacet aequor.” 
 
 Twin poles, that shew how stars successive rise 
 And set — ’twixt these the broad Euripus lies. 
 
 This Euripus was a later name given to the spine in the 
 time of Nero, who filled up the Euripus or canal which bounded the 
 circus on three sides, and had formed the security of the popu- 
 lace, especially when combats of wild beasts were there exhibited. 
 The name was then transferred to the Spina. Not that any 
 canal was ever traced in that direction, but that the course of the 
 chariots down one side of the mound and returning on the other, 
 was somewhat like that of the celebrated Euripus, or Strait of 
 Euboea, where the current, for eighteen days in every month, 
 suffered a flux and reflux in every twenty-four hours, similar to 
 the tide of the sea; whereas on every other day within the 
 month, the current varied, and flowed in almost every direction. 
 For the other ornaments of this Euripus, such as the temple of 
 the sun, a smaller obelisk dedicated to the moon, the three altars 
 of the Cabiri (styled Deorum magnorum , potentium valentium, but 
 
23 
 
 which epithets are only synonyms of the word Cabir), the altars 
 of the goddesses of seed-time and harvest, and preservation of 
 crops, of fortune and victory, the branch of olive and the rest, 
 the work of Panvinius De Ludis Circensibus may be seen. 
 
 Thus the Apulian mysteries were illustrated by the specta- 
 cles of the Roman Circus ; but the Roman orator has supplied a 
 much more interesting commentary upon them : — “ Qui recte 
 “ et honeste cui riculum vivendi a natura datum confecerit, ad astra 
 “ facile revertetur.” — Cicero de Universo. 
 
 The campanulate vases, which are the most numerous of the 
 illumined class, have almost invariably an olive wreath encom- 
 passing the vessel, immediately under the lip. From the ob- 
 servations made in the preceding chapter, I feel justified in viewing 
 this as the symbol of spirit. At the bottom of the bowl of these 
 vases is a waved line to represent water, or the Maeander, which 
 is the known substitute for it. Retween the two is the allegorical 
 painting, which principally attracts the eye. Thus by the opera- 
 tion of spirit upon water, all those scenes of life and action were 
 supposed to be produced, which are intended to be exemplified 
 in these paintings. 
 
 I forbear at this time to enter into an explanation of the 
 many various subjects detailed in painting on the front and re- 
 verse of the campanulate vases. It may be sufficient to say, that 
 they generally exhibit scenes of violent and even of infuriate 
 action, contrasted by states of inactivity and repose, of descents 
 and returns from the shades, and of those Dioscurean races, 
 which seem to have supplied subjects of astronomical specula- 
 tion to the mystagogues of the Apulian school, on which I have 
 digressed, perhaps, too much already. I will only particularly 
 notice the frequent representations of figures reclining at a ban- 
 quet, which are common both to this family of the illumined 
 
24 
 
 class, and to the larger and later Sicilian vases. These banquets, 
 
 I apprehend, point to the ultimate object of the mysteries. Cer- 
 tain of these vessels are occasionally introduced into the subjects 
 of the paintings themselves ; and since allusions to Dionysiac 
 revels are frequent upon them, the vessels deposited in tombs 
 may with equal propriety be supposed to bear allusion to wine, as 
 to oil, the former having been almost as much as the latter, of 
 mystic import. In a very interesting pamphlet of Mr. Iorio, en- 
 titled Scheletri Cumani (the possession of which I owe to his 
 politeness,) wherein he describes the contents of a tomb dis- 
 covered at Cuma, which he had himself examined, the paintings 
 on the walls of three distinct chambers are said to have repre- 
 sented, — 1. A dance of three skeletons, — 2. A scene in the 
 Elysian fields, — and 3. A banquet. — Supposing with this accom- 
 plished antiquary, that this had been the tomb of a celebrated 
 dancer, and that these paintings alluded to her destiny after her 
 death, I should say, that the third of them marked her admission, 
 as a guest at the banquet represented, and not for the purpose of 
 entertaining, by a display of her talent, the guests already there 
 assembled. But even if this representation should be accepted 
 in the lower sense, the scene may nevertheless be understood to 
 exhibit the eventual happy state. 
 
 Let us hear what the Athenian comic poet hath advanced 
 on this subject. In his Comedy of the Frogs, (for many serious 
 expressions may be collected from among the ribaldry in which 
 he indulged,) he has thus marked the happy end of a favorite 
 dramatic poet : 
 
 HP. ’AyaSwv 8e ■ors’ j-jv ; AI. ’A ttoXjttcov /a’ «7ro/p^sT«i. 
 
 ******* 
 
 HP. n 0 7 yys 6 tAi /jficuv ; AI. ’Ej j u,xxagwv evoo^loiv. 
 
 Ran. 83. 5. 
 
 H. But where is Agatho ? D. He has left me and is gone. 
 
 H. Whither poor fellow ? D. To the banquet of the Blessed. 
 
2 5 
 
 The absence of painted jictilia from the Cuman sepulchre 
 examined by Mr. Iorio, prevents me supposing that the deceased 
 had enjoyed the benefit of initiation. But a similar degree of 
 felicity with that which initiation, it was supposed, would have 
 secured, seems to have been thus implied for her, by the bene- 
 volence of those who constructed and decorated the tomb. 
 
 But if Eleusis be the quarter where a complete elucidation 
 of these recondite subjects is to be obtained, let us proceed 
 thither, and ascertain, in the first place, what one of the best in- 
 formed among the ancients has made known respecting them. 
 He presents indeed an appalling spectacle ; but in prosecuting 
 this enquiry, I trust I may be able to advance without indulging 
 in improper curiosity, and that my researches will be directed 
 to a laudable end. 
 
 E 
 
26 
 
 CHAP. IV. 
 
 An Exposure of the Mysteries by Clemens Alexandrinus . # 
 
 — « What if I enumerate your mysteries? I will not 
 
 make a jest of them, as Alcibiades is said to have done, but lay 
 bare, in the words of truth, the impostures they envelope. And I 
 will call upon the stage your gods, as you term them, to whom 
 these mysteries belong, and exhibit them to the spectators such 
 as they truly are in their lives and actions. The Bacchanals per- 
 form their orgies to Dionysus Maenoles, and indulge their frenzy 
 by devouring raw flesh. They crown themselves with serpents, 
 while they solemnly divide the slaughtered kid, and howl out the 
 name of Eua ; that Eve, by whom came error, and its sequel, 
 death. The mystic serpent is the symbol of the Bacchic orgies : 
 now, according to the true Hebrew meaning of the word, if Eua 
 be pronounced with the strong aspirate, Heva , it denotes a female 
 serpent. 
 
 “ Ceres and Proserpine are now become a mystic drama, and 
 Eleusis illustrates with torches the wanderings, the rape, and 
 the grief, of the one and the other. And, in my opinion, we ought 
 to deduce the words, orgies and mysteries, the one from ogyyg, 
 the rage of Ceres against Jupiter, and the other from pvmg, the 
 filthy catastrophe that befel Dionysus. Or, if you would rather 
 derive this from one Mesuns of Attica, who perished in the chase, 
 I will not envy you your having recourse to sepulchral terms 
 and rites, to recommend your mysteries to public opinion. You 
 
 * From the 3d chap, of the 2d book of Eusebius’s Preparation for the Gospel. 
 
27 
 
 may consider these mysteries, too, in another sense, as Mytheria 
 or savage rites, for the letters in the one word and the other 
 nearly correspond. For, whatever may be the effect produced 
 by other fables, such as these have degraded and rendered equally 
 savage the wild Thracians, the silly Phrygians, and superstitious 
 Greeks. Perish then the man who first prompted others to these 
 absurdities ! whether it was Dardanus, who taught the mysteries 
 of Cybele, the mother of the gods, or Eetion, who founded the 
 Samothracian orgies and initiatory rites, or that Phrygian Midas, 
 who learnt them from Orpheus of Odrysa, and afterwards delivered 
 the ingenious fraud to those who were influenced by him. For 
 that islander, Cinyras of Cyprus, shall never make a convert of 
 me, however he may dare to drag from under cover of the night 
 the lascivious orgies of Venus, and expose them in open day ; 
 and however ambitious he may be to deify a compatriot strumpet. 
 Others affirm, that Melampus the son of Amythaon brought the 
 festivals of Ceres from Egypt into Greece, making her grief the 
 subject of his hymns. I would term them all the wicked authors 
 of atheistical fables, the fathers of a pernicious superstition, who, 
 by introducing the mysteries, sowed the seeds of sin and perdition 
 in human life and manners. Nay, but (having fair occasion) I 
 will convince you that your orgies are full of lying wonders : and 
 if ye be of the Initiated, the greater reason shall ye have to hold 
 their accredited fables in derision. I will openly proclaim these 
 hidden rites ; for why should I blush to name what you are not 
 ashamed to reverence ? Well, then, that froth-sprung Cyprian 
 of whom Cinyras is so fond, I mean that Venus who delights in 
 obscene members, she sprung from such, even from those of which 
 Uranus was deprived by amputation, which after excision offered 
 violence to the waves. Her conduct betrays her origin. She is 
 represented in your mysteries as the fruit of these marine plea- 
 sures ; for a lump of salt is there the symbol of generation. 
 The phallus instructs the Initiated in the arts of adultery, and the 
 
 e 2 
 
28 
 
 Mystae present a piece of coin to her, as a paramour would to his 
 mistress. The mysteries of Ceres consist in Jupiter having plea- 
 surable connection with his mother Ceres, and in the anger of 
 Ceres, respecting whom I know not whether I am henceforth to 
 term her his mother or his wife. It is on this account she is said to 
 have the name of Brimo assigned to her. Jupiter’s methods of 
 appeasing her are, a cup of gall, a tearing out of the heart, and 
 other actions that are never spoken of. These are what the 
 Phrygians celebrate as rites to Attys, Cybelle, and the Corybantes. 
 There is a famous saying among them, that Jupiter castrated a 
 goat, and threw what he had torn away from it into Ceres’s 
 bosom ; thus figuratively implying the punishment he himself 
 deserved for the violence she had suffered from him. The 
 symbols of this initiation, when exposed at length, J know will 
 excite your laughter, although from my damning arguments I 
 fancy you will be little disposed to merriment. 4 I have eaten 
 out of the tambourine.’ — 4 I have drunk out of the cymbal.’ — 
 
 4 I have carried the mystic salver.’ * — 4 1 have slipt into the 
 bed.’ 
 
 44 Are not these symbols mere wantonness ? These mysteries, 
 are they not a farce ? Need I produce the rest? Ceres becomes 
 pregnant, Proserpine is reared, and then again, Jupiter, who begat 
 her, has connection with his own daughter, Proserpine, notwith- 
 standing his knowledge of her mother Ceres. He forgets his 
 former profligacy, and embraces her in the form of a serpent, and 
 is afterwards detected. The god, under this form received into 
 the bosoms of the Initiated, is a symbol in the Sabazian Mysteries. 
 Their drawing the serpent through their bosom is a proof of 
 
 * ’Exepvo<pdgr\<ru. — The xepvog, according to Athenasus, was a dish of earthen- 
 ware, having several cotylisci, or one-handled cups fastened upon it. Examples of it 
 sometimes occur in collections of the painted Greek pottery. 
 
29 
 
 Jupiter’s incontinence, and Proserpine conceives a child in the 
 form of a bull ; for thus some Pagan poet says : — 
 
 * The bull, a dragon’s sire, is yet of serpent breed — 
 
 A mystic goad the mountain herdsman bears.’ 
 
 The herdsman’s goad that he here speaks of, I suppose, must be 
 the ferule, which the Bacchanals whirl with a string. 
 
 “ And shall I relate to you the story of Proserpine gathering 
 flowers, the basket, and the rape of her by Pluto, the yawning 
 chasm, and the swine of Eubuleus that were swallowed up with 
 the goddesses ? On which account they drive away their swine 
 at the time of the Thesmophoria, as is the custom at Megara. 
 This fable is celebrated by the women with various festivals, in 
 various towns, under the names of Thesmophoria, Skirrophoria, 
 and Arrhetophoria, all which are different kinds of lamentation 
 for the rape of Proserpine. 
 
 “ But the mysteries of Bacchus are perfectly inhuman. Him, 
 when yet an infant, while the armed Curetes were dancing 
 round him in martial movements, the Titans treacherously stole 
 away, enticing him with childish amusements, and they tore him 
 in pieces. As the Thracian Orpheus, the poet of the mysteries, 
 says : — 
 
 ‘ The top, the hoop, and many an idle toy, 
 
 Sports, which the supple limbs of youth employ : 
 
 Apples, that glow Hesperian woods among, 
 
 The golden fruit of eloquence and song.’ 
 
 And it may be worth my while to hold up to execration the 
 worthless symbols of this particular initiation. They are the dice, 
 the ball, the whirligig, apples, the hoop, the mirror, and the 
 fleece. 
 
 “ Minerva, who conveyed away by stealth the heart of Dio- 
 nysus, was called Pallas, from iretxxsw, because it palpitated. But 
 
30 
 
 the Titans, who tore him in pieces, set a cauldron upon its tripod 
 stand, and threw into it the limbs of Bacchus. They boiled them 
 first, and then fixing them upon flesh-hooks, £ they suspended 
 them over Hephcestus ; in other words, they held them over the 
 fire. Jupiter making his appearance afterwards, for being a god 
 he presently scented the savoury steams from the roasted flesh (for 
 this, your gods confess, is the honourable portion that falls to 
 their share), he struck the Titans with lightning, and entrusted 
 the limbs of Bacchus to his son Apollo, to bury them. Apollo 
 disobeyed not, but taking the mangled corpse to Parnassus, de- 
 posited it there. 
 
 “ Would you like to have an insight into the orgies of the 
 Corybantes ? They slew their third brother, covered the head 
 of his corpse with a purple cloth, and encircled it with a chaplet, 
 and, bearing it on a brazen shield, they buried it at the foot of 
 Mount Olympus. And these are their mysteries, which may be 
 compendiously styled murders and entombments. 
 
 “ The priests of these mysteries (termed by those who take a 
 concern in these things dvaxTOTeXeg-ui, Kings of the Perfectory Rites) 
 add a further wonder to this calamity, by forbidding the parsley 
 plant and root to be produced upon the table ; for they believe that 
 parsley sprang up from the blood that flowed out of the wounds of 
 the Corybas, just as the women, in the feast of the Thesmophoria, 
 abstain from eating pomegranate seeds ; for they imagine that 
 these sprouted from the blood of Dionysus, that dropped upon 
 the ground. But as they style the Corybantes, Cabirs, so do 
 they term this the Cabiric Initiation. For the two who slew 
 their brother, taking up the chest in which the member of 
 Dionysus was deposited, brought it into Etruria, and truly they 
 were the importers of a precious freight ! There these runaways 
 took up their abode, and imparted their valuable lessons in religion 
 to the Etrurians, by proposing to them the member and chest as 
 objects for worship. For this reason some will have it, and very 
 
31 
 
 justly, that the emasculate Bacchus was entitled Attis. And where 
 is the wonder that the barbarous Etrurians should be initiated 
 into such disgraceful vices, when the Athenians, and the rest 
 of Greece, I blush to speak it, recount fables about Ceres quite 
 as immodest as these? For Ceres, wandering in search of her 
 daughter Proserpine, suffered fatigue in the neighbourhood of 
 Eleusis (this is a district in Attica), and she seated herself 
 upon a well, absorbed in grief. The Initiated, therefore, are still 
 warned away from it, lest those who are perfected should seem to 
 imitate her sorrow. Certain natives of the district, inhabitants of 
 Eleusis at that time, were named Baubo, Dysajiles, Triptolemus, 
 Eumolpus, and Eubuleus. Triptolemus was a herdsman, Eu- 
 molpus a shepherd, and Eubuleus a swineherd. From these 
 sprang the family of the Eumolpidae, and that of the heralds, 
 who exhibit the mysteries. And Baubo, for I will not mince 
 the matter, receiving Ceres hospitably, reached to her the 
 cup of mixture, called Cyceon. But Ceres refusing to take 
 it, and not disposed for the draught, for she was overcome with 
 grief, Baubo was exceedingly vexed, thinking herself slighted by 
 it, she thereupon uncovered herself, and exposed her nakedness 
 to the goddess. Ceres was entertained with the sight, and 
 could scarcely take the beverage, so much was she amused with 
 the exhibition. These are the hidden mysteries of the Athe- 
 nians. These Orpheus, too, has recorded. But I will cite the 
 very verses of Orpheus, that you may have this mystagogue for 
 a witness of their immodesty : — 
 
 ‘ Thus Baubo spake — her robe she upward drew, 
 
 Her limbs, and all her shame, exposed to view. 
 
 The goddess push’d Iacchus from her side. 
 
 Full on the dame : the boy a veil supplied. 
 
 She took the cup of mixture as she smiled, 
 
 Laugh’d in her heart, and thus her care beguiled.’ 
 
32 
 
 And this is the conventional sign in the Eleusinian Mysteries. 
 
 4 I have fasted. I have drunk the Cyceon. I have taken from 
 the chest. I have performed my task. I have put into the 
 basket, and have returned it from the basket into the chest.’ A 
 pretty exhibition this ! and mightily becoming a goddess ! Your 
 perfectory rites well deserve night and fire, and are worthy of 
 the high-minded, shall I not rather say the frivolous, people 
 who boast their descent from Erectheus, worthy too of all the 
 other Greeks, whom there awaiteth after death what they little 
 dream of. 
 
 “ For to whom doth Heraclitus, the Ephesian, prophesy ? To 
 the Night-Assemblers, Magians, Bacchanals, Vintage-Revellers, 
 and the Initiated. To these he threatens what may be expected 
 after death. To these he predicts burnings. For these impious 
 mysteries, however sanctioned by the laws, in whatever sense 
 they may be commonly accepted, are mysteries of the old 
 Serpent, the worship of a lie by men who, from a spurious 
 devotion, turn to these profane initiations, and to perfectory rites, 
 that lead to any thing but perfection. 
 
 “ And what are the mystic chests ? for I must even lay bare 
 their holy contents, and speak out what is suppressed in silence. 
 What are these but sesame, and pyramids, and balls of wool, and 
 cakes with many knobs, and heaps of salt, and a serpent, the mad 
 instrument of Dionysus Basarus ? what but pomegranates, and 
 with these pith, ferules, and ivy, cheesecakes, and poppies ? 
 These are their holy things ! The symbols of Themis, too, about 
 which they observe secrecy, are marjoram, a lamp, a sword, and 
 the shell, which is only a decent but mystic word for the female 
 organ. O barefaced shame ! Formerly, when men had a sense 
 of modesty, the silence of the night drew a veil over their plea- 
 sures. But now that they are admitted to initiation, the night, 
 devoted to intemperance, talks aloud of it ; and while the torches 
 
33 
 
 glare upon your wickednesses, they warn you of the fire they 
 merit. Out with your fire, O Hierophant ! Torch-bearer, shame on 
 your torches ! The very light reproves your Iacchus ; for it would 
 persuade you to consign your mysteries of the night to darkness. 
 Be your orgies nevertheless respected. Fire is no hypocrite. It 
 argues for your condemnation and punishment. These are 
 the mysteries of atheists. For it is fair to term those atheists 
 who know not Him who is really God, but who, glorying in their 
 shame, worship a child torn to pieces by the Titans, and the 
 sorrowings of a woman, and members which modesty, in truth, 
 forbids to mention. Thus are they implicated in a two-fold 
 charge of atheism : first, of being ignorant of God, since they 
 do not acknowledge the true one ; secondly, by this their error, 
 of considering those who are not, as if they were, and giving them 
 the names of gods, whereas they not only are not such, but are 
 mere nonentities, or nothing but a name,” 
 
 F 
 
34 
 
 CHAP. V. 
 
 Of the Scenery of the Eleusinian Mysteries. — The Paintings on the 
 Greek Vases copied from them. - — Eastern Illuminations and the Eleu- 
 sinian Shows compared. 
 
 This picture of the mysteries is sufficiently disgusting and 
 offensive, and the grossness of the symbols noticed by the author 
 of it, forbids us to consider the drawing overcharged. But there 
 is an ancient proverb, “ Eleusis servo, t, quod ostendat revisentibus ,” 
 which may induce us to conclude that those who were admitted 
 to these shows were not obliged to witness a repetition of the 
 same fables, but were entertained with a perpetual variety. It is 
 fair then to imagine that less objectionable means for explaining 
 the doctrines of the temple were sometimes resorted to, and that 
 it may be possible to continue these researches, and to illustrate 
 the object of them by what may be innocently brought before the 
 eye of the reader. We will consider, then, what information can 
 be gathered from other ancient writers on this interesting subject, 
 which has been thoroughly sounded by various critics, and by none 
 more copiously treated than by Meursius and Bishop Warburton. 
 They have determined the time of the celebration of the mysteries, 
 and they have enumerated the priests, and assigned to each his 
 proper office and attire. They have prepared the great temple or 
 theatre, with its artificial thunder, lightning, and necessary de- 
 corations. The mystse, introduced in the dark, have taken their 
 
35 
 
 seats, and wait with trembling expectation for the opening of the 
 mysteries. But it is from the compendious essay of the Baron de 
 Ste. Croix, that I shall select a brief notice of the spectacle that 
 succeeded. 
 
 “ L’aspirant y entendoit differentes voix, selon Dion Chry- 
 “ sostome ; la lumiere et les tenebres affectoient alternativement 
 “ ses sens ; a peine pouvoit-il considererla multiplicity desobjets. 
 “ Les principaux etoient des fantomes, ayant la figure de chien et 
 “ diverses formes monstrueuses, que le bruit de la foudre et des 
 “ eclairs rendoient encore plus terribles. De-la naissoient ces fre- 
 “ missements, ces terreurs, ces saisissements, ces sueurs, qui font 
 “ comparer, par Flutarque, l’etat d’un initie a celui d’un mou- 
 “ rant.”— P. 214. 
 
 And further : — “ On faisoit alors paroitre la statue de la 
 “ Deesse frottee avec soin, ornee avec gout, et revetue de ses plus 
 “ beaux habits. Elle paroissoitresplendissante d’une clarte divine*, 
 “ par des reflets de lumiere qu’on savoit artistement menager.” — 
 P. 215. 
 
 “ Le Sanctuaire d’Eleusis etoit l’endroit que la Divinite 
 “ toute entiere remplissoit dans ce moment ; les tenebres se dissi- 
 “ poient aussi-tot ; fame sortoit de l’abyme ; et on passoit de la 
 “ plus grande obscurite, dans une clarte douce, et sous un ciel 
 <c serein. Des prairies, ou l’on entendoit des choeurs et des 
 “ discours sacres, et ou l’on etoit frappe par la vue de fantomes 
 “ saints , recevoient les inities. — Ils etoient declares Epoptes apres 
 <e ce spectacle.” — Ibid. 
 
 These shadows flitting across the stage, the monsters half man 
 
 * So Themistius : — 'Owore Se 6 7tgo(prjTrjS exslvoc, xvxirETXTxg tx ngOTtvXxix rou veai, 
 xoti Tout xtrwvas Tregiore/Xaj too xyx\p.xTog xxXKuvxg re uvto, xx) u'KOvprfea.g ttxvt x^odsv, 
 e7reSeixvo tco ju.ootiju.evw pt.agpixp6<r<rov te r)§r), xx) xvyrj xxTxXxp.7rop.svov SetTiretnu., yre oj 
 exeivY) , xx) to vstpog aSgoov {mEppriyvvTO, xx) e%e<pxlveT0 6 vovg ex rou GxSoug, tpsyyovg xvx- 
 vrX ecu; xx] xyXxixg, xvt) rou 7 rpoTspov ctxotou. — Orat. xx. ad Patrem , p. 235. Ed. Hard. 
 
 F 2 
 
36 
 
 half beast, the brilliant appearance of the goddess illumined by 
 reflected lights (thrown, perhaps, from mirrors, “ qu’on savoit ar- 
 “ tistement menager”), and the holy phantoms which succeeded, 
 induce me to think that the spectacle could not have differed much 
 from the well-known Ombres Chinoises *, or the Eidouranion of our 
 scientific countryman, Mr. Walker ; since it is highly probable, 
 that it consisted of various subjects displayed in transparency. 
 The expression of Clement of Alexandria seems to confirm this 
 opinion : — ” A^toc pev ovv NYKLTO'Z, T« reAso^a-ra, j cat EIYPO'E, koli tov 
 fjt,eycx.XriTO^og ) p aAAov <5e fJux.Toao(ppovog Stj^ov j" ; “ Worthy of 
 
 “ nightly celebration, by exhibitions of fire-light, &c.;” although by 
 Night and Fire this Father likewise meant to stigmatise the shame- 
 fulness of these shows, and to express his detestation of them. 
 
 I find even Passeri $ is inclined to this opinion, for struck with 
 the Orphic appellation of Bacchus, Stolen (pave)g } “ appearing 
 “ in splendour to mortals,” he has remarked, “ quod praecipue 
 “ Bacchus ipse totus igneus et fulgidus adpareret, qui nudis oculis 
 “ tolerari non posset” (vol. iii. p. 19.); and he has elsewhere 
 suggested of the Bacchanalia, <£ Fortasse impostores illi ope machi- 
 “ narum, cum popellus vino sestuaret, imaginem aliquam credulis 
 “ objiciebant.” And it is far from improbable, that some such 
 delirium, as mentioned by Passeri, was produced by a draught of 
 the kmzuv, or cup of mixed liquors, in which poppies were a chief 
 
 * The following account of the manner in which these exhibitions are conducted 
 is taken from Beckmann’s “ History of Inventions,” vol. iii. p. 335. “ This ingenious 
 amusement consists in moving, by pegs fastened to them, small figures, cut of paste- 
 board, the joints of which are all pliable, behind a piece of fine painted gauze, placed 
 before an opening in a curtain, in such a manner as to exhibit various scenes, 
 according to pleasure ; while the opening covered with gauze is illuminated, towards 
 the apartment where the spectators sit, by means of light reflected back by a 
 mirror, so that the shadows of the pegs are concealed.” - 
 f Protrept p. 18. 
 
 | Passeri de Picturis Hetrusc. in Vasculis, vol. iii. p. xxxii. 
 
37 
 
 ingredient. This was presented to each mysta before the shows 
 began, and might have contributed more to that confusion of the 
 intellects, than the awful appearance of the objects exhibited. 
 
 We may hence, I think, collect the real nature of these 
 shows. They probably were transparencies, of which the subjects 
 are faithfully preserved upon what have been termed Etruscan 
 vases. These scenes may be readily supposed to have consisted, 
 either of a dark superficies, in which transparent figures were 
 placed, and hence those vases with red figures upon a black 
 ground, or of opaque figures moved behind a transparent canvas, 
 and hence those earlier vases with black figures upon a red 
 ground.* 
 
 It is thus, that in a celebrated feast of the Chinese, the 
 lanterns displayed are not only ornamented with paintings, but 
 are made further interesting by certain small figures cut out, and 
 ingeniously moved upon the 'side. But a stronger resemblance 
 to these supposed exhibitions at Eleusis may be found in Sir 
 T. Stamford Raffles’s History of Java, wherein a favourite amuse- 
 ment of the natives is described, consisting of figures formed of 
 buffalo’s hide, cut out, and moved behind a transparent curtain. 
 A reciter, in the meanwhile delivers to the audience passages from 
 the B’rata Yudha, and other sacred poems, which illustrate the 
 action of the drama. This accomplished and distinguished 
 
 # In the former class of paintings, a luminous interval sometimes marks the 
 contour, occurring between the hair and other parts expressed in shadow and the 
 ground of the vase. In these another contrivance may also be occasionally observed. 
 In the 82d plate, in the 1st vol. of D’Hancarville’s work on Vases, certain parts of 
 the painting are candescent, like a firework, or the electric spark. This effect was 
 probably produced by perforating the transparent scene, and applying the flame of 
 a lamp behind the canvas so punctured. In the earlier class, many projecting parts 
 of the figures, such as the feet, and the points of their bonnets, are elongated to an 
 extraordinary degree. These seem to be the shadows of solid substances lengthened, 
 in consequence of the lamps, by which the scene was lighted, being accidentally 
 removed to too great a distance from the figures. 
 
38 
 
 orientalist brought home with him, and has deposited in this 
 country, the complete apparatus of these Indian Fantoccini. * 
 
 It is to be regretted that those who have visited China, have 
 communicated but scanty information respecting the annual 
 exhibition of transparencies in that country. Mr. Boulanger, in 
 his Antiquite devoilee par ses Usages , has reported that the Chinese 
 derive the Feast of Lanterns from a Mandarin ( Peirun ) whose 
 daughter perished in a river, and from his seeking her by torch- 
 light. (Tom. iii. p. 51. 8vo.) He compares this Mandarin and his 
 daughter, to Ceres and Proserpine ; and adds, it is for those who 
 have acquaintance with the Chinese language, to seek in the 
 etymology of their names, whether his conjecture be well 
 founded. This festival is held in February, soon after the 
 opening of the new year. The sign Aquarius is accordingly 
 termed in the Chinese language, the Resurrection of the Spring. 
 (Vol. iii. p. 167.) 
 
 The number of the learned to whom Mr. Boulanger appeals, 
 must necessarily be very limited. Accordingly, until some Sino- 
 logist shall be found, who may confirm or disprove his comparison, 
 I offer the following illustration of the Chinese festival from 
 observations made nearer home; and from this the reader shall 
 draw his own conclusions. 
 
 At Dunkerque, about the Feast of St. Martin, or between the 
 4th and the 11th of November, boys go about with paper lanterns, 
 variously fashioned and painted, and blow children’s trumpets. 
 They assemble in the great square at evening, and, dividing into 
 parties, parade the different quarters of the town. It is there 
 supposed, that the custom originated in a woman having lost her 
 child, who was drowned in the canal, and in the people of the 
 
 * See the engraving in Sir T. Stamford Raffles’s History of Java, vol. i. 
 p. 336, 337. 4 to. 
 
39 
 
 town assisting in the search for her with lanterns.* If it could 
 be supposed that this practice were a Romish ceremony, designed 
 to commemorate the victory of Gideon over the Midianites, with 
 lamps and trumpets, it will nevertheless be extremely difficult to 
 account for the popular tradition of the inhabitants of Dunkerque, 
 who, probably, have never much turned their thoughts either to 
 the Eleusinian Mysteries, or to the Chinese Feast of Lanterns. 
 
 The Chinese and the Japanese may be reasonably supposed to 
 have received many traditions from one common origin. Dr. 
 Ksempfer seems to bring us near to the source of the one we are 
 now considering, by the following account of a Japanese custom : 
 He says, “ on the 8th of August, there was another festival called 
 “ Bon. People on that occasion attend for one whole night at the 
 <e tombs of their ancestors and relations, with lights and lanterns. 
 “ The solemnity of this festival began upon the 7th, and lasted lor 
 “ three days together. They believe that the souls of deceased 
 “ persons, whether they led a good or a bad life, walk about, and 
 “ visit the places of their former abode.” — Hist, of Japan , p. 563. 
 
 We may thus be led to conclude, that all those Pagan 
 festivals which were celebrated by illuminations, whether of 
 lamps or torches, were designed to illustrate the doctrine of the 
 soul’s immortality. One of the most interesting of these (the 
 Lampadophoria) was held at Athens in honour of Minerva, Pro- 
 metheus, and Hephaestus ; and as there is reason to suspect 
 that a similar race formed a part of the Eleusinia, it may be 
 properly noticed here. It consisted of a race, on foot or on 
 
 * Such is the vulgar report. I he more knowing attempt to explain it as a 
 recollection of the inhabitants going out at night to welcome the champion Martin, on 
 his return from conquering the Saracens. But Martin of Tours died A. D. 400. 
 The Moors did not enter France until 721; and Dunkerque was founded by 
 Count Baldwin, not earlier than 966. But possibly I may be attaching more 
 importance to this popular ceremony than it may really deserve. 
 
40 
 
 horseback, during which the lamp or torch was passed from youth 
 to youth ; and if in the hand of any one who received it, the flame 
 of it were extinguished, such a one lost his privilege of partaking 
 further in the sport. Lucretius assures us that this torch denoted 
 the lamp of life, — “ Et quasi cursores, vital lampada tradunt” 
 (lib. ii. v. 78.) ; and we may add, that the passing of it from hand 
 to hand denoted the transition of the animating principle through 
 the circle of various bodies, according to the doctrine of the 
 Metempsychosis. 
 
 A notable allusion to this occurs in the Agamemnon of 
 JEschylus, where the communication of the news of the capture 
 of Troy, by telegraphic signals of torches on the several heights 
 between Troy and Argos, is compared to the Lampadophoria ; 
 such, says Clytemnestra, are the regulations of the game : to which 
 she adds, with cutting sarcasm, but in obscure terms, Noc« <T o nguTog 
 xa) Te'Xevroiios fyupuv (v. 315. Ed. Porson.) ; “ Yes, F he, Agamemnon, 
 “ who has conquered Ilium, will indeed be winner, if he who first 
 “ handed to me the torch (of intelligence) shall eventually receive 
 “ back from me the torch (of life).” For it is necessary to under- 
 stand that the course was circular, and the manoeuvre must have 
 been incomplete until the torch had been handed back to him 
 who had first thrown it. 
 
 The vignette prefixed to the first chapter of this work, copied 
 from an antique bas relief to be seen in the wall of a temple, which 
 the venerable Earl of Besborough erected in the pleasure grounds 
 of his villa at Roehampton, as the Temple of Virtue and Honour, 
 to receive the busts of different worthies, is from a Roman funeral 
 monument, which does not exactly describe the Lampadophoria, 
 but approaches thus near to them, that while the youths are 
 running to a sepulchre, one of the two infants behind them, 
 designed to personate the Dioscuri, those alternate arbiters of life 
 and death, inverts his torch, by way of indicating the purport of 
 the foot-race. 
 
41 
 
 Captain Turner has informed us*, that in those illuminations 
 which are made in the East on the 29th of October, if the flame 
 be extinguished, it is considered a most evil omen ; the cause of 
 which is to be explained from the Athenian festival, which was 
 held in the Potter’s way, where similar mismanagement among 
 the youths who ran, was deemed equally unfortunate. We now 
 discover the origin and meaning of those illuminations so frequent 
 in the East, as during the Dewali, in Hindostan, which falls soon 
 after the autumnal equinox f : for, as the sun about that time goes 
 down into the lower hemisphere, these illuminations anticipate 
 the return of his light ; and this festival is accordingly held in 
 honour of the dead, to whom, as at Eleusis, was indicated a 
 similar return from the shades. Even that autumnal feast, the 
 Mullaum in Bootan, and the correspondent Durga Poojah of the 
 Hindus, though now appearing to present a moral scenic exhi- 
 bition, it may be presumed had once, at least, a different meaning. 
 The first of these, we are informed, is celebrated during ten days.J 
 What then forbids our comparing its spirit and meaning with the 
 Eleusinian Mysteries, which lasted nearly an equal number ? The 
 Durga Poojah, we are told, consists in the display of a gaudy 
 scene, with Durga and various figures in alto relief, loaded with 
 tinsel and other ornaments. At the close of the exhibition it is 
 conducted to the Ganges, to the waves of which it is committed 
 with due solemnity. Who does not here discover a counterpart 
 to the ornamented statue of the goddess in the temple at Eleusis, 
 ‘‘ frottee avec soin, ornee avec goftt, et revetue de ses plus beaux 
 “ habits,” as described by the Baron de Ste. Croix ? Whence we 
 may possibly be furnished with a solution of that expression upon 
 
 * Embassy to Tibet, p. 318. 
 
 f The Dussera is celebrated on the first full moon after the autumnal equinox ; 
 the Dewali on the new moon following. Turner’s Embassy, p. 163. 
 
 % Embassy to Tibet, p. 162. 
 
 G 
 
42 
 
 which Meursius exercised his ingenuity with much felicity : — 
 AAAAE MYETAI, “ To the sea, O Mystas !” which gave the 
 name to a particular day of the Mysteries. 
 
 Thus, have exhibitions by fire-light, though varied according 
 to the ingenuity of different nations, been adopted as the means 
 of inculcating the same religious opinions and the same conso- 
 latory hopes to the inhabitants of eastern Asia and Greece ; 
 and, as I presume from my conclusions respecting the 
 painted furniture of the tombs in Magna Grascia, to those of 
 Lower Italy, also. It may be almost in vain to enquire, what 
 hath broken the connecting links between these distant parts of 
 the globe, or to seek to determine the origin of this common 
 practice. I will content myself with regarding Eleusis as the 
 general focus of information on these subjects to the several 
 districts of eastern and southern Europe, and consider the 
 paintings upon the ancient earthen-ware, as records, still extant, 
 of the instruction formerly conveyed by the Mysteries. 
 
43 
 
 CHAP. VI. 
 
 Of the Lesser and the Greater Mysteries. — ■ The Vase and the Lantern 
 comparatively considered as Symbols. — Various ' other Symbols ex- 
 plained. — Use of the Intaglio. — The Descent of Bacchus, under 
 different characters, ad Inferos ; his Voyage over the Styx, and 
 Reascent, exhibited as a mystical Drama, in a Succession of transparent 
 Scenes, selected chiefly from antique Gems. 
 
 What has hitherto been discovered of the Mysteries seems 
 rather calculated to excite, than to satisfy curiosity. Much is yet 
 wanting to complete the view ; and it is from ancient monuments 
 of art that we must derive our information ; for it is scarcely to 
 be expected, that many new hints on this subject will be collected 
 from a further critical examination of the writers of antiquity. 
 The recent brilliant discoveries of our countrymen have ma- 
 nifested the utility of examining such monuments. The 
 topography of Eleusis has been illustrated by their labours, the 
 great temple has been actually recomposed and delineated by 
 their skill ; and with a degree of success which the excellent 
 professor*, now no more, could scarcely have anticipated, when 
 he led the way, by transporting the colossal half-figure of the 
 Eleusinian Ceres from Greece to the public library of his 
 university at Cambridge. The present attempt must be limited 
 to considering what may have been performed in the interior 
 
 Dr. Edward D. Clarke. 
 G 2 
 
44 
 
 of that building, which our learned and scientific countrymen 
 have restored by a very wonderful synthesis. The success of 
 these conjectures will entirely depend on the degree of pro- 
 bability with which, in the judgment of the reader, the ancient 
 monuments which have been resorted to will be applied. 
 
 It will be difficult, however, to meet the expectations that 
 may have been raised by the passages brought into one point 
 of view, from various authors, lately cited. 
 
 Of the original exhibitions it is said, that the fables on 
 which they were grounded were highly ingenious and pleasing ; 
 and that in the course of them the ear was no less delighted than 
 the eye. Much of this is irrecoverably lost ; for, to adopt an 
 expression of Aristides, in his rhetorical complaint on the con- 
 flagration of the temple : — “ What Eleusinian iEschylus will 
 “ now furnish a vocal accompaniment to the chorus ?” 
 
 The Mysteries were twofold ; the lesser and the greater ; 
 the former, celebrated once a-year, in the month Anthesterion, 
 at Agra, near the Ilissus ; the latter, also annually, but in the 
 month Boedromion, at Eleusis. The lesser seem to have been 
 devised, from a political reason, to prevent the necessity of ad- 
 mitting foreigners to the whole of the ceremonies, or of offending 
 them by a total exclusion : probably also to relieve the initiators 
 from a part of their preparatory labours, thus leaving them more 
 free to receive the multitudes which thronged to witness the 
 exhibitions in the Eleusinium. It is probable that the initiation 
 at Agra, which was introduced by purifications, consisted chiefly 
 in the explanation of symbols, and in some general instruction 
 respecting their doctrines. The Mystas, provided with this in- 
 formation, when afterwards they were admitted into the temple 
 at Eleusis, would anticipate the meaning of the inferior parts of 
 the illumined paintings ; and much trouble would consequently 
 be saved to the Hierophant. In imitation of this practice, I will 
 
45 
 
 offer, in the first place, a few words respecting two symbols, of 
 which a clear explanation is necessary for establishing the com- 
 parison I mean to draw between the lantern and the vase. The 
 origin of the forms of the latter, as I am about to deduce them 
 from different kinds of the water lily*, will I hope suffice to show, 
 that the vase was a symbol of water and of humid nature, or 
 rather of the creation of terrestrial objects from water. The wine 
 contained in the amphora was supposed to indicate that animating 
 principle which, infused into the various parts of the creation, gave 
 life and support to the whole. When the lively imagination of 
 the Greeks had embodied the objects of their religious speculations 
 under the personifications of their mythology, Bacchus became 
 the representative of this general system of nature, and the 
 vase was retained as a symbol of his properties. The engravings 
 shortly to be adduced, will show that the lantern was also viewed 
 as a substitute for the vase. 
 
 It was, however, with a very different view from this, that I 
 had embellished my title-page with the Allegory of the Lantern, 
 as it is represented in an antique paste in the To wnley Cabinet; and 
 I had scarcely imagined it could have been necessary to initiate 
 any reader into the meaning of two quotations there subjoined. 
 But a monthly critic, who, in other respects, displayed far 
 more indulgence to the errors in my original unpublished essay 
 on this subject than I had a right to expect, expressed himself 
 dissatisfied with the liberty I had taken, by citing part of a line 
 of Onomacritus, and a passage from the Roman Questions of 
 Plutarch. But, by the former I merely declared my hope of 
 being able to throw light upon a very obscure subject, and to 
 treat certain parts of it with delicacy. By the latter I meant 
 
 * See the Appendix. 
 
46 
 
 not (as the critic supposed) to illustrate, in that place, the 
 descent of Bacchus to the shades, but to show that these 
 allegories of the Greeks, expressed in their sculptured remains, 
 had a metaphysical meaning, and pointed, as in this instance, 
 to the soul’s immortality. 
 
 It is true, that this extract from a memorandum of Plutarch 
 respected the Augural Lamp of the Romans, which was kept 
 uncovered, to denote that omens by the flight of birds ought 
 only to be taken in serene weather. But Plutarch suggests, 
 that the lantern was one of the many obscure intimations or 
 aenigmas made use of by the ancients ; and he adds, “ For 
 “ ilie lamp answers to the body containing the soul. The soul within 
 “ is the light.” I trust, therefore, I have made no unfair application 
 of the commentary of Plutarch. 
 
 This, also, may be the proper place to notice other symbols 
 mentioned by Clemens, which appear as detached parts of the 
 paintings on Greek vases, such as the toxJttj?, a ball of wool in the 
 hands of females, probably denoting the thread of life which is not 
 yet spun ; and the Gutta, signifying the principle of fecundity 
 contained in it, and this may account for sesame being recorded 
 as a mysterious seed, namely, from the oil which it produces ; oil 
 being accepted as a principle of fertility. The pyramid was a 
 similar emblem with flame and the phallus. It was probably a 
 cake of a pyramidal form. Salt is expressly declared by Clemens 
 to have been symbolical of generation. * The serpent is a well- 
 known emblem. The pomegranate was used as a vivifying gift, 
 because its contents were supposed to represent the seeds of 
 existence. K a ^lui A or hearts, may have been merely the heart or 
 
 * ’Ev toTi; TeXsTalg Tatmjf — TsxfJt-rjpiov t% yovijj u\u>v %ovopog, xa) ipaAAoj r oig [xvov- 
 pevois .... kmtiiSoTcu . — - Clem. Alex. Protrept. p. 13. Ed. Potter. 
 
47 
 
 pith of the ferule *, which was used as a slow match for retaining 
 fire, as Prometheus is feigned to have concealed this in the heart, 
 or within the stem, of that plant. Anethum, a plant of sopori- 
 ferous quality, was used for forming an arbour over the couch of 
 Adonis. Ivy always denotes the shades, and is proper to 
 Bacchus in inferis ; it had, therefore, a place in night festivals, 
 such as the Agrionia and Nyctelia. It appears on a vase of 
 marble in the collection of Charles Blundell, Esq., of Ince, cu- 
 riously contrasted with the vine. The front of this oval vase 
 is incrusted with the latter, and the other half of it with the 
 ivy ; and as the vase is, generally speaking, the emblem of 
 Bacchus, so in this instance we view him in his double capacity, 
 designated by appropriate symbols, as the Day and the Night 
 Sun. The cheese and corn cake, noticed by Clemens among the 
 mystic symbols, may possibly have been such, wherein the grain 
 was preserved entire ; for whatever contained seeds, was deemed 
 by the ancients symbolical of generation and life. The poppy-head 
 had its use in the mysteries, for the same reason. The somni- 
 ferous qualities of it, enforced the idea of quiescence, but the 
 seeds were emblematical of existence, and seemed to show that 
 however the powers of nature might be suspended, they had 
 
 * The vupSrfa or ferule, is thus described by Tournefort : “ Ferula glauco folio, 
 caule crassissimo, ad singulos nodos ramoso, et umbellifero. Elle porte une tige de 
 cinque pieds de haut, epaisse d’environ trois pouces, noueuse, ordinairement de dix 
 pouces en dix pouces, branchue a chaque nceud, couverte d’une ecorce assez dure de 
 deux lignes d’epaisseur : le creux de cette tige est rempli d’une moelle blanche, qui 
 etant bien sethe prend feu tout comme la meche ; ce feu s’y conserve parfaitement 
 bien, et ne consume que peu a peu la moelle sans endommager l’ecorce ; ce qui fait 
 qu’on se sert de cette plante pour porter du feu d’un lieu a un autre; nos matelots 
 en firent provision.” — Voyages de Tournefort , vol. i. p. 290, 291. It is the Fe- 
 rula orientalis which is here alluded to. But I apprehend that in ancient sculptures the 
 Heraclium giganteum (also an umbelliferous plant) is substituted for the ferula, on 
 account of the more picturesque form of its leaves. The stem of the Heraclium 
 is deeply scored. 
 
48 
 
 nevertheless a capability of being called into an active state. It 
 would be fatiguing the patience of the reader, to discuss these trifles 
 more at length, nor do I feel confident of being able to explain them 
 to my entire satisfaction. The dissimilar casts, however, of the 
 Astragali might express the alternate operations of the Dioscuri. 
 Priapeid figures of diminutive bronze, punctured with the number 
 of the casts, so as to answer the purpose of Astragali, have been 
 found in tombs ; and two such were preserved in the Townley 
 Cabinet. The hoop and the whirligig, or top, might denote a 
 revolution *; the mirror might present the Simulachrum animce, 
 for which Servius may be consulted upon those words in the 
 iEneid, lib. iv. v. 654., “ sub terras ibit imago.”- f* The fleece 
 
 might be subjected to the same explanation as the -roXt/Vt?, or ball 
 of wool; nor may it be deemed too wild a conjecture, if I suggest, 
 that the golden apples, which were gathered amongst the vocal 
 Hesperides, were to be sought, not according to Gesner, among 
 the orange groves of Portugal, but in the interior of Asia, from 
 which, perhaps, they were imported with those Chaldcea miracula, 
 which were admitted into the theology of the Greeks, as I believe 
 is hinted by Martianus Capella. On more than one vase, pub- 
 lished in the collections of Passeri and D’Hancarville, a serpent 
 appears entwined round a tree loaded with such fruit ; and the 
 apple is accordingly a vivifying symbol. 
 
 After these prefatory explanations, it is time that I hasten to 
 the spectacles, of which my readers are to be Epoptce , I will, there- 
 fore, adduce a few scenes, which may serve to exemplify the 
 general argument of the dramas exhibited at Eleusis, whether 
 
 * The intelligent narrator of his Embassy to Tibet pleasantly informed us; 
 upon a certain occasion, that he “ slept amongst gods and whirligigs.” 
 
 f See the story of Narcissus, thus applied in an ancient fresco painting. 
 Antichita d’Ercolano Pitture, tom. v. plate xxviii., also plates xxx. xxxi. 
 
49 
 
 they represented the rape and descent of Proserpine, spoken 
 of by Clemens, or the descent of iEneas, so agreeably narrated 
 by Virgil, or other similar fables. The descent of iEneas may 
 be supposed to have had a partial reference to the mysteries, 
 notwithstanding the argument of Gibbon, that Virgil could not 
 have been initiated at Eleusis, previous to his writing the sixth 
 book of the JEneid ; for it is even probable that Virgil might 
 have viewed such exhibitions nearer home, in the mysteries of 
 Nola and Apulia, which, certain passages in his poem would 
 nevertheless induce us to believe, he had considerably disguised. 
 That such partial reference was deemed no breach of the secrecy 
 enjoined, we may collect from the comedy of the Frogs, wherein 
 Aristophanes has delivered a hymn of the Initiated in direct 
 allusion to the mysteries. The two poets have equally described 
 a descent to Hades ; but the Roman, after conducting his hero 
 thither, has taken the remainder of his scenery, not from the 
 mysteries, but from various mythologists ; the Athenian, after 
 bringing the characters of his drama to the same point, has thrown 
 the remainder of his subject into burlesque, but not without 
 allusion to that banquet, which formed, as I apprehend, the 
 ultimate object of the mysteries. 
 
 What I have to offer, is a series of a few transparencies, 
 which will follow in tolerable regularity of succession. I have, 
 indeed, been under the necessity of resorting to sculpture to 
 supply the deficiencies of painting ; but this liberty will, I trust, 
 be conceded to me, when the nature of the intaglio is considered ; 
 for this, when executed in cornelian, sardine, or other diaphanous 
 stones, is actually a solar transparency ; such, as when worn on 
 the finger of a Greek who had been initiated, would have recalled 
 in a very pleasing way, those awful but ravishing spectacles, of 
 which it furnished an imitation, both elegant and portable. 
 
 Thus prepared for the undertaking, and having adapted my 
 scenes, although it may be no very desirable employment to 
 
 H 
 
50 
 
 engage as mechanist of a theatre ; yet since the Greeks deigned to 
 receive the mysterious doctrines of their religion from pantomimic 
 representations ; and since men of erudition have, in later times, 
 condescended to direct their researches to ascertaining the nature 
 of them, I may doubtless be permitted to proceed ; and, as the 
 different illumined paintings pass before the reader’s eye, to take 
 upon myself, as far as may be allowable for the immediate 
 purpose, the office of hierophant or expositor : — K«t \yu iroiqo-u 
 
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51 
 
 PLATE I. 
 
 Of the Rotation or Revolution of Nature. 
 
 The allegory conveyed in this first painting comprises the 
 general meaning of the scenes which follow. The vicissitude of 
 decay and reproduction, to which, according to the notions of 
 the ancients, nature was subject in perpetual revolution, is ex- 
 pressed by a female figure tumbling. The order of nature is for 
 a moment inverted : but, by an effort of the limbs, the body 
 appears on the point of being returned to its proper attitude. 
 
 These tumblers were styled fcuSttrrjj-nJpes-, from xv&kttuu, a 
 word derived from jcu&j, caput , that is, in caput deferor, devolvor- 
 que , but which may also signify to turn over as a die ; and 
 jti iZto-rdu is sometimes used in the sense of taxillis ludere, to play 
 with dice : even dice were anciently viewed in the same mystical 
 sense with that which is conveyed by this female tumbler. 
 
 This painting (copied from a vase, the use of which, and of 
 the inedited monuments that follow, I have to reckon among the 
 numerous kindnesses that endear to me the memory of Charles 
 Townley, Esq.) may illustrate some lines of Homer, who, in his 
 description of the Cretan dance on the shield of Achilles, intro- 
 duces two tumblers into the middle of the circle, which per- 
 formed their feats in cadence, whilst the young men and women 
 danced round them : — 
 
 A olu) Ss xu§i<rnjT 7 jp£ xoit uvtovs, 
 
 MoAwrjj g£«f5p£0VT£5, eftlveuov ju.eo-o-ouj. Iliad. 2. V. 604-, 605. 
 
 Should the foregoing allegory be deemed absurdly applied, I rea- 
 
 h 2 
 
52 
 
 clily agree in the charge ; but these are the absurdities which 
 were so severely reproved by the Fathers of the Church, such as 
 might be expected poiTui6<ppovo.g ’EgexQsiduv Srjpov, from the frivolous 
 people who boasted their descent from Erectheus. It is no part 
 of my design to restore the religion of the ancients to its original 
 dignity * * * § ; nor to defend those who formerly professed it from 
 the injurious charge of heathenism or paganism, f Rather let 
 its absurdities be displayed. By discovering how much was 
 needed, we shall be sensible how much we have gained ; for one 
 of the first evidences of the truth of Christianity arises from the 
 necessity of its healing intervention. 
 
 “ Nihil enim adversus pietatem, ac bonos mores molmur ; 
 <e nam veterum superstitionum ritibus expositis, religionis Christ- 
 “ ianas veritas, ac majestas, veluti lux in tenebris magis, magisque 
 “ elucebit. ij: 
 
 PLATE II. 
 
 Bacchus, in the Form of a Vase, carried ad Inferos. 
 
 In the following scenes we shall be made further acquainted 
 with the mythological Bacchus, in whose person were embodied 
 the theological notions of the ancients. We shall view him, who 
 by ancient mystagogues was termed, “ the first-born of the un- 
 known father§,” who was invested with the power of creating and 
 destroying, himself subject to the same vicissitudes. In him we 
 
 * See the Preface to the Essay of M. Le Clerc de Septchenes, upon the 
 Religion of the Greeks. I quote from the English edition in octavo, 
 
 f Ibid. 
 
 % Adprobatio Jo. Baptiste Vicecomitis in Passerii de Piet. Hetrusc. in Vase., 
 vol. ii. 
 
 § “ Ignoti vis celsa patris, prima atque propago.” 
 
 Martianus Capella, 1. ii, p. 43. 
 
53 
 
 shall see cause put for effect, and vice versa : inert, yet producing 
 activity, active and passive, male and female*, he will not only 
 give various forms to matter : — 
 
 O 
 
 "TAjjv aXXotcriTwv IsprjV ISsxig 7roXv[Aop<pot; t f 
 
 But we shall also have reason to concur with the poet, in con- 
 sidering him aioXopopQov uvcocto. the power who could assume 
 various shapes at pleasure ; he will appear alternately extin- 
 guished and rekindled, cr&tvvvptsvog Xupt7ruvTe § ; in fine, we shall 
 observe in him, though governor of nature, a type of nature 
 itself, and of all the successive changes to which it is subject. 
 
 I have before observed of the vases deposited in tombs, that 
 they might in some measure be considered to represent the 
 persons to whom they belonged. In the present instance the 
 vase is the larva of Bacchus. It is in the form of an amphora 
 that we now discover him borne to the lower hemisphere by the 
 destroying harpy, in whose hand the emblematical torch is 
 depressed, to denote suspended animation. Or, if the antiquary, 
 shall be better pleased to consider this to be the figure of a syren, 
 the deportation of Bacchus, the inspirer of song, by a vocal 
 minister, will give further elegance to the design. The general 
 purport of this gem might also be proved from other intaglios, 
 wherein a corpse, or a terminus, are indifferently borne ; and 
 upon a painted tazza, in the Hope collection, the Dioscurus 
 appears bending under the weight of a tortoise, which, as the 
 emblem of sluggish inert nature, he bears ad Inferos . The 
 
 tortoise is kept steady upon his back by a thong or strap, passed 
 over one end of the shell. 
 
 * According to the Orphic invocation, upcuroyovov 8«pu>j, Hymn v. v. 1. 
 f Hymn xxiv. v. 3. $ Hymn xxxviii. v. 5. 
 
 § Hymn lv. v. 5. 
 
54 
 
 PLATE III. 
 
 Descent of the Phanes ad Inferos. 
 
 This beautiful gem exhibits the infant Dioscurus hooded, 
 and bearing the Bacchus, under the form of a lantern *, to the 
 lower regions. Similar subjects may be seen in the Mus. Flo- 
 rentin. vol. i. plate lxxx. fig. 2, 3. 6. 
 
 PLATE IV. 
 
 Bacchus, in the Form of a Lantern , crosses the Styx. 
 
 The Dioscurus here appears as an emaciated elder, conducting 
 the Phanes, or Bacchus, over the Styx. 
 
 PLATE V. 
 
 Arrival of the Amphora at the Cavern of Hades. 
 
 Pursuing the subject, we again find Bacchus, in the form of 
 an amphora, completing his voyagep to the cavern of Hades, 
 where Cerberus, barking, announces his approach. The clep- 
 sydra or water-clock, which appears in the form of an hour-glass, 
 in the boat of Charon, has an allegorical meaning. An Asiatic 
 antiquary has observed that the noise made by the turning of 
 this, when the pleadings in the courts of justice among the 
 ancients were finished, was termed pacsha, a word implying turn 
 or change J, which might induce us to believe, that the water- 
 
 * These lanterns were composed of horn, at least so eai’ly as the time of 
 Plautus. “ Quo ambulas tu, qui Vulcanum in cornu conclusum geris?” — Amphitr. 
 A. i. Sc. 1. 185. 
 
 f I find this subject expressed in a ludicrous way, in an ancient fresco painting, 
 which exhibits the Dioscuri by two grotesque figures conveying a boat load of vases 
 over the Styx. See Antich. d’ Ercolano Pitture, vol. v. plate lxvii. 
 
 $ Captain Francis Wilford, Asiatic Researches, vol. v. p. 301. 8vo. 
 
55 
 
 clock in the present gem might be the symbol of vicissitude, 
 whereby a promise of return is made to Bacchus, in his visit to 
 the shades. 
 
 PLATE VI. 
 
 Bacchus, as a Lantern, in Inferis. 
 
 We here observe the nearly extinguished Phanes in inferis 
 held by a skeleton, which, erect and motionless, seems to partake 
 of the nature of a terminus, designed to express that point in 
 the lower hemisphere, whence nature emerging shall resume 
 her former activity. It was an original suggestion of the late 
 Rev. Dr. Henley, that the pillar (to which I would also com- 
 pare the terminus), symbolically considered, denotes the solstice, 
 the apparent temporary resting-place of the sun, at the furthest 
 extent of his course, whether in the upper or lower hemisphere. 
 
 PLATE VII. 
 
 Return of the Amphora.* 
 
 The return of Bacchus is here neatly expressed by a winged 
 genius upon the amphora, which is wafted along by means of a 
 hoisted sail. 
 
 PLATE VIII. 
 
 Bacchus, having again assumed the Form of a Vase, is brought up from the 
 
 Inferi. 
 
 At length the various characters assumed by this changeable 
 deity have been traced through their mystic revolutions, ex- 
 
 From the Museum Florentinum, vol. i. plate lxxvii. fig. 1. 
 
56 
 
 cepting that it remains for me to bring up the vase to the upper 
 hemisphere. A painting from an inedited vase in the Townley 
 collection, now in the British Museum, may serve to complete 
 my drama. In this, the generative power, characterised by 
 priapeid ears and horns, emerges from the marshy shores of the 
 Styx, bringing up the amphora from the inferi. 
 
 Before I dismiss the spectators, I cannot refrain from ad- 
 verting to the explanation offered by that learned Asiatic 
 antiquary, Captain Francis Wilford, of those mystic words, 
 o[ji.7fa^ 9 (Konx, ompax,) which closed the celebration of the mys- 
 teries. He has observed, that the correspondent Sanscrit words, 
 Cancsha, Om, Pacsha, denote, the first of them, the object of our 
 most ardent wishes ; the second, Om (the monosyllable used at 
 the beginning and conclusion of a prayer), amen ; and the third, 
 Pacsha, “ answering to the obsolete Latin word, vix, change, 
 “ course, stead, place, turn of work, duty, fortune.” — As. Res. 
 vol. v. p. 300. 
 
 That many words found their way into the Greek language, in 
 later times, from different parts of Asia, may be proved from the 
 lexicon of Hesychius ; at the same time an observation of Davies, 
 the learned editor of the Tusculan Disputations of Cicero, (lib. i. 
 p. 53.) deserves regard, — that a superstitious respect was an- 
 ciently paid to words adopted from foreign languages, by which, 
 no doubt the Oriental were implied. Hence these lines of the 
 pseudo-Zoroaster are quoted by the learned critic: — 
 
 ’Ovofiara fidpSupa. fj,rj i tot aWagrjp, 
 
 ’Er» yoip ivop.XTU 'GTCtp' kxOKTTOl; SsoVSoTa, 
 
 Auv«jtx.<v sv t sXsTctig uppyprov tyovr u. 
 
 Change not foreign names ; for every foreign nation has some peculiar to it, 
 imparted by the deity ; and these are of unspeakable efficacy in initiatory rites. 
 
57 
 
 Hence the words Konx-om-pax might have been intro- 
 duced into the mysteries, from their being supposed to possess 
 some secret virtue, even though the Initiators had not a 
 precise knowledge of their meaning. But I presume not to 
 decide on this question, which well deserves the attention of the 
 learned. 
 
 r 
 
58 
 
 CHAP. VII. 
 
 The Cererftonies peculiar to each Day of the Greater Mysteries , as enume- 
 rated hy Meursius, and an Attempt to explain the Exhibitions in the 
 Propylcea. — Characters assumed by the Priests. — - These Characters 
 discovered on a Sicilian Vase, illustrating the Mysteries of the Idcei 
 Dactyli. 
 
 But it was more particularly by the splendour and secrecy of 
 the Greater Mysteries, that the priests at Eleusis contrived to 
 excite the curiosity of their countrymen, and to convene both 
 sexes, from every part of Greece, at the time of their annual 
 celebration. The exhibition lasted nine days. But the desig- 
 nation of each day’s employment, as collected by Meursius from 
 ancient authorities, evidently refers to very little more than 
 introductory rites, and only partially to the mysterious display 
 within the temple. 
 
 According to Meursius, the first of these days was termed 
 ctyvpjAog, the general meeting, in which it may be conceived, that 
 those who had been admitted to the lesser mysteries at Agra, 
 were questioned very strictly as to their several qualifications ; 
 and this, I imagine, must have taken place in the small temple of 
 Diana Propylasa, which stood before the outer propylaea, or portal 
 of entrance to the first enclosure of the temple at Eleusis. — See 
 the unedited Antiquities of Attica , published by the Society of Dilet- 
 tanti in London , chap. i. plate hi. E. 
 
59 
 
 The second is supposed by Meursius to have been employed 
 in a procession to the sea, to which the mystae were encouraged 
 by the exclamation cl\u$e I have already suggested the 
 
 probability of the statue of the goddess, alluded to by Themistius, 
 being then committed to the sea, like the Durga of the Hindus ; 
 and I may add, like the Adonis at Alexandria, which was allego- 
 rical of a descent to Hades, and was considered to be an dcpavia-yog 
 or disappearance of this allegorical representative of Nature. 
 The manner of the appearance , and the stage on which the figure 
 was exhibited may be conjectured from the passage of Themistius, 
 above referred to, considered in connection with the observations 
 of the English dilettanti, respecting the topography of Eleusis. 
 
 Themistius illustrates his father’s expositions of the Aris- 
 totelic philosophy, by the priest throwing open the propylaea 
 of the temple at Eleusis ; whereupon the statue of the goddess, 
 under a burst of light, appeared in full splendour, and the gloom 
 and utter darkness in which the spectators had been enveloped, 
 were dispelled. 
 
 These propylaea must necessarily be the second portals, at 
 the entrance to the inner enclosure of the temple. The 
 foundations of them as detailed in the Unedited Antiquities of 
 Attica, exhibit the vestiges of a theatre, and of theatrical me- 
 chanism. Upon this supposition, the mystae, after delivering the 
 satisfactory proofs of their moral purity , and previous initiation, 
 in the temple of Diana Propylaea, would have been allowed to 
 pass through the first propylaea ; and upon their descending the 
 steps of the inner fafade of that building, the second propylaea 
 would appear, but placed obliquely. The intervening breadth of 
 ground would be the spot to be occupied by the spectators. Before 
 them would have been a pavement elevated by two steps above 
 the level of the area of the outer enclosure, 40 feet 3 inches wide, 
 fenced in by nails on each side, but open toward the spectators, 
 and covered with a ceiling or roof, as may be suspected from the 
 
 i 2 
 
60 
 
 bases of three columns ranging in depth along the walls on each 
 side, which must have been designed to support a ceiling. Such 
 a covering would have been necessary to darken the front of the 
 stage. The ground plan in the before-cited work exhibits the 
 vestiges of two columns in the centre of the pavement, at a depth 
 of about 20 feet from the front of it, and advanced before the 
 fa 9 ade of the second propylaea, which formed, as it were, the scene, 
 separated also from the fa 9 ade by an inclined plane, upon a 
 descent of 16 inches in 18 feet, which are about the length of it. 
 In this inclined plane two parallel grooves, or ruts for wheels, are 
 channelled, of considerable depth. This very gentle descent 
 was calculated only for the gradual movement of the object to be 
 advanced by means of it. The central gateway, thus elevated 
 16 inches above the pavement, exhibits two grooves in its level 
 floor, each describing the quadrant of a circle, for the doors to 
 traverse, upon their being thrown open internally. Hereupon we 
 may conclude, the statue of the goddess, lodged in this central re- 
 cess, must have been drawn forward, and lowered down the inclined 
 plane to its extreme station, between the two before-mentioned 
 columns. Two wings were added to the central gateway ; but 
 from the remains of walls extant in front, and a window frame 
 found near them, the scientific authors of the work alluded to 
 were induced to believe that they were not designed for 
 passages of entrance. It is therefore probable, that the lights 
 by which the central recess was illumined, were disposed within 
 these wings, and that the grooves in the pavement, and the plug 
 holes yet extant, were designed for supporting mirrors, and ma- 
 chinery by which those mirrors were to be adjusted. A 
 semi-transparent curtain was probably stretched across the 
 opening* between the two columns; and the object intended 
 by thus advancing the illumined statue, must have been to in- 
 
 * This opening was about 1 1 feet 6 inches wide. 
 
61 
 
 crease the splendour of it gradually until it should be brought 
 to the greatest possible degree of brilliancy. If the supposed 
 transparent curtain had been formed of plates of horn, we might 
 then imagine the folding doors of the portal itself to have been 
 veneered with ivory ; and a satisfactory account might be rendered 
 for the allusion of Virgil to the actual vision of the goddess at 
 the first portal, which would have appeared as an unsubstantial 
 dream to those who had been afterwards admitted by a free pas- 
 sage through the second. 
 
 According to the foregoing speculation, the propylsea of the 
 inner peribolos, or enclosure of the temple, would have been 
 obstructed by this machinery until the close of the second day. 
 The procession to the sea would take place on the conclusion of 
 this scenic exhibition ; and on the third day, these obstructions 
 being removed, the inner propylaea would have been open for 
 the ingress of the mystae to the last enclosure, where the 
 Anactoron, or temple, with its still more interesting exhibitions, 
 was open to receive them ; and to this, as we may conclude 
 from Themistius *, they were conducted through the inner pro- 
 pylasa, by the daduchus or torch-bearer. 
 
 The third day was opened by the sacrifice of a mullet, as 
 we must presume, preparatory to the great scenic exhibition. 
 On the fourth the mystic basket was brought upon a waggon to 
 Eleusis, followed by females carrying other baskets, or cistas, 
 bound with purple fillets, and containing symbols which Clemens 
 has enumerated. His observations give us reason to suspect, that 
 it was after the arrival of this procession at Eleusis, that a further 
 examination of the mystae took place, and that their answers were 
 
 * After noticing the splendour which succeeded to the previous gloom, The- 
 mistius adds (of his father), — “ Venus was near, in the character of torch-bearer, and 
 “ the Graces, hand-in-hand, performed the perfectory rites.” The whole of this 
 passage in his eloge funebre is well worth perusal. It is full of allusion to the cere- 
 monies and topography of the temple, but so faintly and delicately expressed, as 
 scarcely to bear translating. 
 
62 
 
 neither free from grossness nor absurdity. Sufficient authorities 
 establish the fact of a torch-race, occurring on the fifth evening : 
 to this the well-known lines of Statius apply : — 
 
 “ Tuque Actsea Ceres, cursu cui semper anhelo 
 Votivam taciti quassamus lampada mystae.” 
 
 The word jactare occurring in some lines of Seneca (quoted by 
 Meursius, as having allusion to this,) proves that the torch was 
 tossed from hand to hand, as in the lampadophoria. On the 
 sixth a procession, with the statue of lacchus, moved from Athens 
 to Eleusis, answering, perhaps, to the e vgeo-ig, or return and vivifi- 
 cation of Adonis. 
 
 On the seventh was an athletic contest. The eighth day 
 was termed Epidauria, from iEsculapius, who arrived at Epi- 
 daurus too late to partake of initiation. The business of this day 
 was therefore a repetition of ceremonies already performed, and 
 for the benefit of any who might have been prevented attending 
 sooner. 
 
 The ninth and last day of the mysteries I deem particularly 
 deserving of consideration, and intimately connected with the 
 subject of these disquisitions. It was termed a word 
 
 which, as Meursius has noticed from Julius Pollux, properly de- 
 noted an earthen vase, not ending in a point (like the ordinary 
 amphora) but with a firm and steady base, and being used on the 
 last day of the mysteries, the day was named from it 
 Athenseus terms the vessel <rxsvog ks^ouv, fiepSiKutieg, shaped 
 somewhat like a top, and xotuXi'o-kos. 
 
 Two such vases were used on this occasion. One was placed 
 towards the east, the other to the west ; and they were emptied 
 while certain mystic words were uttered. These have been made 
 known to us by Proclus on the Timseus of Plato. They were, vie, 
 ToxvTe. While the first of these was pronounced, they looked up 
 to heaven ; and casting their eyes downward to the earth, they 
 pronounced the latter. 
 
63 
 
 By thus accosting each Epopt as a son, vie, might be implied 
 the heavenly origin of man : by roKvie might be denoted regene- 
 ration. This day I should presume to fix upon, as the particular 
 time, when the painted earthen vases, which form the subject of 
 these researches, were received or purchased from the priests at 
 Eleusis by those who were now deemed KAAOI, to be preserved 
 by them, as in the personal instance of Apuleius, until their dying 
 day, and to be then deposited with them in their tombs, to com- 
 memorate the fact of the possessors having been both initiated 
 and perfected. 
 
 It is highly necessary, therefore, that we cultivate an ac- 
 quaintance with these priests ; for a knowledge of them may 
 facilitate our admission to the temple. They meet us on the 
 very threshold of the Eleusinium, in a passage of Eusebius, 
 where he says : — 'O pev ‘I e^o(pcc.VTV]g elg elzovx tov Aqptovgyov evtTKevu^eTou, 
 “ The Hierophant is attired as an allegorical image of the Creator;” 
 in like manner the AaSovxog, or torch-bearer, of the sun; the assistant 
 E7r) of the moon, and the 'UgoKvj^vfc of Hermes. Their number 
 was four, corresponding with the three Cabirs and Camillus in 
 Samothrace. But the reason why the hierophant assumed the 
 character of the demiurgus, no writer has disclosed to us. The 
 genuine meaning of the word is artifex, opifex ; and it might be 
 supposed to indicate merely the priest who directed the construc- 
 tion of the machinery, and who set the mystic fantoccini in 
 motion, while the sacred herald might have explained their alle- 
 goric meaning. It is probable that in the mysteries of Eleusis, 
 the priests were originally actors in a drama, wherein the demi- 
 urgus exposed the notions of the ancients respecting the cos- 
 mogony, while the representatives of the sun and moon, en- 
 forced the system of decay and reproduction, and that hence the 
 sacred herald deduced useful conclusions for the moral conduct of 
 the people. But in later times, when the shows were necessarily- 
 celebrated on a larger scale, the mysteries were then illus- 
 
64 
 
 trated by scenery, as a more compendious and striking mode of 
 instructing the spectators. Some allusion to the characters of the 
 priests might have been then preserved in the opaque and trans- 
 parent groups exhibited ; and this appears probable from the first 
 example I shall offer. We will then go forward, and these very 
 priests, who seem to have escaped from us in the vestibule, will 
 reappear in their assumed characters upon the stage, still to be 
 recognised by the reference they will bear to the description of 
 Eusebius. And if we shall succeed in detecting them, we may 
 accept it as a conclusive argument, that the paintings on the 
 vessels found in tombs in Magna Grsecia were really copied from 
 the Eleusinian transparencies, or from those in temples elsewhere 
 established, in which similar shows were displayed. 
 
 Explanation of a Sicilian Vase, illustrating the Mysteries of the 
 Idcei Dactyli. 
 
 The scholiast on the poem of Apollonius Rhodius has 
 noticed three of the Idaei Dactyli, whose names are expressed in 
 the following verse : — 
 
 KlXjxif, A«j te [x.eya j xa) virepSios ’'Axfj.oov. 
 
 Whether these are to be identified with the Cabirs, whom he has 
 termed Axieros, Axiocersa, Axiocersos, and Camillus, does not 
 immediately appear ; but as the officiating ministers at Eleusis 
 were four in number, in imitation of those in Samothrace, we 
 need not be surprised if we should meet with them under their 
 Greek titles, as above cited, concerting a religious mystery on the 
 
65 
 
 stage at Eleusis. Such are the characters in the transparency 
 now produced, in which the demiurgus, the assistant at the 
 altar, the sacred herald, and the torch-bearer are discoverable. 
 The subject of the painting I conceive to be Acmon and Dam- 
 nameneus preparing to animate the universe by means of 
 their minister Celmis; illustrated by the allegory of Pan, in 
 a sitting or quiescent posture, waiting for his torch to be 
 lighted at the furnace of Hephasstus. I presume I cannot be mis- 
 taken in my conjecture, because axpu v, which in Greek denotes 
 an anvil, whence the word mguitfiur, a blacksmith, has also the 
 signification of ouguvog, heaven.* The first of these figures, then, 
 the demiurgus, or workman, implies celestial fire. Damnameneus, 
 evidently composed of the words Supvctu, domo, and pevog, vis , 
 robur , is that which allayeth the power of fire, or which tem- 
 pereth metals which fire hath fused, Water. The Baron de 
 Ste. Croix would explain this to be earth, but it was an anciently 
 received opinion, that earth was a deposition or sediment from 
 water. She is here an assistant at the altar, or in other words, 
 at the forge of Vulcan. KsX^ig I should derive from Ke\opat,jubeo } 
 one who delivers orders, the same as Camillus, Hermes, and 
 Mercury ; and the arm and hand of the third figure stretched 
 forth over the head of Pan, properly convey this meaning. The 
 Audovxos, or torch-bearer, personates Pan, that is, to noiv, the 
 universe. Ptha or Hephaestus, who, according to Egyptian my- 
 thologists, was produced from the egg in the mouth of the supreme 
 Cneph, is here introduced to us as the demiurgic deity, con- 
 ducting the process of creation in the great workshop of nature. 
 The animation of the universe, also, under the character of Pan, 
 may be collected from two interesting plates in the work of 
 D’Hancarville. The first of these, vol. iii. plate xciv., where 
 
 * Hesychius in voce. 
 
 K 
 
66 
 
 Pan crouches under the weight of the sphere, and listens to the 
 instructions of a figure which I venture to term Celmis. In the 
 other, vol. iv. plate cxvm., Celmis presents two eggs, as a vivifying 
 gift, influenced by which Pan, supporting the lower portion of a 
 sphere, dances with the most ridiculous gestures. 
 
 The torch, of which the mystical meaning is determined by 
 Lucretius, — ■ 
 
 “ Et quasi cursores, vital lampada tradunt,” — Lib. ii. v. 78. 
 
 is here neither elevated, to denote life, nor depressed, to denote 
 suspended animation, but characteristically held in a horizontal 
 direction. As the principle of life to the universe it is a symbol 
 of the sun, and Eusebius has informed us that the A otdovxog was 
 attired as an allegorical image of the sun. This idea may be 
 pleasingly illustrated by a passage in the Ezour Vedam ; in which 
 little work (evidently composed by some European missionary*, 
 for an excellent purpose) is the following apostrophe : — “ Le Soleil 
 “ que tu as divinise, n’est qu’un corps sans vie et sans connoissance. 
 “ II est entre les mains de Dieu comme une chandelle entre les 
 “ mains d’un homme. Cree de lui pour eclairer le monde, il 
 “ obeit a sa voix, et repand partout sa lumiere comme une chan- 
 46 delle qui commence a eclairer des qu’on l’aUume.” — Vol. i. 
 p. 226, 227. “ The sun, which you have deified, is a mere lifeless 
 
 “ and unintelligent body. It is in the hand of God as a candle in 
 “ the hand of a man. Created by him for the purpose of lighting 
 “ the world, it obeys his word ; and disperses every where its light, 
 “ as a candle throws its beams the moment it is lighted.” 
 
 To this it may be properly added, that the most ancient 
 Osiris of the Egyptians, for there were many of the name, was 
 
 * I believe it to be the same work that is noticed by Father Giorgi, Alph. 
 Tibet, p. 94., as the production of the Capuchin missionaries in India. 
 
67 
 
 supposed to be the son of Vulcan, and was entitled Tosorlhrus*, 
 a word that, according to Father Giorgif, signifies Jilius for- 
 nacis, “ the Son of the Furnace.” 
 
 Upon the whole, this interesting painting, taken from a very 
 early Sicilian vase, which was once preserved in the library of 
 the late James Edwards, Esq., but was destroyed by accident, 
 furnishes a curious insight into the earliest religion of Greece, 
 which evidently consisted of speculations upon, and probably a 
 worship of, the mundane elements. This worship is also to be 
 clearly traced in religious allegories upon works of art, in China 
 and Japan 7; and it seems to have prevailed universally, before the 
 first deification of heroes, who, in the course of time, were likened 
 to those elements. 
 
 * “ Plures fuerunt in Egypto Reges Osirides ; quorum primus a Bonjurio, sta- 
 “ tuitur Tosorthrus, filius Necher-Ophis Vulcani, omniumque Egyptiorum Regum 
 “ antiquissimi.” — Alphabet. Tibetan, p, 71. 
 
 + “ Tosorthrus hie idem esse possettanquam^ofttjEp-^U^JptU > Touser-thro, 
 “ et Graeca terminatione Tousorthros, filius fornacis, sive Vulcani filius. — enim 
 “ articulus feemineus ideo praefigitur, quia pCU fornax generis est foeminei.” — 
 Ibid. p.75. 
 
 t The Chinese imagined two principles which they termed Yang and Yn, and 
 they represented them by an entire line, and a divided one, styling them the perfect 
 and imperfect, heaven and earth, male and female. Dr. Kaempfer observes, that 
 certain of the Japanese philosophers admitted an intellectual or incorporeal being, but 
 only as governor and director, not as the author of nature ; nay, they pretended, 
 that creation was an effect of nature produced by In and Jo, heaven and earth ; one 
 active, the other passive ; one the principle of generation, the other of corruption. 
 Hist, of Japan, p. 250. These opposite principles are elsewhere reported, p. 601., to 
 be represented before the Daibod’s Temple, near Miaco, by two images of giants, 
 called A-tmin, or In-Jo, or Ni-wo, one with the mouth open and the hand extended, 
 the other with the mouth shut and the hand brought close to the body. 
 
 K 2 
 
68 
 
 CHAP. VIII. 
 
 Harmonious Arrangement of the Universe. 
 
 According to Plutarch, when Osiris had settled the affairs of his 
 government at home, he set out to civilise the rest of mankind : — 
 
 Tvg nXilarrug koc) Xoyu per udvjg vrc&Tvig ua] gxtriKvjg BeXyoftsvvg 7rpc<r- 
 
 uycpt-vov. [De hide et Osir. s. xiii. p. 32.) “ By persuasion and 
 “ argument, with every kind of song and music, he soothed the 
 “ minds of men, and brought them over.” Now as to what may 
 have been the origin of this tradition, and who the person shadowed 
 under the name of Osiris, I shall not here make it my business to 
 enquire. But I suspect, that the expedition of Osiris, and the 
 manner in which the object of it was accomplished, were anciently 
 converted into a religious allegory, by which a well-known human 
 event was made a type of the harmonious arrangement of the 
 universe. 
 
 I suspect this, because Plato, whose philosophy and language 
 are frequently borrowed by Plutarch, had before said, that the 
 deity created all things, n reiQotxoti Xoyu , “ by persuasion and reason.” 
 The representations on vases of a figure setting out in a quadriga, 
 preceded by Camillus,or Mercury, petasated and booted, and bearing 
 the caduceus, while an attendant by the side of the car plays upon 
 the lyre, or beckons with the arm uplifted ; these I venture to 
 term the expedition of the deity, either in his male or female nature, 
 
JT. /j 6'(9- 
 
 aZl 
 
 // 
 
 
69 
 
 to harmonise the universe. An example of the former to which 
 I would apply the expression of Plutarch, per uSy? Wq? ku\ 
 pwmijsi “ with every kind of song and music,” may be be seen in 
 Tischbein’s Collection, vol. i. plate xxiv. ; of the latter, in that of 
 D Hancarville, vol. iii. plate lii. where an inscription appears in 
 characters scarcely legible, but which D’ Hancarville would explain 
 to be OAOTC for OATCCETC, Ulysses. The forms of the cha- 
 racters, however, are as follows, which, unless they 
 
 be read /3v?p ofySoi', give us something like the word Suoda. But 
 to wave what cannot be affirmed with certainty, I beg the reader’s 
 attention to a painting from a Sicilian vase, in the collection of 
 Thomas Hope, Esq., which exhibits a female representative of 
 the deity, or mind, ascending a quadriga, preceded by Camillus, 
 or Mercury, and accompanied by a male and female figure, the 
 former with the hand open, and extended in an argumentative 
 attitude, the latter with the arm uplifted and the fingers bent 
 inward, as if persuading or inviting her companion. * These 
 figures I conceive to be the Xoyog and 7 reiQu, or Argument and 
 Persuasion, which powers are here personated under the different 
 sexes. The vine tendrils issuing from the breast of the female in 
 the car, and from her agent the Dioscurus, are symbolical of the 
 genial influence of Bacchus, who was differently entitled Osiris, 
 Dionysus, and Ampelus (api rsXog), “ the vine,” which Osiris was 
 supposed to have first planted. The fabled expedition of this 
 personage having been undertaken for the purpose of conferring 
 benefits on mankind, the vine is therefore symbolically made to 
 accompany the deity in his course. The cherishing power of the 
 deity is thus generally expressed on vases by a vine springing 
 from the breast, or from between the shoulders of the great Pan, 
 from which the tendrils, diverging in thin waved and budding 
 
 * A youth with one hand extended, in the act of exhorting, is designated FIEI0.Q 
 in very legible characters on a Nolan Vase, formerly m the possession of H. Tresham, 
 and now in that of Thomas Hope, Esq. 
 
70 
 
 shoots, light upon different figures, that appear entangled in its 
 folds. This is the meaning of those thin knotted lines which 
 often intersect the groups on vases of the ancient class, orna- 
 mented with black figures on a red ground. A further example 
 may be seen in plate xii. of this work. 
 
 The painting I first explained made us acquainted with the 
 opinions of the ancient mystagogues respecting the demiurgic 
 powers, from which the universe was supposed to have received 
 animation, and the sun its light. This second plate has repre- 
 sented that luminary embodied, and setting out upon his course. 
 
 We will now consider his influence in the lower world, in 
 which various vicissitudes were accounted for, and were measured 
 by his example. 
 
Plate XI. p. 71. 
 
 afr a 
 

71 
 
 CHAP. IX. 
 
 Attributes of the Deity , variously personated on Vases. — Of Shields, and 
 their Devices . 
 
 Having formerly resolved the mythological Bacchus into his 
 attributes, and shown in what manner he represented the day and 
 the night sun, accordingly as his visit was paid to either hemi- 
 sphere, having likewise noticed his ambiguity of sex, whereby 
 he comprehended within himself both the active and passive 
 principles of creation, I will now confirm those illustrations by a 
 different mode of proceeding. I will collect the scattered mem- 
 bers of the Osiris, and synthetically show how groups were 
 admitted upon vases, which are to be accepted only as parts of 
 one mystic personage. The opposite engraving, from a Sicilian 
 vase in the collection of Thomas Hope, Esq., represents a male 
 and female figure, both draped, standing between two armed 
 warriors, upon the shield of one of whom is emblazoned a dove, 
 whilst a thigh, leg, and foot are bent, and comprised, by way of 
 device, within the shield of the other. These male and female 
 figures are personifications of the double sex of Bacchus <h<pw,q ; 
 the two armed attendants are his agents, the Dioscuri. The shield 
 itself is a symbol of the deity ; his creating power is typified by the 
 dove, the well-known emblem of life, which seeks the upper part 
 of the sphere ; and the lower limbs of the human body, having 
 allusion to the lower regions, denote the influence of Bacchus also 
 
in Inferis. Thus the group expresses the Bacchus in his several 
 natures, as male and female, vivifier and destroyer : — 
 
 T yoLp icn r« II avoj. * 
 
 For these are the members of Pan, or the integral deity. 
 
 Thus also upon a very interesting vase, which is engraved in 
 the collection of Passeri-f-, we notice the cherishing and destroying 
 powers of Bacchus emblematically personified. A man, bound 
 hand and foot, is laid obliquely upon a couch or chair, and his feet 
 are opposed to a blazing fire. A draped figure opposite, looking 
 upward, as if with gratitude, stretches out his hands in the act of 
 warming them. Behind, is a temple, within which a figure of the 
 deity, supported upon a pedestal or altar, points toward these 
 figures, as if superintending or directing what passes in the fore- 
 ground of the painting. The learned antiquary was perplexed 
 with the appearance of torture, thus publickly inflicted, which ill 
 accorded with the celebration of the Bacchanalia, to which he 
 referred the subject of the vase : but the meaning is evident ; 
 that the same element which can cherish by its genial warmth, 
 may also be an instrument of torture ; that the same deity who 
 preserves, can also destroy ; and that these powers are united in 
 the integral Bacchus. 
 
 The attributes of Bacchus are sometimes expressed in a dif- 
 ferent way. Plate lxxxvi. vol. ii. of the Etruscan Antiquities 
 of D’Hancarville represents in succession, a tigress and a boar, a 
 lioness and a goat, a harpy and a stag ; which are thus alternately 
 classed, as destroying and generating animals : and further to 
 evince this contrast of disposition, allusive to the opposite powers 
 of the deity, and the continual warfare in nature, of which 
 
 * Onomacritus, hymn x. v. 3 . 
 f De Piet. Hetruscor. in Vasculis, vol. iii. last plate. 
 
73 
 
 creation and harmony were the result*, we lastly observe in this 
 painting a pair of fighting bulls, which confirm the explanation 
 given. 
 
 The attributes of the deity are not always so evidently de- 
 picted : they are frequently conveyed by detached symbols, and 
 devices upon shields are significantly used for this purpose ; such 
 as a human arm to denote the upper, or an anchor the lower 
 hemisphere ; the kid, the Hesperian fruit, and wings, expressive 
 of life, and the serpent of renovation ; the Pegasus and Salian 
 figures allusive to the pervading power ; and others which do not 
 so readily admit of explanation. 
 
 * (T cov 7tuvtcov) — ex xx) dvTiTraSeixs r>jv yeveriv i^ovTcvv.~— Plutarch, de 
 
 hide et Osiride, sect, xlviii. p. 121. 
 
 L 
 
74 
 
 CHAP. X. 
 
 Temporary Repose of Nature. — Of the Egyptian Horus in the torpid 
 State. — Mutes on the Reverse of Vases. — Figures draped and naked. 
 
 As yet, however, we have made but little advancement towards 
 a general understanding of the paintings upon vases ; it is time 
 that we examine the operation of the attributes lately mentioned, 
 and how by their influence nature was subjected to the vicissitude 
 of decay, inertion, and resuscitation. The subject most frequently 
 alluded to in these scenes is the temporary suspension of the 
 powers of nature, and the restoration of the same by the inter- 
 ference of some vivifying agent. By far the most numerous class 
 of paintings upon vases have been so designed as to elucidate 
 this subject in one composition ; and although a satisfactory ex- 
 planation of every vase is more than we can promise, yet the 
 reader may be assured that with moderate attention to the meaning 
 of symbols, and the manner in which they are interchanged in 
 order to produce varieties, many of these subjects may be under- 
 stood by referring them to this general allegory. 
 
 The temporary state of rest may be exemplified in a pleasing 
 instance furnished by Passeri, the genuine meaning of which, 
 however, escaped that learned antiquary. He has cited a vase 
 whereon was depicted a soldier sleeping on his post, but with his 
 limbs so disposed, as that upon the least alarm he might start up 
 
75 
 
 and resume his station in the ranks. I will give it in his own 
 words ; — “ In ea miles clypeo protectus, sinistro genu et crure 
 “ humi dejecto, super illud decumbit ; at ne proruat, hinc genu 
 “ dextero sublato, et clypeo subnixus ita dormit, ut, signo dato, 
 “ promptissime exsiliat.” * The solution of this allegory is ready 
 at our hand ; it represents the temporary repose of nature after 
 lassitude or decay, and its promptitude to resume its functions. 
 The same explanation may also be applied to a vignette which 
 embellishes an early part of Mr. Tischbein’s illustrations of Homer; 
 where a file of warriors kneel, their helmets, pikes, and greaves 
 only appearing beyond the orbs of their shields. The fact is, 
 they rest upon their arms, but are nevertheless ready to spring up 
 from their temporary state of repose. 
 
 The explanation of these later devices will, perhaps, be 
 readily admitted ; but it may be satisfactory to many to be in- 
 formed whence the Greeks derived them, and what was their 
 original meaning. The doctrine of the inert state may be sup- 
 posed to have been more recently borrowed from a very simple 
 agricultural painting of the Egyptians, whereby they emblemati- 
 cally warned their countrymen of those times of annual rest, when 
 the overflowing of the Nile caused a cessation of agricultural 
 labours, until, upon the entrance of the sun into a certain sign, 
 the waters subsided, and vegetation sprang forth with renewed 
 vigour, f An etching in the work of the Abbe Pluches (tom. i. 
 p. 88. plate xi.), to which I refer the reader, will make this more 
 evident. Horus, an emblem of vegetable nature, there appears in 
 a state of repose, stretched on a couch or bier, and embarrassed 
 with swaddling clothes, to denote his inaction under the influence 
 of the sun in Leo, whilst a female before him (probably Virgo), 
 with the hand uplifted, calls him into action. A plate in 
 
 * Passeri, vol. i. p. lxxi. 
 
 f This may suffice for the present, but the allegory was of more ancient origin. 
 
 L 2 
 
76 
 
 Kaempfer’ s History of Japan (tom. i. plate v. p. 33.) may be here 
 cited, which represents Amida seated on a cippus, with five small 
 figures above, and the same number of figures beneath him. In 
 these several plates, the Egyptian Horus and the Oriental Buddha 
 appear in a similar state of rest, and, which may be deemed still 
 more curious, the Canopi below the Horus, and the five attendants 
 above and below the Japanese deity correspondently denote the 
 elements * or attributes of each personage, and these monu- 
 ments illustrate well the character of Buddha, “ In otio plurimo” 
 (to use the words of Tertullian) placidas stupentis divinitatis.” 
 But we will transfer the scene from Egypt to Eleusis. If the 
 reader will open the work of Passeri (vol. iii. plate ccxcvm.), he 
 
 * This observation requires further comment. The element, water, was cha- 
 racteristic of the preserver Bacchus, who was accordingly symbolised, and his 
 mysteries were commemorated, by the vase. In the Egyptian painting, indeed, 
 the symbols are somewhat perverted. Three vessels denoted separately the 
 elements, earth, water, air, and collectively the overflowing of the Nile, as I am 
 instructed by Horapollo (Ed. Pauw. p. 38 .), who assigns a physical reason for this 
 signification. But the Egyptian painting having also to notice time and other 
 circumstances, heads of certain creatures are superadded to the vessels, the complex 
 meaning of which may be learned from the Abbe Pluches ; and a fourth vessel is 
 introduced, surmounted by the head of a virgin, with allusion to that particular sign. 
 That the twice five figures attendant upon Amida represent the elements I conclude, 
 1. from the number of them as computed by the Japanese, viz. 1. wood, 2. fire, 
 3 . earth, 4 . ore, 5 . water ; , which elements, with a different monosyllable postfixed, 
 are increased to ten (Kaempfer, p. 15 ?.): 2 . from Kaempfer having noticed (p. 604 .) 
 an idol in the temple of Sotoktais, surrounded with the idols of four elements. In 
 proof that these relate to the attributes of their deity, may be adduced the opinions 
 of the Japanese philosophers, who, somewhat after the manner of the Brahmins, 
 (Asiatic Researches, vol. i. p. 244 . octavo.) maintain that the animal creation was 
 produced by In- Jo, i. e. Heaven, and five terrestrial elements. (Kaempfer, p. 250 .) 
 Respecting the connection between Buddha and the great events of the creation and 
 the deluge, much might be here adduced, did not that subject present too extensive 
 a field for present enquiry. I will content myself with suggesting, that the represen- 
 tatives of the deity, Cenresi in Tibet, and Ravana in Ceylon, are exhibited, the one 
 with a human head and ten others (Alph. Tibet, p. 166 .), the other with the head of 
 the ass and ten human heads (Systema Brachmanicum, p. 299 .), probably with allusion 
 to the creating deity operating upon the twice five elements. 
 
77 
 
 will observe the same subject expressed upon a very curious vase 
 of the earlier . class, which may possibly be yet preserved in the 
 Vatican. The inert Bacchus is there exposed upon a funeral 
 couch, and the vivifying agent, like the Egyptian Virgo, awakens 
 him into energy from the torpid state. On the reverse of 
 the same vase (ibid, plate ccxcix.) nature seems to be repre- 
 sented under the form of a dragon, which an owl draws up by a 
 string from the shades. 
 
 The appropriate symbols, therefore, of the inert state appear 
 to be sleep, rest, the attitude of reclining*, and particularly the 
 embarrassment of clothing. Under this last head may be classed 
 reverses exhibiting draped figures, which Passeri has termed 
 youths newly invested with the toga virilis. I had long doubted 
 the propriety of this assertion of Passeri, applied to vases of Greek 
 workmanship; but I yield to the judicious observations of Mr. 
 Bottiger, who has properly savoured that opinion, f I must, 
 
 * To these may be added bondage, whether expressed by the hands tied behind 
 the back of the figure, as in those instances, on gems, of Cupid and Psyche bound 
 (Mus. Florent. vol. i. plate lxxix. fig. 4, 5, 6.), or by Time in Fetters (ibid. vol. i. 
 plate xcvn. fig. 4.), or Cupid in the Stocks (ibid. vol. i. plate lxxxi. fig. 2, 3, 4.), 
 besides many others. 
 
 f Mr. Bottiger cites an interesting passage in Artemidorus, where allusion is 
 made to the one year’s inaction and silence of youths, with the right hand enveloped in 
 their robes (Oneirocrit. lib. i. cap. 56. p. 48. Ed. Rigaltu), whence lie remarks: — 1. 
 that the investing of youths with the chlamys, at the age of 17, was an ancient Athenian 
 custom, and transferred to the Grecian colonies. He supposes that the Etruscans, 
 and their Roman descendants, imitated this ancient ceremony in their custom of pre- 
 senting the toga. 2. That the upper garments of the figures so represented on reverses 
 neither resemble the Grecian chlamys , nor the Roman toga. They appear to him to 
 be of a mixed fashion, and he would determine them to be the toga Grcecanica of 
 Suetonius in Domitian, c. 4. “ and wherefore,” he adds, “ might not the scanty upper 
 “ cloak, as worn in the mother country, have taken a broader cast when used by the 
 t£ same Greeks in Lower Italy, and have been thus accommodated to the effeminate 
 “ manners of this voluptuous people?” - — Uber den Raub der Cassandra auf einem 
 alten Gefasse von gebrannter erde. — - Zwey abhandlungen von H. Meyer, and 
 C. A. Bottiger. — Weimar, 1794, 4to p. 83, 84. 
 
78 
 
 however, be permitted to add this corollary : — that the repre- 
 sentation of youths so invested with their hands beneath the 
 chlamys , and hence unentitled to a voice in public assemblies, 
 must be symbolically accepted as merely denoting silence with 
 respect to the mysteries. In the same manner, on the bottom 
 of the Barberini vase, a figure draped and hooded, with the 
 finger to the mouth, implies that the mysterious allegories re- 
 presented on the side of that vessel are not to be incautiously 
 revealed. 
 
 A very curious Campana vase, in the possession of the 
 Earl of Aberdeen, confirms what I have here suggested. Upon 
 the reverse of this, supported by two such draped and muffled 
 figures, is to be seen Harpocrates on the lotus, and a water-fowl 
 beneath him. This painting is decisive. The youths are mute 
 as to the meaning of the allegories depicted on the front of the 
 vase. 
 
 It may, therefore, be observed with regard to figures draped 
 and naked, that the former are generally to be considered in the 
 inert, the latter in the resuscitated state ; and many instances 
 may be produced where figures have been thus purposely con- 
 trasted. Such a one occurs in the work of Passeri (vol. iii. plate 
 ccxlvi.), where two naked dancing figures in front are con- 
 trasted with two draped figures on the reverse of the same vase 
 (plate ccxlvii.) ; but a more striking instance may be noticed 
 on a vase, plate xciv. in the 3d vol. of D’Hancarville’s col- 
 lection. The painting of this, as far as it concerns Pan and 
 Celmis, I have already explained : the remaining part also 
 deserves notice. A naked male there approaches a tree, the 
 trunk of which is embraced by two serpents, in the same way 
 as the mundane egg is embraced by the Agathodsemon. The 
 three Hesperian apples hang above, and the naked male figure 
 appears to be kept at bay by one of the serpents which guard 
 them. A draped female advances upon the other side, but 
 
79 
 
 upon that no fruit is to be seen. Thus fruitfulness and ste- 
 rility, and the draped and unembarrassed states appear to be 
 purposely contrasted. To the right are Pan, with the globe, 
 and Celmis. I confess that I formerly found a difficulty in be- 
 lieving, with Passeri, that many Chaldean traditions had found 
 their way among his Tuscan ancestors ; but the more I consider 
 this plate, the more I am led to think that an obscure notion 
 of the objects of these traditions had been preserved in the 
 mysteries : nor can I refrain from adducing those memorable 
 words in Gen. chap. iii. v. 11. “ Who told thee that thou wast 
 4£ naked P hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded 
 “ thee that thou shouldest not eat ?” 
 
 The mode of solution which I propose on all occasions, 
 in place of the unsatisfactory reference usually made to poetic 
 mythology and history, will at least, rescue the credit of the artists 
 who executed these paintings, from the charge of anachronism, 
 and of disregarding unity of place in the scenes they depicted ; and 
 it is with every respect for the learned antiquary Passeri, that I 
 offer a remedy for the apparent incongruity in his explanation of 
 such a vase as the following, plate xm. vol. i., where he has 
 felt a difficulty to reconcile the appearance of Clytemnestra with 
 Iphigenia and a female attendant at Sparta, whilst, divided from 
 them only by a pillar, were seen Achilles demanding the daughter 
 of the king in marriage, and Ulysses interfering ; which last events 
 must have taken place at Aulis. The difficulty seems to have 
 arisen from a wrong interpretation of the umbrella borne by the 
 Iphigenia, which I have elsewhere given reason to believe (upon 
 vases at least) does not denote marriage.* The truth is, that in 
 
 * When the bride walked beneath the umbrella, it was to denote a transition 
 from the shades to light, from barrenness to fecundity ; and for the same reason the 
 bride was covered with the hood or veil, as in the celebrated gem which represents 
 the marriage of Cupid and Psyche. 
 
80 
 
 this painting the three females form a group in inferis , which is 
 implied by the umbrella spread over them ; they are draped, as 
 being inert, and their inactivity is further implied by two of them 
 being seated, and the third in a quiescent (though upright) 
 posture : the fancied Clytemnestra is indeed in the act of listen- 
 ing with appearance of expectation ; equally with her com- 
 panions she is motionless ; but they are in inferis , where like 
 the daemon in his glass prison, they sit enchanted, waiting until 
 some more powerful magician shall come to their assistance, 
 and break the charm. The pillar, beneath which they are seated, 
 is the boundary between motion and rest, between life and death. 
 The small figure upon the summit is not the Tauric Diana, but 
 the emblematical Bacchus, whose powers are for awhile suspended. 
 The hooded elder, resting on his staff, and the supposed Achilles, 
 leaning on his spear, are engaged in conversation. The gross 
 appearance of the latter is ill suited to the youthful and fiery 
 character of the Grecian hero : and I conceive, they are both 
 designed to complete the view of that intermediate state, to which 
 all ranks, the virgin and the matron, the warrior and the sage, 
 were supposed to be equally obnoxious. Their expectation of 
 being recalled is however indicated by the fingers of the warrior 
 bent backward, and on the reverse of the vase, the animating 
 powers advance to release them, with the torch, the tibiae, and 
 the tambourine, to the sound of which instruments, perhaps, the 
 Clytemnestra listens, being thereby apprised of their coming. 
 

2Vatt JOL j, SI. 
 
 
81 
 
 CHAP. XL 
 
 Of Fish, and the Allegory of Angling. 
 
 Before I proceed to the examination of new matter, for I have 
 other subtleties to propose, and I shall be obliged to adopt a 
 particular jargon in expounding the sophisticated ideas which were 
 embodied and expressed on vases, I will adduce something 
 further on the subject of resuscitation. For this purpose I select 
 a vase in the collection of D’Hancarville, vol. ii. plate xxvn. 
 Upon this appear the Dioscuri, who, having landed the female 
 Bacchus in inferis , are in the act of heaving their anchor, and 
 rowing back to the opposite shore of the Styx. The Libera seated 
 on the bank, in the mystic attitude of the Harpocrates, awaits the 
 return of the genius who lhay be charged with calling her into 
 activity. This already appears in the upper part of the painting, 
 where a water-fowl is on the wing towards her, bearing in its 
 mouth a fish, which, in this instance, is evidently used for a symbol 
 of resuscitation. From this allusion of fish to the principle of 
 animation required by inert nature, angling became an appro- 
 priate devicefor any monumental stone. Upon one of this 
 class in the Townley collection, a fisherman seated on a rock 
 
 M 
 
82 
 
 angles for fish ; and in the collection of Charles Blundell, Esq., 
 at Ince, near Liverpool, a figure of an angler (in small life), 
 seated on a rock with a basket of fish by his side, illustrates the 
 same idea. 
 
 The reader, prepared by the foregoing observations, will 
 probably feel himself at no loss if I introduce him to a fishing 
 party composed of distinguished ancient personages, for an ac- 
 quaintance with which I am indebted to the condescension of 
 Thomas Hope, Esq., who has politely permitted an engraving to 
 be taken from a Sicilian vase in his splendid collection, whereon 
 this subject is preserved. The triad of grisly figures exhibited 
 in the accompanying plate consists of Hercules, distinguishable 
 by the lion’s skin and quiver, kneeling on a rock in the centre, 
 Neptune angling, and Hermes seated to the right, reaching 
 forward the caduceus. The anxiety and attention of Hercu- 
 les are well expressed by his attitude, and by the hand invert- 
 ed, as if he were watching the expected bite. The sovereign 
 of the waters, behind him, grasps a fish that he has just hook- 
 ed, and Hermes, who could either consign to the deep, or 
 resuscitate, with equal facility, by means of his caduceus, needs 
 no better implement on the present occasion. Thus each 
 pursues the sport with equal prospect of success. But who 
 would expect from a subject so grotesquely detailed, that the 
 painter had designed to express the triple power of the deity, 
 drawing the principle of life from the primary abyss ? Such, 
 however, I presume to be the sophisticated meaning of the 
 painting : for the vine springing from the feet of Hercules 
 identifies him with the creating Bacchus, who has assumed the 
 lion’s skin and quiver, as emblematical of power. The preserver 
 is designated by Neptune, who presided over the waters, and 
 he is here opposed to the destroyer and regenerator, Hermes. 
 In confirmation of this exposition, let me observe, that winged 
 
83 
 
 genii denote the animating principle ; and such is their meaning 
 when Psyche angles for winged infants instead of fish, on a 
 gem published by Bracci. * 
 
 The original cause for the acceptation of fish in this sense 
 it were difficult to ascertain : probably it arose from the ready 
 propagation of their species. But I have met with a curious 
 reason assigned for it in Plutarch, which I will venture to adduce. 
 The priests of Neptune at Megara, as the Syrians also, it seems, 
 abstained from fish, because they were the symbol of humid 
 nature, from which all things were created. But the opinion 
 of Anaximander is truly whimsical ; for he attempts to prove, 
 (says Plutarch f, or Nestor for him,) not that fish and men 
 are in their natures the same, but that men were originally 
 generated in fish, and being bred up (as was the case with 
 the first men,) until they were equal to providing for them- 
 selves, they were then cast out, and they caught hold of dry 
 land. Those who do not fully assent to the system of Mr. 
 Bryant will scarcely permit me to refer this tradition to the 
 Deluge J ; but the Indian Vishnu, the preserver, is fabled to 
 have interfered, in the form of a fish, during the destruction 
 of the world by water. Those Gentile divinities, which are 
 reported to have been personated by figures ending in the 
 form of a fish, were consequently representations of the deity, 
 in his generating or preserving capacity, and we may plainly 
 discover, that it was not merely from the exposition of the 
 
 * Bracci, Memorie degli antichi Incisori, vol. i. tab. xix. No. 1 . 
 
 •J" ’Avui-lpuvSpos tcuv elvSpomwv 'SJctrepoi x«» /xrjTepa xoivov diro$v)Vct$ tov fyduv. — 
 Plutarch. SojW.Troc. %poS A. lib. viii. prob. 8. Aj<i t / ju.«Ai<rr a. ol Hvbtxyopixo) ey.'liu^cov 
 
 TOVg ’l%6vg 't&UgyTOUVTO. 
 
 % See many ingenious arguments respecting the Ceto, indifferently considered as 
 a fish or boat. Analysis of Ancient Mythology. 
 
 M 2 
 
84 
 
 initial letters comprised in the word IX0T2 *, that the title of 
 the fish was given to Christ, as the saviour or preserver, by the 
 early converts to his church, but it arose from a laudable zeal in 
 his followers to reclaim the Pagans from their absurd worship, by 
 speaking to them in a symbolical and sacred language, which they 
 readily understood. 
 
 ’LjCOUf, Xpi(TT 0 J, 0600 Yioj, 2; OOTrip . 
 
85 
 
 CHAP. XII. 
 
 Of Old Age, Wine, Music, and Rhetoric. 
 
 I will dismiss the subject of angling, by referring to some 
 pleasing lines upon a worn out sportsman, who hung up his 
 fishing rods and lines, and implements of the chace, to Hermes : 
 by the concluding line of the epigram — 
 
 — ’Ex yypoos S’ aSgav'/jj SeSst «», 
 
 I am reminded, that in the Greek religious allegories, old age 
 implies a state of bondage and inertion. To figures of this class 
 wine is frequently presented, as the invigorating principle. This 
 appears in the Antichita d' Ercolano, Pitture , vol. v. plate xlv. 
 wherein are depicted Silenus seated beneath a leafless tree, and a 
 female pouring wine to him from a uter. Upon an ancient 
 terracotta in the Townley collection, may be seen two Dioscuri, 
 hooded, as agents in inferis, who resting on one knee, their backs 
 turned to each other, and one hand uplifted, pour wine into a 
 tazza , and present it severally to a couchant griffin. In that 
 well known bas relief, of which we have a spirited etching, the 
 
 It is given by Toup on Suidas, vol. i. p. 19. 
 
86 
 
 last in the work of Bartoli upon ancient sepulchres, Ganymede 
 offers wine (for such seems really to have been that liquor which 
 poets ennobled by the name of nectar) to an eagle overshadowed 
 by a tree. The avidity of the bird, and his longing after immor- 
 tality, are well expressed by his depressing the cup with his talon, 
 as if to procure a readier draught of the liquor. With this he 
 waits to be refreshed, before he wings his flight to the upper 
 hemisphere. That such allegories are conformable to the religious 
 notions of the Greeks may be collected from a passage of 
 Pausanias, which Passeri has cited, informing us that the Dorians 
 named Bacchus Psilas, a word implying, in their language, wings ; 
 and with great propriety, he adds, in his opinion, for wine elevates 
 and lightens the spirits of man, in the same way as wings uplift a 
 bird : — Seuv treSouiriv ol TuvryTou re ’A ftVKXaiov non A uivucrov, oqQotoctoi 
 Sokew YiXuv E7Tovo[/.cl^ovTeg. fiXa, KuXovtriv ol A ugieig toL -zj-te^cc. 
 uvQfjUTtovg <5e oivog Irrul^t te ku\ dvocnovcpiQi yvapnqv, ov&sv ti Yi<rtrovrj opvtSotg 
 
 TzrTE()ci. — Pausan. Lacon. lib. iii. p. 258.* The Bacchus of the 
 poets, young and sprightly, is never represented by them in- 
 dulging in wine to intoxication. Passeri has adduced some 
 beautiful lines from Nbnnus, which might furnish subject either 
 for the chisel or the pencil, in which he is appropriately 
 described sipping the genial liquor : — 
 
 K«» yXvxegov itorov sops, xctl oivopsvrou Aiovvtrou 
 Asuxa Sjaivojw-svcow epvQoilvsTO SocxtvXx %eipcZv. 
 
 Kaf Seirug ayxuXov ei%e /3 oo$ xepct(’ y$uttotov Se 
 Xe!\e<riv txxgoTtxTouriv eye ixja.ro B ocxyog kepizrjg. 
 
 Lib. xii. v. 201. 
 
 *• Aristophanes, who was a scoffer, has made allusion to this in his drama 
 of the Acharnenses ; where the Chorus, observing the feathers of poultry that had 
 been picked for dressing, says : “ He hath cast these feathers” (in the original, wings) 
 (( the symbols of life, before his door Tou (3lov S’ Ss7y/taT«S£ r a impa. npo twv 
 
 Svpwv ( Acharn . v. 977.) : while the humorous and more immediate sense of ro5 filou 
 hlyfix is “ the sign, or proof, of good living.” 
 
87 
 
 “ Bacchus the vine’s sweet bev’rage foremost found, 
 
 Its foaming juice his purple fingers crown’d; 
 
 Forth from the cup’s writhed horn the drops he drew, 
 
 Bent o’er the brim, and lightly sipp’d the dew.” * 
 
 The reason for wine being sacred to Bacchus, as corn 
 and tillage were favoured by Ceres, partly arose from the em- 
 blematical reference of it to resuscitation. 
 
 Music and musical instruments are frequently applied on 
 ancient monuments from a similar allusion. The trumpet used 
 in this sense, in a plate in D’Hancarville’s collection, would be 
 worth the reader’s notice ; but he will turn from it with disgust, 
 when he finds it accompanied by an indecent emblem that 
 is further illustrative of the meaning I assign to it. The lyre 
 and tibice are more agreeably introduced on vases, and likewise on 
 gems ; and in the work of Caylus, especially, may be noticed 
 the three Cabirs on the deck of a boat, which may be supposed 
 to float on the great abyss, while Camillus excites them to dance 
 by blowing the tibice. 
 
 In subjects more intellectually conceived, rhetoric has furnish- 
 ed many elegant groups. Upon an ancient fresco among the Anti- 
 chita d’Ercolano, may be seen an elder seated, with a cista of vo- 
 lumes at his feet, and a female addressing him, with the hand ex- 
 tended in a persuasive attitude. I venture to deem the former phi- 
 losophy, in the latter I recognize eloquence j for it may be suggest- 
 ed, that philosophy when inert is little more than meditation, but 
 animated by eloquence it assumes a different nature, it benefits 
 and enlightens ; and it is from this union of soul with body, that 
 we derive the noblest productions of literary composition. 
 
 In this class, therefore, I will place a vase already noticed, 
 where a youth in the act of pleading is entitled nEl0Xi, and 
 
 This version is from the elegant pen of W. Sotheby, Esq. 
 
88 
 
 a seated female EYKAEA*, as a personification of eloquence 
 rousing the historic muse. It is to be regretted that an imper- 
 fection in the vase prevents our ascertaining the character of a 
 third figure, that would have rendered the group complete ; but 
 the allegory is sufficiently intelligihle. 
 
 * Or perhaps EYKAEIA : the I may be supposed to be concealed by the skirt of 
 the robe of the sitting figure. 
 

89 
 
 CHAP. XIII. 
 
 Of the dotted Chaplet , Girdle , and Scarf — The Fate of Cassandra and 
 the Flight of JEneas mystically treated. 
 
 It was just at this moment that I had promised to myself and 
 the mystas, my readers, admission to the very adyta of Eleusis ; 
 for I had found a key, not indeed that golden one which 
 Sophocles tells us was hung upon the tongue of the Eleusinian 
 priests, it was of baser metal : with the hope of obtaining useful 
 information I applied it ; but what a nauseous spectacle did it 
 disclose ! 
 
 To see the internal organisation of nature laid open, to view 
 the mysterious oeconomy of her womb, (and this merely to show 
 the transition from sterility to fecundity, and to prove that 
 nature is ever reproductive,) might afford entertainment to the 
 anatomist, or the obstetrical professor ; but to an enquirer into 
 the principles of Greek theology, it presented nothing but 
 horror and disgust. Let me then quickly close this chamber, 
 where from every object drips uncleanness, and chase its contents 
 from my memory. It is now, for the first time, that I applaud 
 the prudence of those who forbad the disclosure of the mysteries. 
 The Greek writers often intimate their acquaintance with these 
 
 N 
 
90 
 
 doctrines, which visions, and other warnings, deterred them from 
 exposing : but, independent of their fears, and the punishment 
 that awaited whoever revealed them, these writers might also 
 have convicted themselves of unmanly conduct in having listened 
 to such discourses ; and I conceive, notwithstanding the laxity of 
 morals in Greece, that the priests who adopted these gross allusions 
 in explaining their tenets would scarcely have been honoured 
 with general respect, but for the consolatory promises also held 
 out by them to the initiated. 
 
 The extent of these disquisitions will be somewhat abridged, 
 from the disappointment I have experienced : of some things 
 which it yet remains for me to treat, a part must be taken by my 
 reader for granted; but should he be inclined to withhold his assent 
 to certain points, I will rather court his incredulity, than be com- 
 pelled to assign authority for what I advance. To enter upon an 
 investigation from mere curiosity were a waste of time, but to 
 collect from any such enquiry what may throw light upon the 
 customs and ceremonies of distant nations, or tend to approxi- 
 mate the scattered tribes of the av^^uiruv towards their 
 
 original focus, may have its use, as well as rational entertain- 
 ment. It is with this view, therefore, that I proceed in my 
 disquisition. 
 
 The object of these nightly shows was chiefly to display 
 nature resuscitated, generally by the means of some vivifying gift ; 
 but this present was supposed to be first impregnated, in a 
 manner, which for obvious reasons, I forbear to explain. Suffice 
 it to say, that certain luminous spots, whether disposed in a 
 circle, or expressed upon a leaf or chaplet, a girdle or scarf, were 
 signs of such impregnation. Hence I have reason for dissenting 
 from the report of Diodorus Siculus, respecting the veC^)g or fawn’s 
 hide, which that writer observes, was said to be worn by Bacchus, 
 because it represented the starry firmament, whereas the spotted 
 appearance of it recommended this peculiar clothing to Bacchus 
 

 
Plate JU.V. 
 
 
91 
 
 for the reason I have stated ; it was a symbol of fecundity. It 
 was, therefore, that during the Lupercalia at Rome, women vo- 
 luntarily submitted to blows, inflicted by those who ran about the 
 streets with thongs of goat’s hide : from the nature of that animal, 
 the blow was thought topromise fruitfulness, and easy delivery : — 
 
 Nupta, quid expectas? non tu pollentibus herbis, 
 
 Nec prece, nec magico carmine mater eris. 
 
 Excipe foecundas patienter verbera dextrag ; 
 
 Jam socer optati nomen habebit avi. 
 
 Ovid. Fast. lib. ii. 425. 
 
 This is the meaning of the dotted leaf which appears upon vases; 
 and when the spotted crown or girdle (whether tied or untied) 
 was presented to a seated female, it denoted the re-admission of 
 inert nature into the circle of existence. This may be seen upon 
 a vase, in D’Hancarville, vol. ii. plate li. where a female is seated 
 upon a terminus, beneath the shade of an umbrella : with her left 
 hand she inverts a speculum , referring, as I before observed, to the 
 t7$og or simulachrum animce, at that moment in the lower regions, 
 whilst the vivifying Dioscurus presents the dotted untied girdle. 
 This one example will furnish a solution of numerous others that 
 might be adduced. But I am here presented with an opportunity 
 of turning to a more pleasing subject, and at the same time of 
 doing justice to a very well judged assertion of the missionary 
 Paolino, who, struck with the apparent correspondence of many 
 Indian ceremonies with others which he had formerly noticed 
 upon the Greek vases, declared, that a satisfactory explanation of 
 the latter could not be given, until they were compared with 
 the manners of the Orientals.* 
 
 In the very entertaining narrative of Captain Turner’s em- 
 bassy to Tibet we are informed, that “ between people of every rank 
 
 Paolino’s Travels, p. 255. English edit. 8vo. 
 N 2 
 
92 
 
 “ and station in life, the presenting a silken scarf constantly forms 
 “ an essential part of the ceremonial of salutation. If persons of 
 “ equal rank meet, an exchange takes place; if a superior is ap- 
 “ proached, he holds out his hand to receive the scarf, and a simi- 
 “ lar one is thrown across the shoulders of the inferior by the 
 “ hand of an attendant at the moment of his dismission. They 
 “ are commonly damasked, and the sacred words, Oom Maunee 
 “ paimee oom*, are usually interwoven near both ends and again, 
 “ trivial and unmeaning as this custom may appear to Europeans, 
 “ long and general practice has here attached to it the highest 
 “ importance. I could obtain no determinate information as to 
 “ its meaning or origin ; but I find that it has, indeed, a most ex- 
 “ tensive prevalence. It is observed, as I have before noticed, in 
 “ all the territory of the Daeb Raja; it obtains throughout Tibet ; 
 “ it extends from Turkestan to the confines of the great desert ; 
 
 * Hom-mani-peme-hom, in Alphab. Tibetan, these words I would render, Jial, 
 Manes loto ( insidens),Jiat . Mani, of whom and of his parents, Patecius and Carossa, 
 we have a very imperfect account in the work of Father Giorgi, I apprehend to have 
 been originally the Indian Menu, the ^Egyptian Menes, and our patriai’ch Noah : 
 since, in the East, the same personages are revived at different periods, agreeable with 
 the scheme of the Metempsychosis. This the Buddhists of Tibet believe to be 
 carried on by means of the lunar ship, which ferries over the souls of the approved to 
 the pure regions. Alph. Tibet, p. 238 . 372 . Hence we may infer that the deluge, 
 and the subsequent renewal of the human race were accepted by early nations, as a 
 type and assurance of a future state. The persons of Mani and Pout appear to be 
 distinct. The former is decidedly the patriarch Noah. A late respectable Oriental 
 scholar, Sir W. C. Rouse Boughton, Bart., was disposed to identify Pout with Phut, 
 the third son of Ham ; in illustration of which idea he observed, that as Phut was 
 third in descent from Noah, so BotAuaj, Budyas, is named by Arrian as a king hi 
 India, third in descent from Dionysus. But I apprehend that Pout is much the 
 earlier of the two, and that in fact he personates divine spirit. It would seem that the 
 scarf with its legend presented in Tibet were an appeal to the patriarch Mani, accom- 
 panied by a solemn wish, that the person greeted might be admitted into the circle of 
 renewed existence, in the same way as Mani had anciently been favoured. 
 
93 
 
 “ it is practised in China, and I doubt not reaches to the limits of 
 “ Mantchieux Tartary. I view it merely in the light of an em- 
 “ blem of friendship, and a pledge of amity.” 
 
 I have been much gratified by the particular attention paid 
 by Captain Turner to this ceremony, and it were to be wished 
 that every traveller would be equally accurate in relating even 
 the most trifling customs of the distant nations he may visit. 
 The meaning of the ceremony, I conceive, will be discovered 
 upon the painted Greek vases. As the umbrella, and its use in 
 the East, may be understood by a reference to these monuments 
 of art, and records of ancient religious opinions, so, I conceive, 
 may the present of the scarf, with its mystic legend, in Tibet. It 
 is no more than the girdle presented by the vivifying agent, who 
 calls him that accepts it into the circle of life. On vases it is 
 marked with what denotes the seeds of existence. In Tibet it is 
 impregnated with the mystic words, Oom maunee jpaimee oom , 
 which are supposed to be equally efficacious. 
 
 The entrance into the regenerated state is expressed on a vase 
 in thework ofPasseri,bya seated female in the act of putting on the 
 girdle. In the same work we read of a mystical dance, termed 
 saltatio ad restim , where dancing youths, taking hold of the same 
 rope, described a circle in their movements. When wehearof Ceres 
 with her wheaten crown, we are reminded of that goddess, who 
 instituting the mysteries, taught the admission of decayed nature 
 into the circle of existence, of which the grain in her chaplet em- 
 blematically represented the seeds; and when a Grecian female had 
 passed the pains of labour, a chaplet was suspended at her portal, 
 to signify that a human being was newly admitted into the circle 
 of life. 
 
 By way of concluding these remarks upon dotted circles, 1 
 will notice a singular vase of very homely workmanship and 
 painting, preserved in the British Museum, and published, plate 
 
94 
 
 lvii. in the third volume of D’Hancarville, which represents Cas- 
 sandra slain by the Dioscuri. A female extends her arms ready to 
 receive her after death, and another holds a taper, at the top of 
 which, instead of flame, appears a circle of luminous spots. I do 
 not hesitate to explain this emblem, as the circle of existence into 
 which the slaughtered Cassandra is about to be re-admitted. To 
 the left above, a female readies out the branch of conversion ; and 
 to the right at top, the owl brings a hoop illumined with mystic 
 spots. Other circular dotted emblems, disposed in the opaque 
 parts of the scene, may imply future circles or stages of existence, 
 in different planets. Mr. Bottiger has thought this painting 
 worth notice in his dissertation upon another vase, whereon the 
 story of Cassandra is differently represented. I presume the 
 torch surmounted by a dotted circle, is what Mr. Bottiger has 
 termed a key in the hand of the priestess, the warden of the 
 temple ; nevertheless the engraving given by D’Hancarville is 
 correct ; and the symbol cannot be mistaken. Upon the other 
 circular emblems Mr. B. is silent. But with regard to that vase 
 which has given occasion to the elaborate dissertation of Mr. 
 Bottiger, I will observe by the way, the subject of it is of similar 
 meaning with the other in the British Museum. The event 
 succeeds to a very generally recorded destruction — the over- 
 throw of Troy. The violence offered is not so much to Cassandra, 
 as to inert, but repugnant nature ; and I suspect, the embryo 
 figure sketched upon the disk in the upper part of the painting 
 commended by Mr. Bottiger, is no votive tablets unless, indeed, it 
 be to Artemis Lochia. 
 
 While speaking of Trojan history, an unpublished vase of 
 the late Arthur Champernowne, Esq., occurs to me, exhibiting 
 the flight of iEneas under circumstances that, I apprehend, no 
 poet ever detailed, but aptly enough conceived, if we refer them 
 to the initiators in Lower Italy. iEneas, bearing Anchises on 
 
Pfatr .XI.' 
 
95 
 
 his back, is represented wading ancle deep through shoal water, 
 and conducted by Mercury to a faun, as the generative or re- 
 invigorating principle. Anchises carries off a cornucopia, the 
 symbol of fertility, instead of the Penates. Behind is seated a 
 female, her head and arms gracefully turned, and designed with 
 uncommon taste. From her retrospective attitude, and the affec- 
 tionate concern expressed in her countenance, she doubtless per- 
 sonates Creusa, who was left behind when the Trojan hero quitted 
 his ruined country. She represents the inert state in Inferis , as 
 can be satisfactorily shown, by comparing this with another vase 
 in the British Museum. The fishes in the lower part of the 
 painting are equally symbols of water and generation. It may be 
 said that the expedition of JEneas to the Inferi is no more than 
 his voyage to Hesperia, an ancient name for Italy, which was 
 occidental with respect to Greece. But I must add, that like 
 the painting disserted upon by Mr. Bottiger, the plate before us 
 illustrates the destruction and subsequent renewal of things * ; 
 and the work of M. Boulanger will show, that subversion in 
 the political as well as in the physical world was anciently con- 
 sidered the prelude, as it were, to a new life, and order, and 
 general happiness. In the same way would I dispose of 
 most of those subjects on vases, which antiquaries have termed 
 Homeric. 
 
 These remarks I particularly recommend to the reader who 
 may be acquainted with the dissertation of the learned professor, 
 and those who seek new subjects of mythology upon vases will 
 
 * Livy lias doubted whether Ascanius were the son of vEneas by Creusa 
 or Lavinia. It is very probable that he was by the former, and that the name 
 lulus was afterwards given as a word of good omen, which indicated the re- 
 establishment of his family, since v IouAoj is a word of religious meaning, as I have 
 elsewhere endeavoured to explain. 
 
96 
 
 do well to consider the painting I first cited. The strange hiero- 
 glyphics with which it is accompanied, justify a belief, thatwhenever 
 subjects were selected from history or mythology to adorn these 
 funeral vessels, they were merely designed as vehicles for theo- 
 logical opinions. Hence facts were misrepresented, or gave 
 place to mystical conceits, devised by those priests by whom 
 the Eleusinian shows were conducted. 
 

 
97 
 
 CHAP. XIV. 
 
 Of Solstitial Fountains. 
 
 I now present my reader with a plate, which he may have 
 noticed in the work of D’Hancarville. * The meaning of it has 
 never been explained. The antiquary, therefore, who looks with 
 eagerness for unedited works, will probably be not less gratified, 
 if I shall succeed in rendering intelligible a monument that is 
 already familiar to him. The leading object in this scene is the 
 terminal Bacchus ; but other figures are comprised in it of alle- 
 gorical import. To the right of a pillar with its capital placed 
 upon a font, or behind an altar, a transparent opening again 
 displays the terminal Bacchus in a fixed state ; and in an open- 
 ing to the left is a naked figure whose limbs are moved, as if he 
 were in the act of dancing. The pillar is here the boundary 
 between motion and rest; and it seems to illustrate the inertness 
 of Bacchus, and the temporary suspension of his powers. Thus 
 much may be collected from the painting, which I leave for 
 the present, to consider what is suggested to me respecting it by 
 a coin of Thespiae. 
 
 * Vol. ii. plate lxxii. 
 
 O 
 
98 
 
 The reverse of this coin engraved in the work of Pelerin* * * § , 
 exhibits a lofty phallus crossed by three horizontal lines, on one 
 side of which is an object somewhat resembling a bell, and on the 
 other a theta, in its ancient square form ££ as the initial letter of 
 ThespiseinBoeotia, where it has been supposed the coin was stricken. 
 
 Pausanias informs usf , that the figure of *E gag, or Love, at 
 Thespiae, was a white stone, i. e. a phallus or obelisk ; so that if 
 the leading emblem upon the coin had reference to his rites, we 
 might conclude they were not of the most decent nature. But 
 all this may, perhaps, be explained by means of the tract ascribed 
 to Lucian, de Syria Dea. The ancient temple at Hierapolis in 
 Syria, is there reported to have stood upon an eminence in the 
 middle of the city, the base of which eminence was enclosed by a 
 double wall. Near the gates to the north, were erected two phalli 
 (of the enormous height of thirty fathoms §), one of which a man 
 ascended twice every year||, swarming it by a chain, as was prac- 
 tised by the Arabs in climbing the palm-trees of their country. 
 Arrived at the top, he coiled his clothes round so as to form a 
 
 * Medailles des Peuples et des Villes, vol. i. plate xxv. fig. 26. Haym ascribes 
 this coin to Thebes. The principal object upon it has usually been termed a 
 quiver. 
 
 f Bceotic. lib. ix. c. 27. p. 761. Ed. Kuhnii. 
 
 J (i Hodiernum ejus nomen Membig a primigenio Mabog, nam a Seleuco Syriae 
 “ Rege dicta demum Hierapolis.” — Rasche rei Numarice, t. ii. par. 2. p. 279. 
 
 § I have substituted the judicious emendation of Palmerius for the extravagant 
 measure rpir]xo<rleov in the text. 
 
 |j ’Ef tootewv tov eve*. tpotWbv, uvYjp ex<x<rTou st6o$ 8tj dveg^srcu, or rather, perhaps, 
 each of which he ascended once annually. 
 
99 
 
 nest or seat, and having let down another chain*, which he 
 carried with him, and drawn up by the means of it food and ne- 
 cessaries, he remained upon the phallus seven days. Seated aloft, 
 he prayed for all Syria ; but whilst he prayed, he rang a bell : 
 xgOTesi TroUpcx, y/aXittov, to cceiSei y.Eyct 3 jcai Ktvsopevdv. Some con- 
 
 ceived that thus being nearer to the gods he was heard to more 
 advantage, whilst others referred the custom to the deluge, when all 
 men betook themselves to the high places for safety. The phallus, 
 with sticks projecting from it to assist the man in ascending j~, and 
 the bell, seem to be imitated upon the Thespian coin. The 
 Persian Mithra, who was supposed to intercede with Oromasdes, 
 the deity, is represented floating in air upon the mystical Tau ; 
 the man, therefore, on the phallus, who interceded by prayer for 
 all Syria, might have been designed to personate Mithra ; but, 
 says the Pseudo-Lucian, some refer this ceremony to the deluge ; 
 and by the lucubrations of the learned M. De Sacy we are in- 
 formed that similar phalli in Egypt actually did refer to the 
 overflowings of the Nile, which seem to have served as a national 
 record of that greater flood, which was equally commemorated on 
 the banks of the Euphrates. 
 
 From an unedited work of a Syriac writer, from whose tour 
 in Egypt an extract has been given by M. De Sacy it appears 
 that similar phalli were erected before the temple at Heliopolis 
 in Egypt. At the top of these obeliscal columns were bonnets 
 of copper of many quintals’ weight, and when the river, with 
 which they communicated, rose, the water issued from the 
 
 * I venture to read oi> fictKprjv which words, I suspect, formerly crept into 
 
 the text, although the first of the three is now omitted. 
 
 -f- Or perhaps to mark the different heights to which the water rose. 
 
 In the Magazin Encyclopedique for 1801 , t. vi. 
 
 o 2 
 
100 
 
 bonnet, serving as a signal to the natives of the annual inun- 
 dation. * 
 
 We read in Bishop Pococke’s account of the Eastf of a 
 pillar standing at Balbec, in the capital of which was a basin 
 for water, from which a semicircular channel descended along 
 the shaft; and of another pillar, of curious formation, nearer 
 to Lebanon. Bishop Pococke doubted respecting the probable 
 use of these, whether they had been designed for conduits, or for 
 any superstitious ceremonies of the heathens. 
 
 Applying these observations to my immediate purpose, I 
 discover from them the precise meaning of this painting, which 
 the late Mr. Cardon, senior, who furnished both the drawings X 
 and plates for the work of D’Hancarville, re-engraved for me. 
 It exhibits a solstitial fountain. The bowl-shaped capital, and 
 the thin tube in the shaft of the pillar, must be supposed to 
 have connection with the terminus near it. When the water 
 contained in the pillar was increased by the commencement of 
 solstitial floods, seeking its level, it would discharge itself through 
 the perforated breast of the Bacchus. It is here that the illumined 
 paintings in the back ground become intelligible : for as previous 
 to the arrival of the sun at the solstice vegetation had slackened, 
 so, upon his passing it, vegetation was restored by these inun- 
 dations. The contrasted figures of the terminus and the dancing 
 satyr imply the vicissitude of inertness and activity ; and the 
 cherishing effect of this phenomenon upon nature is expressed 
 by the water issuing from the breast of Bacchus. 
 
 * It may be difficult to conceive the precise application of the obeliscal pole upon 
 the Thespian or Theban coin. If it really represented what I have suspected, it is not 
 impossible that, placed in some low situation, such a contrivance might have been 
 used to mark the rising and falling of the lake Copais, of which, and of its singular 
 catabatkra, a most interesting account is given by that very accurate traveller, DodwelL 
 Travels in Greece , vol. i. p. 238. 
 f Vol. ii. p. 107. 
 
 J These were preserved in the Townley library. 
 
101 
 
 CHAR XV. 
 
 Of the Window and the Ladder , and the Banqueting Chamber of the 
 Blessed. — Singular Customs of the Oriental Buddhists explained. 
 
 Of a few points yet remaining for discussion, the window and 
 ladder may be noticed as interesting symbols. Passed explains 
 the square windows on vases to be receptacles in the walls for 
 images of the domestic Lares, which were only opened on festive 
 days, but were otherwise closed with bolts, as may be seen in the 
 engravings of his work. But this opinion I must be permitted to 
 class with the errors into which this learned antiquary was un- 
 avoidably betrayed, by placing the objects of his researches , 
 amongst a people, who neither invented the vessels nor the 
 allegories he described. From the engravings of his valuable 
 work, however, I flatter myself the meaning of these symbols 
 may be elucidated ; for which purpose a plate * in his first 
 volume may be properly adduced, where a dove looks from one 
 of these square receptacles, and a genius flying downward reaches 
 out the vivifying scarf to a naked male figure. From this 
 painting we discover, what powers were supposed to issue from 
 these apertures, and what was the object of their descent. 
 
 Vol. i. plate lxxxvi. 
 
102 
 
 If the reader be not fatigued with this continued jargon, 
 which is actually necessary for the exposition of my subject, 
 and which I have endeavoured to submit in as intelligible a 
 manner as the nature of it will allow, I will proceed to investigate 
 the meaning of another symbol, which I hope will better repay 
 his attention than what I have lately discussed. I allude to 
 the ladder : but here I am again obliged to dissent from Passeri, 
 who for want of a better explanation was content to consider it an 
 emblem of fortune. “ Quis fortunae manentis imaginem, apud 
 “ Etruscos inveniri reputasset? et quidem nacti sumus.” — Yol. i. 
 p. 7. But notwithstanding the authority of iElian, which is in- 
 geniously attached to this declaration of discovery, I venture 
 to affirm that the antiquary was deceived in his conjecture. 
 “ Sustulit tamen haesitationem (he continues) iElianus de Var. 
 “ Hist. ii. 29. hasc scribens, n iTTuxog ev MiTuXyvy uciTetrKedoctre To7g lejaoig 
 <£ KXifxoaca, elg oddepictv j ulv ^V (r,v eirtTvifisiovy adro ds tovto uvdBviftot elvou. 
 (i alviTTOfjLivog rvjv etc rvjg TV^vjg, uvw, v.ai kcctui iaztoIktoctiv. T^ottov Tivce. 
 i{ tuv [tev edru^/odvruv uviovtuv, kutiovtuv de Tav dv'&TV^ouvTuv^ (i PittacUS 
 
 (( of Mitylene introduced a ladder into the temples of his country, 
 4< not designing it for any particular use, but simply as a vote or 
 offering, implying thereby the rise and fall in the vicissitudes of 
 <£ fortune, according to which the prosperous might be said to 
 £ < climb upwards, the unfortunate to descend.” All this maybe 
 very true of Pittacus, but as I speak of allegories which were not 
 devised by the celebrated Lesbian sage, I must decline accepting 
 this emblem in the sense assigned to it by Passeri. Nor will 
 that country, to which I have occasionally betaken myself for the 
 origin of symbols and a solution of such difficulties as impeded 
 my way, avail me in the present case ; the meritorious historio- 
 grapher of Hindustan directs me to Chaldaea for the genuine 
 sense of this allegory, “ to that grand theological school, in which 
 “ the metempsychosis was first divulged ; in which the sidereal 
 
103 
 
 if ladder and gates were first erected.” * * * § Mr. Maurice has left 
 me no doubt as to the signification of the ladder, I therefore 
 advance with confidence, that this symbol refers to the Metem- 
 psychosis, of which the different stages are represented by its 
 steps. -j- I am further inclined to suggest, that the window 
 denotes perfection or the highest stage of it. In the Monumenti 
 Inediii of Winckelmann, is inserted a grotesque illustration of the 
 story of Jupiter and Alcmene. She is seated at a window, and 
 Jupiter, conducted by Mercury, ascends by a ladder to the feigned 
 character, who (might I be pardoned for an etymological trans- 
 gression) seems in this place to be no more than denoting 
 
 the summit, or perfection. 
 
 Similar with the preceding is a vase ;j;, where a grotesque 
 figure, attended by an agent with the torch and situla, and the 
 emblematical chaplet, ascends by a ladder to a female at a window, 
 to whom he offers the Hesperian fruit and the mystic girdle. 
 That the ladder is emblematical of life, we are assured by its 
 being occasionally impregnated by the mysterious dots § ; and as 
 the steps denote the Metempsychosis, it is fair to conclude that 
 the window is the highest stage. 
 
 But, perhaps, the curiosity of the reader may not rest here. 
 He may desire to look in at this window, and ascertain what may 
 be passing within this elevated apartment. I scruple not to 
 gratify him in his wish, and in doing so, I apprehend I shall 
 
 * Dissertation on the Oriental Trinities, p. 257. 
 
 f D’Hancarville was mistaken when he referred that gem of ancientrude sculpture, 
 Antiq. Etrusques, vol. iii. p. 195. plate xxviii. fig. 19, to the potter Choraeous, and the 
 bee, which, as he supposed, denoted him to be one of those Athenian tribes, which 
 occupied Mount Hymettus. It represents the Dioscurus with a vase in each hand, 
 ascending the ladder of the Metempsychosis, above the upper end of which is the 
 Psyche, or butterfly. 
 
 % Passeri, vol. iii. plate ccvi. 
 
 § Ibid. vol. i. plate xlvii. 
 
104 
 
 reach the utmost limits to which these disquisitions can be ex- 
 tended. On a marble bas relief of the Townley collection, now 
 in the British Museum, is a representation of a banquet, with the 
 whimsical device of a horse looking through a window. This, 
 then, is that Feast of the Blessed which I alluded to in the begin- 
 ning of this treatise, by which was implied the utmost object of 
 pagan hopes. To this the apparatus in the tomb of Cyrus, 
 described by Strabo, had reference, as also that in the upper 
 chamber of the pagoda of Belus at Babylon, in the first book of 
 Herodotus. The horse, as was shown respecting the Sicilian and 
 Punic vases, denoted the procession of spirit from water, and in 
 the present case it probably implies a similar vehicle, and the 
 arrival of another guest at this metaphysical banquet. 
 
 But what, if extending our view beyond the limits of Chaldaea, 
 we enter the courts of the Birman and other Buddhistical kings, 
 and witness ceremonies in every respect similar to the allegories 
 depicted on Greek vases ? We shall scarcely fear to incur the 
 charge of rashness or wanton misapplication of authorities, if we 
 presume to reduce them to such principles, as those which the 
 Chaldasan theologians professed, who imparted their mystic em- 
 blems to Egypt and Greece. Whoever has perused the account of 
 La Loubere of the kingdom of Siam, and the more recent narrative 
 of our accomplished countryman, the late Colonel Symes, 
 respecting the court of Ava, will remember that the kings of 
 those countries appear at court only from a window * ; and that 
 the hall of audience below (for this opening is many feet from 
 the ground) is decorated with umbrellas, f The eminence of the 
 
 * Dr. Kaempfer was thus received by the governors of Osacca and Miaco, the 
 residence of the ecclesiastical Emperor of Japan, appearing to him from an adjoining 
 apartment, after the shutters of lattice windows had been flung open. P. 479. and 
 p. 433. 
 
 f See the plate in the work of La Loubere, vol. i. p. 331. 
 
105 
 
 prince above his people is hereby implied, he thus appearing 
 perfect , or in the highest stage of the Metempsychosis, while his 
 courtiers below are shaded by the umbrellas, as if in Inferis , 
 un purified, or to suit my expression to the vase of Winkelmann, 
 at the bottom of the ladder. 
 
 The palace of the king of Siam is covered with seven roofs* : 
 the king resides under the seventh , nor dares any mortal climb 
 or walk above his head, -f What are these roofs but the ladder of 
 the Metempsychosis, with its seven steps, illustrated by Mr. Mau- 
 rice Xi of which the king of Siam flatters himself he has ascended 
 to the highest round ? whilst, to show the grovelling impurity, 
 the gross and abject state of his courtiers, they are compelled 
 to enter beneath the lowest roof, creeping upon all-fours. § 
 In the same spirit the Rajah of Bootan is described || residing 
 on the highest floor of his palace or dwelling, and the English 
 ambassador and his suite were obliged to mount by ladders 
 through different floors to arrive in his presence. Other singu- 
 larities which occur in the narrative of Captain Turner may be 
 referred to the influence of the same religious opinion : such as 
 the houses at Buxadewar, erected on props, although in a hilly 
 country, above the danger of reptiles or torrents, p. 28. ; Captain 
 Turner being conducted to the upper floor, upon his visit to a 
 recluse, p. 103; and particularly in p. 91., in the citadel of 
 Tassisudon, the seventh ladder leading to the temple of Ma- 
 hamoonie. 
 
 0 A view of this is given by La Loubere in a plate to vol. i. p. 95. 
 f Thus, in the embassy of Colonel Symes to Ava, may be noticed the offence 
 given to the boatmen, upon certain of our countrymen walking over -their heads on 
 the deck beneath which they slept. P. 451. 
 
 f 'EirruTTopou aupMV xuToi /3«fydSo j. Dissertation on the Oriental Trinities, p. 271. 
 The course of lustration by the Metempsychosis was supposed to be through the 
 seven planets. 
 
 § La Loubere de Siam, vol. i. p. 94. Ed. Amst. 1713. 
 
 |] Turner’s Embassy to Tibet, p. 66. 
 
 P 
 
106 
 
 I wish the coincidences I have brought into one point of 
 view might prove at least acceptable, if not of use, to those who 
 have the opportunity of mixing with the different Asiatic 
 nations whose customs afford such various subject for admiration 
 and curious enquiry. I offer them, at all events, in grateful ac- 
 knowledgement of the pleasure I have received from those who, 
 to the benefit of their country, have already accomplished such 
 visits, and who have communicated them with so much elegance 
 to the improvement of their countrymen. 
 
107 
 
 CHAP. XVI. 
 
 Extinction of Heathen Rites in Greece and Italy. — Eleusinian Mysteries 
 inadequate to the End proposed in them. — Conclusion. 
 
 These are the chief observations I have made after examining 
 the paintings upon many vases, and comparing them with such 
 allegories as I have found upon other works of ancient art. 
 Excepting that examples have been retrenched, more there 
 scarcely remained for .me to say, for much respecting these 
 painted vessels is yet unintelligible ; but to have exposed more 
 of what I have discovered than has been submitted, would have 
 only been to stir a filthy pool. The grossness of paganism we 
 may be pardoned for omitting ; the attaching ourselves to what- 
 ever, connected with it, may prove of service to universal history, 
 is surely laudable, and infinitely more pleasing. Many arcana 
 of the pagan theology may never be ascertained, nevertheless, we 
 have been permitted to recover from antiquity as much as may 
 forward the useful, and even the polite and elegant arts ; and 
 provided that the architect and artist, who borrow- the more 
 
 p 2 
 
108 
 
 obvious emblems of the Grecian mysteries to embellish their 
 works, apply them not incongruously, a nice attention to the 
 more sophisticated symbols may be very well excused. 
 
 A veil seems to have been kindly drawn by Providence, for 
 ages past, over the disgusting errors of paganism, which, having 
 answered its purpose, may now perhaps be innocently removed, 
 provided this be done with no irreverent hand. The most 
 polished states of Greece have been, perhaps designedly, possessed 
 by an ignorant people, whose ferocity long rendered many parts 
 inaccessible to the curious traveller, or whose jealousy prevented 
 his search. Not to mention the complete destruction of Roman 
 grandeur by the northern nations, volcanoes, kindled by a wise 
 hand, have produced a moral as well as a physical change in 
 many parts of Italy and Asia Minor, and burying whole tracts of 
 country in oblivion, with their monuments and rites, may, 
 perhaps, have in some measure contributed to furnish smooth 
 footway for Christianity to advance upon. 
 
 As no impropriety can now attend discussions of the present 
 nature, if we consider the result of our discoveries, and the object 
 to which the enigmatical allusions of this mysterious theology 
 seem to have been ultimately directed, it will appear that a know- 
 ledge of the relative situation of man with regard to the Deity, 
 was attempted through an exposition of the economy of the 
 universe ; that renovation from water, first brought to knowledge 
 by ancient tradition, and afterwards traced through various phe- 
 nomena, was considered as a pledge of re-existence and a future 
 state j but the continual succession of decay and renovation ob- 
 servable in nature was blended with these speculations. 
 
 That many truths had been handed down by early tradition 
 from the purest sources was the firm opinion of many of the 
 ancient philosophers ; but probably they little suspected how 
 much those truths had been disfigured in their passage to them. 
 This great fact, the renovation of created beings from water, after 
 
109 
 
 the flood, gave occasion to a mistaken notion of the pre-existence 
 of the soul, for which Plato has endeavoured to account in his 
 Phaedo, by very absurd and inconclusive arguments. Some of 
 the conjectures upon the state of the soul are there professed to 
 be drawn in the way of inference from the ona. and the vo^pu, by 
 which I presume we must understand the mysteries and the 
 popular religion of his country ; and, I doubt not, the doctrine of 
 the pre-existence of the soul was meant to be included amongst 
 these inferences. That it formed a part of what was taught in 
 the Eleusinian mysteries we know from a fragment of Cicero, 
 preserved by Augustine (lib. iv. contra Pelagium), which is thus 
 given, p. 403. vol. iii. Ed. Oxon. 4to. 1783. 
 
 “ Ex quibus humanae vitas erroribus et aerumnis fit, ut 
 “ interdum veteres illi sive vates, sive in sacris initiisque tra- 
 “ dendis divinae mentis interpretes, qui nos ob aliqua scelera 
 “ suscepta in vita superiore, poenarum luendarum causa natos 
 “ esse dixerunt, aliquid vidisse videantur ; verumque sit illud, 
 (( quod est apud Aristotelem, simili nos affectos esse supplicio, 
 c * atque eos, qui quondam, cum in praedonum Etruscorum manus 
 “ incidissent, crudelitate excogitata necabantur ; quorum corpora 
 “ viva cum mortuis, adversa adversis accommodata quam aptissime 
 “ colligabantur : ita nostros animos cum corporibus copulatos, ut 
 “ vivos cum mortuis esse conjunctos.” 
 
 Here it is shown that those who conducted the mysteries 
 taught a previous state of existence, and a state also of degradation 
 resulting from sin ; and from a passage in the Phaedo, it appears 
 that in consequence of the latter the mysteries were considered 
 necessary for cleansing and spiritualising every individual. 
 
 A consideration of the vignette prefixed to this last chapter, 
 taken from one of the Townley terra cottas in the British Museum, 
 will, I apprehend, afford a consistent and rational explanation of 
 the origin of the opinion, that the soul had existed in a previous 
 state, and of Socrates’s or Plato’s doctrine of reminiscences. 
 
110 
 
 This monument represents a figure on the lotus with the body 
 and limbs of an infant, feeble, and leaning for support on two 
 perpendicular tendrils of the plant ; but the head is that of an old 
 man, expressing in the most evident manner a notion of a previous 
 state, and of regeneration from water. The renovation of the 
 animal and vegetable creation is represented by the composite 
 figures in a state of rest on either side. In fact, the sculptured 
 monuments of the ancient Greeks and Romans are full of 
 allusions to the Noachic Deluge. The tradition of the patriarch 
 having lived in the old world which had preceded that event, and 
 having been, as it were, born again in the new, imperfectly pre- 
 served, led to the supposition, that the same had been the case 
 with every individual. So that, although occasional reference is 
 made in their monuments to the operation of the Divine 
 Spirit on the primary chaotic fluid, yet the two circumstances 
 were blended together; and I know not how the allusions to 
 water in the construction of the Egyptian temples can be ex- 
 plained, if not by reference to these important events. For if 
 the use of the temple was to express therein gratitude to the 
 Deity for the preservation of mankind, what greater act of temporal 
 mercy can we suppose them to have experienced in the early part 
 of their history, than this preservation from water ? It would 
 naturally follow, that if the buildings erected for offering prayer 
 and praise admitted any ornament or devices, these would be 
 records of the mercies they had experienced. The Egyptian 
 temples in fact record them. But the renovation of a world sub- 
 merged was viewed as another creation ; accordingly the Divine 
 Spirit, symbolised as the orb of light, is represented on the cornice 
 of these temples, extending its wings, and hovering over the 
 columns of reeds swathed together at intervals, while the foliage 
 of the capitals, elevated above these columns, marked where life 
 had been borne aloft, and to what depth the waters had prevailed. 
 
 The boasted philosophy of Thales was no more than a 
 
Ill 
 
 publication of these doctrines in Greece, where they had been 
 long preserved, in secret, at Eleusis. The Ionic order of archi- 
 tecture attested the opinions of Thales ; but the same had been 
 more simply and strongly expressed in the earlier Doric. * That 
 these traditions had come down in very gradual succession we may 
 believe from the regular order in which the mysteries may be 
 traced in Greece through Eumolpus up to Orpheus, and from him 
 to certain personages called Cabirs, or the powerful ones. These 
 Cabirs are to be found in other countries, though differing in 
 point of number ; for they were four in Greece, with allusion to 
 the number of males preserved in the patriarchal family ; seven 
 in Egypt and India, as the colonists of the renewed earth under 
 the instructions of the patriarch, who completed the Ogdoad. Thus 
 all these countries equally derived revealed truths from the purest 
 sources, but in the course of time they variously disfigured and 
 disguised them. The real history of these Cabirs is thus expressed 
 by a genuine poet, in a very elegant little essay, which has been 
 hitherto withheld from the public : — 
 
 “ To Shinaar from the East 
 Japhet, Shem, Ham — the three Curetes came, 
 
 Whom loud-tongued priests in planetary dance, 
 
 As Earth, and Sun, and the eclipsed Moon, 
 
 Long through the ages honour’d.” 
 
 Hence the Cabirs of Samothrace were supposed to have the 
 winds under their controul, and were invoked in dangerous 
 navigations, as if the patriarchs whom the Cabirs represented 
 could extend to others the safety they had in a similar case 
 experienced.-f- 
 
 We further learn, from the fragment of Cicero, that a state of 
 degradation, the consequence of sin, was taught in the mysteries ; 
 
 * See observations in the Appendix, 
 f See animadv. in Atheneeum, lib. x. p. 715. Ed. Casaub. 
 
112 
 
 and it is observable that it had reference to sin committed in a 
 state of pre-existence : and it appears to have been a principal 
 object in the mysteries, to purify the soul by way of qualifying it 
 for a future state. To this effect Socrates, in the Phasdo, ob- 
 serves: — 44 The probabilities seem to be, that the founders of our 
 44 mysteries were not much out in their conjecture ; nay, that what 
 44 they implied of old by senigma was a real truth, that those who 
 
 44 go to Hades, uninitiated and unspiritualised, will abide there in 
 
 45 filth, but the purified and the perfected, upon arriving there, will 
 44 inhabit with the gods.” — P. 195. Ed. Forster. 
 
 The purification offered in the mysteries must have formed 
 the concluding as well as the introductory part of them ; and so 
 much, indeed, is implied by the etymology of the word tea srvj ; 
 for, as pvvio-ig, or initiation, in the lesser mysteries, was the first 
 rite, the teAetij, in the greater mysteries, was the perfectory or con- 
 cluding one. That a higher degree of purification followed the 
 scenic exhibitions, which were considered only as shadows or 
 faint images of doctrines, designed to entertain as well as to in- 
 struct, I collect from the Phaedo : and here I cannot refrain from 
 expressing my opinion, that the sentiments and speculations pro- 
 posed in that dialogue were those entertained by Plato himself, and 
 are by him only fictitiously ascribed to Socrates. I believe too, 
 from the actual mention of the mysteries in some passages, and 
 from apparent slight reference to them in others, that Plato, while 
 he would have abstained from reporting the symbols, and the 
 means by which the doctrines of the mysteries were inculcated, 
 was less scrupulous in discussing the principles conveyed in them, 
 which he uttered in safety, screening himself under the character 
 of an upright man, against whom malevolence had already done 
 its worst. But to revert to what I had suggested respecting puri- 
 fication, the passage on which I ground my conjecture, above- 
 mentioned, is the following: 44 In a word, that is real virtue, 
 44 which is accompanied with wisdom, independent of pleasures, 
 
113 
 
 “ fears and the like ; for when virtue is not inwardly received and 
 “ felt, but proceeds from interested motives, may it not be viewed 
 “ as a kind of shadow painting, servile, unreal, and unsound? But 
 “ true virtue purifies from all this ; for temperance, justice, manli- 
 “ ness, and wisdom itself maybe considered a kind of purification.”* 
 Here allusion is made to the I,Kixy^u(pia, or, as I suspect, to the 
 scenes of the Eleusinian shows, which are treated as unsubstan- 
 tial instruction received by the eye, and where the pleasure or the 
 pain of the representation rather affected the spectator, than the 
 meaning of the things represented ; and it leads me to believe that 
 something really of a nature to elevate and spiritualise the minds 
 of the Epoptas, and possibly of a moral tendency, was enforced 
 after the close of the exhibition. 
 
 But whatever were the means of purification provided in the 
 mysteries, it is admitted that they were not generally efficacious ; 
 for Plato cites the ministers of these perfectory rites for the as- 
 sertion, that they had many more thyrsus-bearers than indivi- 
 duals deserving the name of Bacchus : E hr) yx(> Svj, q>a<r)v oi srefn rag 
 TSXsrxg, votft'/ixoQogoi gev TroXAot, Se ye ’srxo^oi. — Ibid. p. 195. 
 
 The thyrsus was ‘formed of the votfovifc, or ferule plant. In 
 the pith of it, which was used as a slow match, Prometheus was 
 fabled to have concealed the fire he had stolen from Heaven. The 
 meaning of the expression is, therefore, that in the mysteries there 
 were many initiated who had a capacity for spiritual and heavenly 
 purity, but few were properly disposed to receive it, so that a very 
 small number arrived to a state of perfection resembling Bacchus, 
 who, as Passeri suggested, was “ totus igneus et fulgidus .” 
 
 * K«» gvXXySByv dkySyg apery para <pfOvy<reu)g, xa ) 'srpocryiyvop.evwv xa\ airoyiyvop.evuv 
 xa) fjSovcoy xa) cpoScuv, xa) raov aXXuiv navroov rcuv roiurwv xcepityp-evu Be cppovycrewg, xa ) 
 dXXarrojj.eva dvr) aXXyXcov, py axiaypapla r)g y y roiaury apery, xa) r tpovn dvSp an oBuByg re, 
 xa) ouSev byieg ouS’ aXySeg eyy, to S’ uXySeg rip ovriy xaSagtrig rig rcuv romrcov navrcuv’ xa t 
 y <ru)<ppo<TuvY] xa) rj 8ix«i ocruvy xa) y avSpela xa) abry y Qpovycrig p.y xadapu.og rig y. Pluzd. 
 p. 195. Ed. Forster. 
 
 Q 
 
114 
 
 This advanced state is beautifully illustrated by Plutarch, who 
 has exposed the secret object of the Isiac mysteries, from which 
 those of Eleusis appear to have been partly derived. He observes, 
 that the highest stage in the scale of nature was, as the garment 
 of Osiris, (pwToeiSvjg , “ shining as the light that the perception 
 of that which was intelligent, pure, and holy, flashed like lightning 
 on the soul, which was grasped at, and viewed but for a moment, 
 and then it passed away. When philosophy was employed upon 
 such speculations, it was termed epoptic , as some might infer, be- 
 cause it was then versed on such doctrines as were explained 
 epoptically, or by shows, at Eleusis. And this was to be effected 
 by the exercise and improvement of the mind, by abstracting it 
 from all considerations of sense. Plutarch further explains, that 
 the Deity was removed far from earth, not liable to corruption or 
 decay ; that the eventual state was a participation of the Divine 
 Nature, termed by him perbuo-iot tou QeS, of which the soul, whilst 
 encompassed about with body and passions, had only an obscure 
 glimmering : but when freed from these impediments, and re- 
 moved into the purer regions, it was then that God was to become 
 its leader and king ; upon him would it then wholly depend, still 
 beholding without satiety, and still longing after that beauty, which 
 it was not possible for man to express. 
 
 These, indeed, are noble sentiments, but whether they may 
 not have been partly gleaned by Plutarch from the semi-Christian 
 schools at Alexandria, and whether the doctrine of the hiero- 
 phants reached so far, there may be some reason to doubt. It 
 must at least be confessed, that buffoonery, the most stupid and 
 absurd*, frivolous conceits, and gross indecency curiously sophis- 
 ticated, were very inadequate to so sublime an end. That the 
 ceremonies and spectacles of the mysteries were of the grossest 
 description, we have been satisfied from the exposition of them 
 
 See the Collections of Passeri, D’Hancarville, and Tischbein, passim. 
 
115 
 
 by Clemens. The sublimest doctrines, delivered to minds polluted 
 by participating in such obscenities, must have been listened to 
 with indifference or disgust. 
 
 Let me here, then, conclude a subject, which, if it has been 
 investigated with any probability of correctness, may serve at 
 least to show the miserable state of ignorance and impurity to 
 which the pagan world were reduced, and excite our gratitude for 
 having been brought from such darkness into light, that may be 
 well styled marvellous. We here collect from pagan witnesses fresh 
 attestations to the truth of our own consistent antediluvian history, 
 which should be dear to us in the extreme, because the found- 
 ation of all our hope is laid in the very earliest pages of it. It 
 serves to show, that however human pride may be disinclined to 
 admit a state of degradation, the result of sin, it was nevertheless 
 acknowledged by the initiated heathens ; and the pagan QEdipus 
 utters a first great truth, in the same words which are adopted by 
 the awakened Christian : — 
 
 1 Ap’ s<pvv xxxog; 
 
 r Ap’ oupd avayvoj ; — CEdip. Tyr. 841, 842. 
 
 but, for this uncleanness, the Christian can boast, in the words of 
 Plato (with a very slight alteration of their sense), that o-utyori vy, 
 a singleness of heart, Siuaioa-v vy, a righteousness not his own, 
 dvSf) e!a, God manifest in the flesh, and tywyns, wisdom imparted 
 from above, — these are an effectual purification. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
APPENDIX. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
SECTION I. 
 
 Classification of the Greek Fictilia. 
 
 In attempting to classify the ancient fictilia, the most obvious charac- 
 teristics I have to consider are those of form and colour. It might, 
 perhaps, be deemed a more regular mode of proceeding, if shape and 
 the natural objects that suggested it were to occupy the first place in 
 my scheme, and if the painting were to follow next in order, as an acci- 
 dent of form. But, as Linnaeus, in the arrangement of his Vegetable 
 System, selected his first indicia from the parts, before he took a general 
 or a specific view of the construction of the plant, in the same way I shall 
 find it convenient to notice the decorative painting upon vases, as the 
 first essential point, and reserve the form of the vase for secondary con- 
 sideration.* 
 
 * Botanists altogether reject colour as accidental, and unfit to supply even specific 
 character ; but, as the objects of which I am treating are wholly artificial, I feel at full 
 liberty to employ it. 
 
120 
 
 It is only by the style of the painting that we can judge of the com- 
 parative antiquity of these vessels ; and as the contrast of colour, or general 
 effect, is that by which they may be most easily distinguished, I shall 
 adopt it as the criterion of the classes, which may thus be reduced to a 
 few simple heads. According to this mode of arrangement, I shall com- 
 prise the whole under the four following Classes : — 
 
 I. The Purple-figured, 
 
 II. The Black-figured, 
 
 III. The Illumined, and 
 
 IV. The Plain. 
 
 The means by which the effect is produced next deserve attention, 
 and the different modes of laying on the colours* suggest so many dif- 
 ferent Orders or subdivisions, in cases where further distinction may be 
 necessary. 
 
 The Vessels of the First Class are painted with adeep purple colour, 
 on a pale clay. They frequently exhibit lions and stags, and other wild 
 and tame animals, in alternate order, and such animals disposed in a similar 
 manner, have been adopted to embellish the lips of the largest Siciliant 
 vases of the latest periods. The similarity of style observable through- 
 out the first class renders any subdivision of its contents unnecessary. 
 
 The Black-figured Vases rank next for antiquity and curiosity. 
 The groups on some of the earliest of these are heightened with enamel, 
 and the ground is either red or pale. I shall, therefore, divide this class 
 into three orders, with an additional order to comprehend the later imita- 
 tions of this style. 
 
 * The best information on this subject may be obtained from a letter of the very 
 accomplished antiquary, the Canon Andrea de Iorio to the Cav. Matteo Galdi, “ Sul 
 Metodo degli Antichi neldipingere i Vasi,” &c., which first appeared, I believe, in the 
 Biblioteca Analytica, 1813. I have been indebted to this tract for several useful 
 hints respecting my different orders. 
 
 f This style of embellishment seems to have been originally Spartan. Herodo- 
 tus speaks of a large bowl of bronze presented to Croesus by the Lacedaemonians ; 
 the surface of the lip of it was filled with small figures of animals : — rionjcra/x-syoi 
 HgyjTijga %akxeov gcoSlwv ts s^cuSsv t X rjtrctvTeg zrsp) to ^iiXog. — Lib. i. s. 70. The contents 
 of this vessel (300 amphoreis) must have been erroneously reported. 
 
121 
 
 The Third, or Illumined, Class is of many orders ; for the con- 
 trast is produced by 
 
 1. Figures exhibiting the red clay, or warmed by a red varnish, on 
 a black ground. 
 
 2. Figures on pale clay. 
 
 3. Figures relieved with white, yellow, or purple enamel. 
 
 4>. Figures on a white priming, 
 
 5. Figures painted in opake colours, red or yellow. (If these be 
 not restored, or altogether spurious.) 
 
 6. Ornaments only in red or white enamel, on a dark ground. 
 
 The Fourth Class is composed of those vases which have no paint- 
 ing, but retain the colour of the clay, whether plain, or warmed by a 
 varnish superinduced, or of those which are wholly black ; but in this 
 state they are sometimes stamped, or marked with a pointed tool. 
 
 THE FORMS OF VASES 
 
 present other but very various characteristics. Athenaeus has mentioned 
 a particular cup in use among the Greeks, termed x&w^iov*, which 
 derived both its shape and name from the fruit of the Nelumbium. After 
 much attentive consideration of the subject, I have been led to conclude, 
 that all the larger vases of the ancients, or with very few exceptions, 
 have been fashioned after the capsules of certain plants of the water-lily 
 kind : either 
 
 I. Of the Nelumbium of Egypt, approaching to a conical form ; or 
 
 II. Of the Nymphsea Lotus of iEgypt, of oblong spheroidal shape ; or 
 
 III. Of the Nymphsea alba of Greece, oblate spheroidal ; or 
 
 IV. Of the Nuphar lutea of Greece, of which the capsule is urceolate. 
 
 Thus, the genera of vases may be expressed by the epithets, — 
 Nelumbio-ides, Loto-ides, Nymphaeo-ides, and Nupharo-ides. 
 
 * KiSwgiov.— A/SojU-Oj 8s fyo-t txoTr^lov eiSoj slv«j, xat ra^« «v s»j t« Xeyo'/xsva 
 8ia to jtaTaj'&sv si s ^evov <rvvri^6cici a>j rot AiyvnTict xiSwgix. — ATHENiEUS, lib. xi. cap. 7. 
 p. 477. Ed. Casaub. 
 
 R 
 
122 
 
 The species will mark the more or less close adherence to the 
 forms of these capsules. 
 
 A Punic* bottle, in the British Museum, and of conical form, resem- 
 bling the capsule of the Nelumbium, but inverted, and with the addition of 
 a taper neck and cruet lip, as also the truncated conical form of certain 
 cups of heavy black ware, to be found in most collections, are strongly 
 characteristic of the first genus. 
 
 The ordinary bell-shaped vase also resembles, but more faintly, the 
 full grown, and somewhat flattened capsule of the Nelumbium ; while 
 others of this kind, more cylindrical, may be compared to an enlarged 
 capsule of the same plant, after most of the petals have fallen off. These 
 are the vases which have handles at the bottom of the bowl, and just 
 above the stem. 
 
 The spheroidal form of the fruit of the Nymphaea Lotus may be disco- 
 vered in those vases of Campania, which are remarkable for having upright 
 ears, each formed of two stems connected at the top, and two pairs of 
 knobs on the shoulder of the vessel. These, I conceive, were suggested 
 by the petals, which are disposed, eight in a circle, round the bulb of the 
 capsulet, after it is enlarged, and when the summit, overtopt by the 
 shoulder, becomes buried within the bulb. In this instance, four of the 
 leafits may be supposed to remain erect, the other four to have fallen off, 
 leaving so many scars behind. 
 
 In the large Apulian vases, as they are termed, an allusion to the egg 
 has been superadded to that of the vegetable ; but the handles are de- 
 rived from the fertile petals, or stamina, incurved towards the lip of the 
 vase, or the summit of the capsule. Many varieties of what I term 
 
 * The purple-figured ware is usually termed Punic ; but some of this class were 
 probably manufactured in very early times at or near Corinth, as Dodwell (Travels in 
 Greece, vol. ii. p. 196, 197.) bought one of this description, inscribed with Greek cha- 
 racters, in that neighbourhood. 
 
 f This particular disposition of the eight petals round the bulb has been very cu- 
 riously imitated upon three vases of heavy black ware in the British Museum, by four 
 mouldings resembling a pointed Gothic arch, in addition to the handles. See the 
 vignette, page 135. of this Appendix. One of these is engraved in the great work, of 
 D’Hancarville, vol. iv. plate lxx. 
 
123 
 
 the Lotoidal Genus are formed by the addition of a neck with a spout 
 or lip. 
 
 The tazza was derived from the summit of the capsule of theNymphgea 
 Lotus ; and this summit, after subsiding, and becoming, as I before men- 
 tioned, buried within the bulb of the capsule, suggested the suddenly 
 contracted throat of the lachrymatory vase. 
 
 The compressed form of some vases directs us to the Nymphaea alba 
 for their original model. The connection of the common lamp, among 
 the Greek fictilia, with this third family, may be thus traced. Its com- 
 pressed and ribbed form represents the oblate spheroidal assemblage of 
 seeds within the fruit of the white water-lily (Nymphaea alba), after the 
 bursting of the coat which contained it.* The spout and handles are 
 accessories. 
 
 Certain Campanian vases may be termed urceolate, or of bottle shape ; 
 globular at the bottom, then gradually lessening in the neck, and as 
 gradually expanding again at the wide reflected lip. This is precisely the 
 form of the capsule of the Nuphar lutea of Greece and Britain. In 
 this country it is very significantly designated, “ the yellow water-can.” 
 
 These I conceive to have been the chief models for the forms of 
 Greek vasest : but it is possible that the pericarpia and seed-vessels of other 
 plants were resorted to by the ancients ; as of the pomegranate, poppy, 
 and many more. Lastly, the numerous crepundia of diminutive pottery 
 are referable to the seed-vessels of a multitude of plants, which it might 
 be very interesting, though difficult, to distinguish. 
 
 I now subjoin a more detailed classification of the whole : — 
 
 * The corolla of the Nymphaea, after florescence, sinks beneath the water, to en- 
 able the fruit to swell to its peculiar form. When the capsule of the Nymphaea alba 
 has attained this, the outer coat bursting, excludes the oblate spheroidal mass, in 
 which the seeds are embedded. The summit at the same time starts from its seat 
 entire, and discloses the perforation in the centre of the glutinous mass. The surface 
 of this is ribbed, which is scarcely apparent through the coat which forms the 
 capsule. 
 
 f The large Sicilian vases seem to be of a mixed character; the bulb of the vessel 
 being designed from the fruit of the Nymphaea Lotus , w hile the neck partakes of the 
 conical form of the fruit of the Nelumbium. 
 
 R 2 
 
124 
 
 CLASSES. 
 
 I. The Purple-figured. 
 
 II. The Black-figured. 
 
 III. The Illumined. 
 
 IV. The Plain. 
 
 Class I. — Purple-Jigured. 
 
 Order I. Figures on a pale ground. 
 
 Class II. — Black-figured. 
 
 Order I. Figures on a red ground. 
 
 II. Figures on a pale ground. 
 
 III. Figures assisted with green or purple. 
 
 IV. Black figures on a red ground, the ground of the vase being 
 
 black. 
 
 Class III. — Illumined. 
 
 Order I. Figures exhibiting the red clay, or warmed by a red var- 
 nish, on a black ground. 
 
 II. Figures on a pale clay. 
 
 III. Figures relieved with white, or yellow, or purple enamel. 
 
 IV. Figures on a white priming. 
 
 V. Figures painted in opake colour. 
 
 VI. Ornaments only in white or yellow enamel on a black ground. 
 
 Class IV. — Plain. 
 
 Order I. Pale clay. 
 
 II. Pale clay warmed with a varnish. 
 
 III. Black. 
 
 IV. Black tooled. 
 
125 
 
 GENERA AND SPECIES.* 
 
 Class I. — Purplefgured. t 
 Genus Nelumbio-^5. 
 
 Species 1. Conical, - - Neck long, one handle and spout. 
 
 D’ Hancarvillet, vol. ii. plate 117 . 
 
 2. Flat, - - Circular, lip reflected. 
 
 British Museum. — A dish or tren- 
 cher with animals disposed in 
 circles , as if upon the surface of 
 the Ciborium. 
 
 Genus 'LoTo-ides. 
 
 Species 1. Globular, - - Neck short, one handle from the 
 
 lip to the shoulder, lip flat, throat 
 narrow. 
 
 2. Semi-prolate spher- 
 oidal, 
 
 Neck very short, handle erect, lip 
 triply scalloped. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. i. plate 85. 
 
 * The terms used in these tables are designed to convey a near idea of the several 
 forms of vases ; but they must not be understood to define them with mathematical 
 precision. 
 
 f It has been my intention to omit altogether, from these tables, vases that exhibit 
 ornaments painted rather with a dull red colour than purple, upon a pale, coarse, and 
 heavy clay. Such vases are rather Tuscan than Greek, and of little interest com- 
 pared with that ware which is usually termed Carthaginian. If it were desirable to 
 notice them, they might form a second order under Class I. 
 
 % I refer to the great work of D’Hancarville, in four volumes folio, descriptive of 
 the original collection of vases of Sir William Hamilton, now in the British Museum. 
 
126 
 
 Species 3. Oviform, - Two handles on the neck, throat 
 
 contracted suddenly. 
 
 4. Expanded, - Two handles horizontally looped. 
 Genus Nymphjeo-?^. 
 
 Species 1. Oblate spheroidal, 
 
 Two handles looped very low, erect, 
 throat open. 
 
 2. Utriform*, 
 
 (a.) Handle looped above, position of 
 the neck eccentric, lip flat, throat open. 
 D’ Hancarville , vol. i. plate 113. 
 
 ( b .) Handle none, throat central, 
 between two taller and narrow necks. 
 One specimen of this in the Hope 
 Museum. 
 
 3. Oblate spheroidal, 
 more or less com- 
 pressed, 
 
 (a.') Shoulder oblique, one handle 
 erect, acutely looped, broad and flat, 
 lip flat, throat open. 
 
 D' Hancarville, vol. i. plate 46. 
 
 ( h .) Neck none, throat open, one 
 handle horizontally disposed, and wav- 
 ed. 
 
 H* Hancarville, vol. ii. plate 104. 
 (c.) Lip thick, flat, mouth open. 
 
 Genus Nupharo-?^. 
 
 Species 1. Urceolate, 
 
 Shoulder wanting, lip flat, one small 
 handle on the neck, throat narrow. 
 
 2. Urceolate narrow, 
 
 The same. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. iv. plate 99. 
 
 * I have included this species, because it appears among the engravings in the 
 work of D’Hancarville. But it is probably no other than coarse Tuscan ware. 
 
127 
 
 Class II. — Black-figured. 
 
 Genus Nelumbio-z^. 
 
 Species 1. Cylindrical, - Handles none, throat open, a pa- 
 
 rallel rim at the top and at the base, 
 stem very short, nearly of equal 
 diameter with the vase, plinth flat, 
 lid flat, with a conical knob or handle. 
 
 Genus Loto -ides. 
 
 Species 1. Prolate spheroidal, 
 
 2. Prolate spheroidal, 
 truncated above, 
 
 3. Semi-prolate spher- 
 oidal, or paraboloi- 
 dal inverted, 
 
 4. Oviform of mixed 
 character, 
 
 (a.) One handle on the neck, lip 
 triply scalloped. 
 
 (6.) Neck wide, throat open, lip 
 concave, small, one handle erect. 
 Englefield vases, plate 36. No. 2. 
 
 Shoulder flat or oblique, one han- 
 dle on the neck, lip erect, or sloping, 
 throat contracted suddenly. 
 
 Sicilian lachrymatory. — D'Hancar- 
 ville , vol. i. plate 66. — Englefield 
 vases, plate 32. No. 4. 
 
 (a.) Throat open, lip none, with 
 two handles looped, ascending. 
 Englefield vases, plate 29- No. 3. 
 
 ( 'b. ) Vertex truncated, common cup. 
 
 Two handles on the neck, neck 
 wide, throat open. 
 
 D* Hancarvillc, vol. i. plate 91* — 
 Englefield vases, plates 25. 29- 
 
 (a.) Two handles on the neck, lip 
 oblique, throat open. 
 
 5. Oviform, 
 
128 
 
 Species 6. Oviform inverted, 
 
 (5.) Neck funnel-shaped, with or 
 without two handles. 
 
 (c.) One handle on the neck, lip 
 triply scalloped. 
 
 One handle on the neck, throat con- 
 tracted suddenly. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. i. plate 80. 
 
 7. Expanded, 
 
 With two looped handles, stem and 
 foot. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. ii. plate 75. 
 
 Genus Nymphjeo-?^. 
 
 Species 1. Oblate spheroidal, (a.) Neck wanting, throat open, 
 
 2. Oblate spheroidal 
 approaching to 
 
 Vase with the Sunian galley-race in 
 the Hope Museum. 
 
 ( h .) Neck short, throat open, two 
 handles looped low, erect. 
 
 Englefeld vases, plate 30. No. 1. 
 
 (c.) One handle on the neck, lip 
 triply scalloped. 
 
 Two handles on the shoulder, loop- 
 ed at the bottom, neck straight, throat 
 
 oviform, open. 
 
 Pactippus vase. — D’ Hancarville, 
 
 vol. i. plate 22. p. 152. 
 
 3. Oblate spheroidal, Neck straight, throat open, 
 much compressed, 
 
 4. Semi-oblate sphe- Neck short, throat open, stem cylin- 
 
 roidal, drical, foot wanting. 
 
 One specimen of this in the Hope Mu- 
 
 seum. 
 
129 
 
 Genus Nupharo-?^. 
 
 Species I. Urceolate, (<z.) Shoulder oblique, two handles on 
 
 the neck, neck short, lip oblique, throat 
 open. 
 
 Agrigentine vase ( of Talides ) in the 
 Hope Museum. 
 
 ( b .) One handle on the neck, lip con- 
 cave, throat open. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. i. plate 118. 
 
 (c.) Shoulder wanting, one handle on 
 the neck, lip flat. 
 
 Class III. — Illumined. 
 Genus Nelumbio-z'^s. 
 
 Species 1. Conical truncated, (a.) Two handles ascending, in- 
 and inverted, curved upon the lip, lip reflected, with 
 
 stem and foot. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. iii. pi. 124, 125. 
 — Engl f eld vases , pi. 35. No. 2. — 
 See also the coins of Methymna. * 
 
 ( b .) The same without handles. 
 
 (c.) Surmounted by a pyramidal 
 neck, with one handle and spout. 
 British Museum. — For the form, see 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. ii. pi. 107. 112. 
 
 2. Cylindrical, 
 
 Cover flat, stem or foot scarcely ap- 
 parent. 
 
 Englefeld vases, plate 31. No. 2. 
 
 * Varieties of this cup may be seen on the coins of Aphytis, Boeotia, Athens, and 
 Naxos. The vase species 1., above, I take to be the xccp^rjcriov of Athenaeus, resem- 
 bling the upper extremity of the masts of the ancient galleys, and it seems to have been 
 the particular kind of cup used in the game of the xotto&os. 
 
 S 
 
130 
 
 Species 3. Conical terminating, One handle on the neck, mouth 
 
 open, lip reflected, the vessel terminat- 
 ing in the head of some animal. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. i. plate 49. 
 
 4. Conical campanulate, Two handles at the bottom of the 
 
 bowl, erect and incurved. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. i. plate 33. — 
 Englejield 'vases , plate 9. 
 
 5. Campanulate, ( a .) Two handles beneath the lip, 
 
 and incurved, lip reflected. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. i. plate 7 5. — 
 Englejield vases , plates 11 . 13. 
 
 ( b .) The same, but the lip thin, as- 
 cending, or rather wanting. 
 
 D* Hancarville, vol. ii. plate 54. 
 
 ( c .) Bowl ribbed, handles knotted, 
 lip with a horizontal fluting. 
 
 D* Hancarville, vol. iii. plate 101. — 
 Englejield vases , plate 37- No. 3. 
 
 (e?.) Lip none, two handles horizon- 
 tally looped. 
 
 (e.~) Two handles attached to the 
 sides, handles no higher than the lip, 
 with or without a stem and foot. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. i. plate 39. 
 
 6. Campanulate in- With parallel rim on the shoulder, 
 
 verted, and at the base, neck tall, lip triply 
 
 scalloped, or terminating in a spout, 
 and one handle erect, and resting upon 
 the shoulder. 
 
 jy Hancarville, vol. i. plate 78. and 
 vol. iv. plate 25. 
 
131 
 
 Species 7* Campanulate, 
 approaching to 
 paraboloidal in- 
 verted, 
 
 (a.) Two handles beneath the lip, in- 
 curved, reflected. 
 
 (&.) Two handles beneath the lip, 
 solid, flat, square, declining, rim thick, 
 lip ascending. 
 
 Collection of Samuel Rogers, Esq. 
 
 Genus Eoio-ides. 
 
 Species 1. Prolate spheroidal, (a.) Neck long, erect, with one han- 
 dle, throat contracted suddenly. 
 
 Englefield vases, with others, plate 33. 
 No. 3. 
 
 2. Prolate spheroi- 
 dal, truncated 
 above, 
 
 3. Semi-prolate 
 spheroidal, 
 
 (b.) Handle looped above, with spout. 
 
 (c.) Two handles, shoulder oblique, 
 throat contracted suddenly, with stem 
 and foot. 
 
 D y Hancarville, vol. iii. plate 95. — En- 
 glefield vases, plate 30. No. 2. 
 
 Shoulder flat, one handle on the neck, 
 throat contracted suddenly. 
 
 Nolan lachrymatory. — Englefield vases, 
 plate 35. No. 5. 
 
 Neck long, throat contracted sudden- 
 
 Englefield vases, with others, plate 33. 
 
 4. Semi-prolate spher- Open at the top, the entire diameter, 
 oidal inverted, D y Hancarville, vol. ii. plate 49. — En- 
 
 glefield vases, plate 37. No. 1. 
 
 5. Paraboloidal 
 inverted, 
 
 ( a .) Lip none, throat open, two handles 
 horizontally looped. 
 
 Englefield vases, plate 36. No. 3. 
 
 (6.) Vertex truncated. 
 
 Englefield vases, plate 36. Nos. 1. 5. 
 s 2 
 
132 
 
 Species 6. Oviform of mix- 
 ed character, 
 
 (c.) Handles none, lip none, throat 
 open. 
 
 Two double handles on the neck, neck 
 wide, throat open, lip concave. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. iv. plate 111. — 
 Englejield vases , plates 22. 24. 
 
 7- Oviform, 
 
 (a.) Shoulder faintly convex, one 
 handle on the neck, and two on the shoul- 
 ders, lip flat, throat narrow. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. i. plate 30. — En- 
 glejield vases , plates 1 , 2. 
 
 ( b .) Two handles on the neck, throat 
 contracted suddenly, stem short. 
 
 Englejield vases, plates 4, 5, 6. 
 
 (c.) One handle on the neck, lip triply 
 scalloped. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. ii. plate 23. — En- 
 glejield vases, plate 32. No. 1 . 
 
 8. Oviform elon- 
 gated of mixed 
 character, 
 
 Shoulder faintly convex, two handles, 
 throat open, lip concave. 
 
 Nolan. 
 
 9. Oviform elon- 
 gated, 
 
 (#.) Shoulder faintly convex, two 
 handles on the neck, lip flat, throat open. 
 Patroclus vase in the Hope Museum. 
 
 ( b . ) With handle looped above. 
 
 iy Hancarville, vol. iii. plate 98. 
 
 10. Globular, but 
 sometimes ovi- 
 form, 
 
 (a.) Shoulder flattened, or faintly con- 
 vex, with two upright handles looped, 
 and two pairs of knobs on the shoulders, 
 neck none, with lid. 
 
 D* Hancarville, vol. iv. plate 84. 
 
 ( [b .) The same with masks on the shoul- 
 ders. 
 
133 
 
 Species 11. Oviform of com- (a) With two flat handles, looped at 
 posite character, the bottom, and incurved upon the lip 
 at top. 
 
 ( p •) The same with masks upon the 
 handles. 
 
 (c.) The same with masks on the han- 
 dles, but the knobs on the shoulders com- 
 muted for swans’ heads and necks. 
 
 D' Hancarville, vol. i. plate 52. 
 
 12. Expanded, (a.) Circular, with or without a glo- 
 
 bule* or gland in the centre. 
 
 (b.) The same with looped handles, 
 and four or six knobs. 
 
 Englefield vases , plate 27 . 
 
 ( c .) With or without looped handles 
 incurved, and with or without a stem. 
 
 Englefield vases , plates 26. 35. No. 6. 
 
 Genus Nymph^o-zc^,?. 
 
 Species 1. Oblate spher- (a.) One handle on the neck, neck long, 
 oidal, throat contracted suddenly. 
 
 Englefield vases , plate 34. No. 4. 
 
 (Z>.) Handle low, and looped above, 
 with spout. 
 
 * In imitation of tlie gland or nectary in the centre of the summit of the Nymph a\i 
 Lotus , which secretes a fragrant and spicy liquor, filling about one half of the cup of 
 yellow petals in the centre of the corolla. This tazza, with the gland in the centre, 
 was probably the Thericlean cup, which, as we learn from a fragment of Aristophanes, 
 preserved by Athenaeus, was manufactured by a celebrated potter of the name of 
 Thericles, who was contemporary with that dramatic poet. Aristophanes there terms 
 it suxtixXwTov ournl 8« (p. 472. Ed. Casaub.), as I presume, from its flattened and cir- 
 cular shape, with a boss in the centre. It may also have been the same as the r, 
 of Cratinus, apud Athenaeum, lib. xi. p. 501. Ed. Casaub. 
 
134 
 
 Species 2. Semi-oblate With two handles horizontally looped, 
 
 spheroidal, ascending. 
 
 Genus NuPHARO-z'cfes. 
 
 Species 1. Urceolate, (<z.) With two handles on the neck, lip 
 
 reflected. 
 
 Nolan . — D’ Hancarville, vol. i. plates 
 69. 72. vol. iii. plate 69. 
 
 (b.') With one handle on the neck, lip 
 triply scalloped. 
 
 D’ Hancarville, vol. ii. plate 101. — 
 Englejield vases , plate 31. No. 5. 
 plate 34. No. 2. 
 
 (c.) Shoulder wanting, neck taper, lip 
 flat. 
 
 2. Urceolate nar- 
 row, 
 
 Shoulder wanting, one handle on the 
 neck, lip flat, throat narrow. 
 
 3. Cylindrical, Compressed in the middle, lip flat, neck 
 
 tapering. 
 
 4. Expanded, and (a.) With a lid or cover. 
 
 much compressed. Englejield vases , plate 30. No. 3. 
 
 ( [b .) With cover, stem, and foot ; cover 
 with upright stem, and summit flat, cir- 
 cular. Vase within, four-celled, cells with 
 lids, which, as also the surface of the 
 valves or dissepiments, are painted ; cells 
 surrounding a central tube, which is closed 
 by a diminutive vase with a cover.* 
 
 Collection of S. Rogers, Esq. 
 
 * This curious article affords a strong presumptive proof of the forms of vases 
 having been derived from the seed-vessels of plants. 
 
SECTION II. 
 
 Of the Water-Lilies of Egypt and Greece. — The Cibotium and Cibotus , or 
 Ark of the Covenant. —Mysterious Allusions in the Nymphcea Lotus . — 
 These Allusions discoverable in the Grecian , Moorish, and Gothic Archi- 
 tecture. — The latter probably derived from Alexandria in Egypt. 
 
 The foregoing tables will furnish a pretty correct indication of the 
 form of almost every painted vase in the collections of the British Mu- 
 seum, and of Thomas Hope, Esq., which are by far the most considerable 
 in England. I will proceed to offer some remarks on those vegetable 
 models, which have suggested to me the means of classifying these ves- 
 sels, that the reader may judge, how far the rationale of my scheme 
 may coincide with the opinions of the ancients, in fashioning them, and 
 in applying them to religious uses. 
 
 Of the two kinds of Egyptian water-lily, which I have selected as the 
 original models of my two first genera, the Nelumbium has been briefly 
 described by Athenaeus in his third book, and more scientifically by 
 Rheede in his Hortus Malabaricus, and by Rumphius in the Herbarium 
 Amboinense, and recently by Sir James Edward Smith, M. D., in his 
 
136 
 
 Exotic Botany, where a representation of the plant is given in a coloured 
 plate. Herodotus has described the second in the following terms : — 
 “ When the Nile is full, and covers the plains like a vast sea, many lilies 
 “ are produced in the water, which the Egyptians call Lotus. In times of 
 “ scarcity they dry these in the sun, and bruising what they find in the 
 “ centre resembling a poppy-head, they make bread of it, baking it with 
 “ fire.” * As I am not aware of any modern publication in which the 
 Nymphaea Lotus is fully and satisfactorily described, I will venture to 
 add something further respecting it. The corolla of this is generally 
 styled by botanists poly pet alous, but an attentive observation of a well 
 blown specimenf enables me to assert, that while the calyx is composed 
 of four leafits in a double and alternate series, that is to say, of four co- 
 loured and four particoloured leafits, the corolla is octopetalous in a double 
 series, the inner circle of eight white petals being much smaller than 
 the outer circle of the same number. In the centre is a cup formed of 
 more than eighty small petals in regular sets of about four yellow incurved 
 leafits, each diminishing in length towards the centre. On the tip of 
 each of these, and on the inner side, the anthers are disposed in two thin 
 parallel lines. A fifth or interior barren leafit is connate with a recurved 
 rib of the summit of the capsule, and forms the extremity of the rib, for 
 the summit consists of an umbilical gland in the centre of a salver, with 
 various spongy rays, apparently springing from the gland, each in the 
 form of acymatium, but horizontally disposed. The hollow of this sum- 
 mit, I presume to say, furnished the idea of the tazza. If a set of the four 
 inner fruitful leafits or stamina, and the fifth barren member, be separated 
 from this central cup of the flower by the knife, they furnish the orna- 
 ment which decorated the prows of the ancient galleys, called Acrostolium, 
 while the salver of the summit, abridged of about one third of its disk, re- 
 
 * ’E^sai/ v?\rigY)s ysvriTou 6 zs -0Toip.og, xed t« ®rs&ia TseXotyfo y, pdsToii ev tcu utictTi xglvsoc 
 toA\«, t« A'lyvitlioi x«Xs ovtri Acdtov. tocvt sneoiv Sgeipcutn avalvoviri itp'og fjfaov, xai eneira. to 
 lx too p-saou too Acotoo, t»j [/.Yjxwvi sov epupepec, 'sdllcravTeg, zsoi eovt«i I £ aoYoo uprovg onlovg 
 vrupL— Lib. ii. s, 92. This of the Nymphaea Lotus. He then proceeds to describe the 
 other kind of lily of the Nile, with a flower like a rose, and fruit like a wasp’s nest, 
 namely, the Nelumbium. From Theophrastus it also appears, that the Nymphaea 
 Lotus is a native of the Euphrates. 
 
 f Blown by Mr Anderson, the intelligent and very zealous curator of the Bo- 
 tanic Garden of the Apothecaries’ Company at Chelsea. 
 
137 
 
 presents the honeysuckle ornament of the ancient Acroteria, which often 
 exhibits the central gland at the base of the tuft of leafits so disposed. 
 
 But if these plants were objects of religious respect among the Egyp- 
 tians and Greeks, we shall assuredly find a nobler application of them 
 than as models for vases and utensils. I shall, therefore, indulge in a 
 digression, to show that they furnished an important meaning in the orna- 
 ments of their sacred architecture. 
 
 In those Eastern countries which were liable to periodical inundations, 
 so long as the floods prevailed, the water-lily would have presented a 
 principal object for contemplation. It would have been viewed as a pro- 
 mise of the fertility to be expected on the subsiding of the waters, it 
 would have reminded observers of the preservation of a select few dur- 
 ing a more awful deluge, and of the ancient tradition that all things had 
 been created from water. In these senses it was probably first contem- 
 plated in Shinar, and gladly recognised by the dispersed who settled 
 apart on the Yellow River, the Ganges, and the Nile. The first temples 
 erected after the flood would have required such ornaments as were al- 
 lusive to the mercies experienced, and would have been expressive of the 
 gratitude of the few preserved. 
 
 It can scarcely be doubted, that the columns of the Egyptian temples 
 were originally designed to imitate reeds, or lotus stems, swathed toge- 
 ther at different intervals ; thus conveying a notion of submersion, while 
 the foliage appeared above, as if on the surface of the water. It is there- 
 fore, that in the Greek cornice we find the cymatium, ku ^ utiov , of which 
 the profile is convex and concave, to represent a wave, as its name im- 
 ports. I even venture to think, that the original structure of the Do- 
 ric Greek, as of the Egyptian column, was reeded, and that the echinus, 
 as it is termed, in the capital of the former, is really the fruit of the 
 water-lily, which, reduced at the bottom by regular cuttings that appear 
 as annulets, is supposed to have its point buried amid the extremities of 
 the reeds of the column, from the surface of which, several of the reeds 
 have been alternately removed to produce the flutings ; and that the 
 channel sunken in the shaft, and round it, below the capital, is a groove, 
 designed to receive a cord, by which the pa 6So* of the shaft might be 
 bound at top, to prevent their starting under the pressure of the fruit 
 and the weight of the entablature. 
 
 T 
 
138 
 
 In the Ionic capital we find the egg and anchor moulding, as it is 
 improperly termed, connecting the volutes. It is not improbable that 
 these last were designed to represent the leaf of the water-lily, though 
 inverted, unfolding itself on its arrival at the surface of the water. I 
 consider the oval beads in this moulding to be no other than the seeds of 
 the Nelumbium, each viewed within its cell in a section of the ciborium. 
 Hence, as I have presumed to derive the campanulate vase from the 
 fruit of the Nelumbium, these nuts form an appropriate ornament 
 for the lip of such a vessel j and instances of this application of the orna- 
 ment may be seen among the elegant engravings by Moses, from the 
 vases of the late Sir H. C. Englefield. 
 
 From the xa§oa of the Nelumbium has been derived the caryatid sub- 
 stitute for the column in architecture. These figures are frequently called 
 Canephorae ; but except that the lip of the ciborium which they bear 
 on their heads is reflected like a basket, they rarely, I believe, present 
 any other resemblance. These females truly bear on their heads the 
 capsule of the Nelumbium, as the busts of Jupiter Serapis are also sur- 
 mounted by it. 
 
 Mr. Gwilt, in his Essay on Caryatides, has properly concluded that 
 the first statues so called were either applied to the temple of Diana, or 
 were representations of virgins who were engaged in her worship. But the 
 origin of Diana Caryatis is yet to be accounted for. It has been imag- 
 ined, that the embellishments of the Dea Multimamma at Ephesus were 
 suggested by the many nippled surface of the Egyptian ciborium. This 
 admitted, the Ephesian and the Laconian Diana are the same mystic 
 personage, and the figures of those priestesses with the caryatid head- 
 dress, who occasionally danced to her honour, might have furnished ap- 
 propriate supporters to the portico of her temple at Caryee near Sparta. 
 By the story of the jealousy of Lyco and Orphe, and their expulsion by 
 Bacchus, as cited by Mr. Gwilt from Servius, may be obscurely implied 
 the first introduction of Egyptian mysteries into Laconia, and the setting 
 aside for them some previously established Pelasgic, or other doc- 
 trines. 
 
 Let me now venture to trace this interesting subject to a more im- 
 portant conclusion, and offer what it presents to me, respecting our 
 Christian order of architecture. 
 
139 
 
 It may be believed, that if the Pagans illustrated their religious tenets 
 by their architecture, the Christians would not fail to do the same £ par- 
 ticularly during the rivalry that existed between the Platonists and Chris- 
 tians at Alexandria, and the taste for mysticism which prevailed in that 
 city about the third and fourth centuries. It may also be imagined, that 
 the Christians, while they imitated, might hope to instruct, their precur- 
 sors in architectural science. If the Nelumbium had been chiefly resorted 
 to by the Pagans to illustrate their great doctrine of renovation from 
 water, the Nymphaea Lotus would probably be preferred by the Christians 
 for the same purpose ; particularly on account of its conformation, which 
 exhibited a record of the Ogdoad in the eight petals which surrounded 
 the central o-xuQiov. 
 
 It is interesting to observe, how widely these principles had formerly 
 been spread, and how the nations of the East were once bound together 
 by one religious tie. The Chinese still preserve a recollection of the Pa- 
 triarchal eight*, who survived the general flood, by the eight petals of the 
 Lotus circularly disposed in four correspondent pairs ; or by a bamboo 
 clustered, and surrounded by eight smaller stems of the same plant.! A 
 similar commemoration can be shown in the ornaments of Christian ar- 
 chitecture. Of the latter we find an instance in certain massive columns 
 in the cathedral at Milan, which are surrounded, each, by eight smaller 
 ones clustered and joined to it, and are surmounted by eight tabernacles, 
 or niches, containing the figures of as many saints, as may be seen in the 
 memoir of Mr. Kerrich, Archaeologia, vol. xvi. p. 302. Were a Chinese 
 Mandarin to view these columns, he would immediately recognise the 
 symbol. An example of the former may be shown in our own country. 
 In the church of St. Mary at Dover, may be seen two Norman pilaster 
 columns bearing octangular mouldings byway of capitals, and near them 
 a massive pilaster column, the capital of which is formed of four large 
 
 * I have no hesitation in thus interpreting the eight Elementary Tchin, which 
 are thus symbolised upon the ancient porcelain and earthenware of the Chinese. 
 I should, however, add, that the water-lily usually employed by the Chinese as a re- 
 ligious symbol is the Nelumbium ; but I believe that other kinds are natives of China. 
 Even the Nymphaea pygmcea of China would exhibit the conformation by eight in 
 its various parts, nearly similar to the Nymphaea Lotus. 
 
 f Instances of both these illustrations by the Chinese are in my own possession. 
 
 T 2 
 
140 
 
 and three smaller erect and alternate petals of the Nymphasa Lotus ; so 
 that, had the column been complete, the number of petals would have 
 been eight and eight, in strict conformity with the corolla of the Egyp- 
 tian plant. A Gothic pointed window, subdivided by a munion into two 
 lesser pointed arches, exhibits nearly the same form, and the same alter- 
 nate disposition of petals of the Nymphaea Lotus ; the windows and 
 portals therefore of certain early Christian churches might have been 
 derived from the petals and calyx of the Lotus, and the cupola from its 
 capsule,* A cupola had indeed been previously used to denote the vault 
 of heaven in the Pantheon of Agrippa at Rome ; it may, however, 
 be seen imbricated with Lotus petals in the grand work of Daniell, 
 particularly in a platef which represents the mausoleum of Mucdoom 
 Shah Dowlut, at Mooneah on the river Soane : and, upon a smaller scale, 
 the canopies for Gothic shrines and niches for saints were derived from, 
 and even named after, the fruit of the Nelumbium, as may be seen in the 
 memoir of Mr. Ledwich, Archasologia, vol. viii. p. 17 1*> and as the reader 
 may satisfy himself, by referring to Dufresne’s glossary, at the word 
 Ciborium, where very interesting authorities are cited. The purport 
 of these ayioi , or saints, placed beneath the cover of the ciborium, will 
 appear from considering the connected meaning of that word. 
 
 NowKi£a>g<ov and xiSwnov were indifferently the name of the capsule 
 of the Egyptian Nelumbium, and it is singular, that the latter of these 
 words should have been applied to the cone of this particular water-lily, 
 which after the falling off of the petals bears the young family of sprouting 
 seeds floating on the water, which seeds strike root, when enlarged from 
 their cells after the subsiding of the periodical floodsj, when a word nearly 
 similar, xiScorbs, was used by the Alexandrine translators of the Scriptures 
 to denote both the ark of Noah, and the ark of the covenant. The 
 chest which contained the Tables of the Law was indeed of oblong square 
 
 * The original architectural term in Spanish for a cupola is cimboi'io. It is 
 probable that the ciborium was referred to, without any precise knowledge of the 
 plant to which it belonged. The actual form of the cupola is more truly expressed 
 by the popular term, media naranja, the half orange, 
 f Plate 22. of the set, published in 1795. 
 
 t See this subject well described by Sir James Edward Smith, M. D., in his Exo- 
 tic Botany. 
 
141 
 
 shape, but the moulding which strengthened the edge of it, upon which 
 the lid or mercy seat rested, was termed xupar iov*, a wavelet, as if it had 
 been designed to represent a floating chest ; and I doubt not, it was 
 designed for a memorial, like other figurative objects among the Jewish 
 ceremonials. Both of these were types of the ark of Christ’s church, as it 
 is termed in our baptismal service ; within the enclosure of which, while 
 God’s laws are kept, which is the great and only test of regeneration, 
 safety is insured to the believer, in passing through the waves of this 
 world to the next, under the covering of the sprinkled mercy seat. 
 Hence the propriety of that figurative expression of St. Paul addressed 
 to the Hebrews, c. vi. ver. 12.19., will appear, where he encouraged them 
 to go on to perfection, to be not slothful, but followers of them, who 
 through faith and patience inherited the promises, and to lay hold upon 
 that hope, the anchor of the soul, which is dropped within the enclosure 
 of the veil. Where allusion is made to the ark, considered as a ship, 
 moored within the Holy of Holies, that enclosure which was figurative of 
 Heaven, and this, if they persevered, would not fail to be their final rest- 
 ing place. The safety that had been insured to the patriarchal family 
 is referred to in the custom of placing saints beneath the cover of the 
 ciborium. 
 
 The most marked comparison between the deluge and the sacrament 
 of baptism occurs in the first epistle of St. Peter (c. iii.), who speaks of 
 “ the long suffering of God, which waited in the days of Noah, while the 
 “ ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is eight souls, were saved by 
 “ water : the like figure whereunto, even baptism doth, also, now save us.” 
 Chap. iii. v. 20, 21. Hence Augustine speaks of the sacrament of the 
 deluge, as prefigurative of the Christian church, and he elsewhere says, in 
 a figurative sense, “ Area enim Ecclesia est.” Gregory of Nazianzum 
 had before termed baptism a deluging of sin, not a drowning of the world 
 as of old, but a purifying of the individual from sint, and the church into 
 which the elect were received by baptism, was considered as a ship ; at 
 least, in the Constitutiones Apostolicce, the whole appointment of the 
 church is likened to that of a ship, wherein the bishop is the pilot, the 
 
 * K«i -sroiijfrsjf «urj) xu/xana xvxXco . — Exod. C. 25. V. 11. 
 
 f Oratione 40. vol. i. pp. 638. 641. Ed. Morell. 
 
142 
 
 ministers sailors, and the congregation passengers.* Much in the same 
 spirit, Clemens Alexandrinus had long before pointed the following 
 beautiful apostrophe in his concluding prayer to the Divine Logos, Christ, 
 his Pasdagogue : — K a) zra^aa-^s — aKujxrxvrwg T% d[xa^Tlag tov ^X'jocova 
 bta.Tr'XeuG-a.VTas, yoCKv^mvrag ’Ay la) (n)[x<ps^£(T$ai Tlv£V[xaTi. (Pcodag. in fine.) 
 " Grant, — that in our voyage over the sea of sin, we may not be tossed 
 “ by the waves of it, but be gently borne along by thy Holy Spirit.” 
 But notwithstanding this connected view of the sacrament of baptism 
 with the ark and the Christian church, the earliest baptisteries we are 
 informed, were built apart from churches, but their form was octagonal.t 
 Such was the baptistery of St. Sophia at Constantinople, the Lateran 
 baptistery of Constantine at Rome, and those at Ravenna and Florence. 
 Montfaucon has enumerated seven instances of octagonal buildings in 
 different parts of France, which doubtless had been baptisteries. The 
 adaptation of this form to the sacramental uses of the building is sub- 
 stantiated by the inscription over the baptistery of St. Thecla at Milan, 
 which is thus given by Montfaucon, vol. ii. supplement, p. 220 : — 
 
 Octachorum sanctos templum sun-exit in usus, 
 
 Octagonus fons est munere dignus eo. 
 
 Hoc numero decuit sacris baptismatis aulam 
 Surgere; quo populis vera salus rediit.f 
 
 The circular form succeeded to the octagonal ; as in the instance 
 of the church of St. Jean (namely the Baptist), termed le Rond , at 
 Paris ; where the form, though circular, is said to have approached to the 
 
 * Cotelerii Patres Apostolici, lib. ii. c. 57. p. 260, 261 . ; and in the spurious epistle 
 of Clement to James, ’'Eoixev yxg oXov to 'srguyixot ty\c ’Exx\rj<rloi$ vrfi [xeyaXy. — P. 609. 
 
 f The first Metropolitan church, however, at Antioch, built under the orders 
 of Constantine, was of octagonal form. 
 
 f In Mr. Gough’s observations on ancient fonts ( Archaeologia, vol. x. p. 199.), 
 two more verses are cited, with a reference to Gruter’s Inscriptions, and to Ciampini : 
 Luce resurgentis Christi, qui claustra resolvit 
 Mortis, et a tumulis suscitet exanimes. 
 
 Mr. Gough has added : “ The last lines explain the appearance of Christ’s re- 
 “ surrection on fonts.” The lines have an allusion to the early practice of baptising 
 particularly at Easter. 
 
43 
 
 octagonal.* * * § Besides the baptistery connected with the cathedral at Can- 
 terbury, which admits of little question, I apprehend that one (if not 
 more than one ) instance of a baptistery which has been overlooked 
 occurs in our own country ; I mean in the round church at Cambridge, 
 which, in imitation of the octagonal Catholic baptistery at Ravenna, has 
 its inner wall supported by a circle of eight columns. This mystic num- 
 ber, however, was not always observed. In the circular baptistery at 
 Pisa, the columns are twelve in number. Robinson, in his History of 
 Baptism, acknowledges that baptisteries, which imply an intermediate 
 state of baptism between that in rivers and that in fonts, were but few 
 in Britain, which he attributes to the prevalence of Pelagian principles in 
 those times. Yet he adds, “ there were however, as Bede observes, 
 “ some of these oratories or baptismal chapels erected here at first.” 
 The period of these is between the coming of Austin and the conquest 
 by the Normans, p. 129. He refers a chapel of the Abbey of Braintree 
 in Essex to that period ; he notices also a Roman bath at the west end 
 of the parish church of St. Mary at Dover, which he thinks had been 
 used at first for the church baptistery ; nor are these - the only instances 
 adduced by him. 
 
 Of the origin of the round church at Cambridge, we are assured, 
 no record exists. Report has ascribed its foundation to the Templars, 
 and as bathing for chivalrous purposes! was occasionally performed on 
 the Continent in the baptismal churches of St. John!, (although we can 
 scarcely suppose that the sacred piscina was used for the purpose§,) the 
 erection of baptisteries by the Knights Templars, both for parochial and 
 chivalrous uses, would appear to be neither inconsistent nor improbable. 
 
 * This church was situated beyond the cathedral of Notre Dame. It was 
 taken down several years ago, and I have been informed that not a vestige of the 
 foundation remains. 
 
 ■f The bath and white garment of the novice, says Gibbon, were an indecent 
 copy of the regeneration of baptism. (Vol. xi. p. 38.) The knights, however, were re- 
 quired upon their oaths to declare their abhorrence of anabaptism, (Robinson, p. 389.) 
 as an acknowledgment that there is only one baptism in the Christian church, ac- 
 cording to Heb. vi. 4, 5, 6. 
 
 % Robinson, p. 390. 
 
 § The profanation of Nicolas Rienzi, in the baptistery of the Lateran, is per- 
 haps a solitary instance to the contrary. See Gibbon, vol. xii. p. 347. 
 
144 
 
 The round church at Cambridge is dedicated under the title of the 
 Holy Sepulchre, and is supposed to have derived its circular shape from 
 the church under which the small chapel of the Holy Sepulchre at Jeru- 
 salem is contained. This form, I believe, superseded the octagon in 
 baptisteries, in order to preserve in the latter more strongly an allusion 
 to the Apostle’s exposition of the Christian rite, which is most clearly 
 stated by him in his epistle to the Romans, c. vi. ver. 4. XuvsTa^y-ev 
 ouv aura) S/a ts fia7rlt(r/£aT0£ elg Zavarov, “ We are buried with him” (that 
 is, with Christ) “ in baptism,” by being, as Whitby expresses it, “ buried 
 “ under water” and thus obliged to a conformity to his death, by dying 
 unto sin ; and we have already had the opportunity of observing in the 
 two last verses of the Latin inscription over the baptistery of St. Thecla, 
 quoted by Mr. Gough, that in the institution of these baptisteries a refer- 
 ence was made to the death and resurrection of our Saviour, and to the 
 baptised Christians dying unto sin, and walking in newness of life. 
 
 The church at Cambridge, thus adapted by its form to the comme- 
 moration of the Saviour’s death, preserves the mystic number of columns, 
 and shows the two allusions combined. I am hence induced to believe, 
 that round churches, wherever they occur, were originally baptismal 
 oratories. In the end, fonts were introduced into churches, in lieu of 
 the detached baptisteries, and the rite of initiation was recorded in these 
 sacred edifices by the pointed arch, and by the octagonal mouldings, 
 with which the columns were surmounted. 
 
 It is to be regretted, that no monuments remain, from which we 
 can judge in what style of architecture the episcopal churches were con- 
 structed, which in the reign of Constantine, were closely planted along 
 the banks of the Nile.* It can scarcely be believed, that the Roman 
 style was adopted in that country, which was at all times original in its 
 structures and inventions. The primitive churches also in Abyssinia, 
 which must have been copied from those at Alexandria, no longer exist, 
 and have been supplied by others more modern. But it may be fairly 
 supposed, that something resembling the Eastern Moorish, or Gothic, 
 style of building had been adopted there, and communicated thence to 
 Europe and Asia. The first building of the cathedral of St. Mark at 
 
 * Gibbon, vol. iii. p. 283. 
 
145 
 
 Venice, we are told, was occasioned by refugees from Alexandria, who 
 brought with them thence the remains of that Evangelist. The present 
 is not indeed the original structure, nor does the interior of that basilica 
 answer to the expectation excited by the portals ; but the Gothic fashion 
 of the Doge’s palace seems to indicate the style imported by the Alex- 
 andrian freemasons. It is usual to term this Moorish ; but the Moslems 
 had no original architecture ; they borrowed from Byzantium. Gibbon 
 observes* that, in Spain, the third of the Abdolrahmans invited the 
 artists of Constantinople, the most skilful sculptors and architects of the 
 age, to construct his city, palace, and gardens, at Zehra. This was in- 
 deed so late as between A. D. 912 and 961. But of the Abbassides, 
 Almanzor, A. D. 754, was the first who encouraged the acquisition of 
 profane science, and Almamon, the seventh of the Abbassides, (between 
 A. D. 813 and 833,) is said by Gibbon to have invited the muses from 
 their ancient seats. His ambassadors at Constantinople, and his agents 
 in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt, collected the volumes of Grecian science.! 
 It can scarcely be doubted that architecture was included among the 
 sciences he so encouraged ; and although Gibbon mentions the surprise 
 of Mahomet the Second, upon entering Constantinople after its surren- 
 der, at the palaces and buildings it contained, so different from the 
 architecture of the East, which must perhaps be understood in a very 
 qualified sense!, it may nevertheless be believed that Alexandrian archi- 
 tects had been encouraged there, and that these were the artists who 
 had been furnished to the Abbassides. The Mahommedan architecture, 
 therefore, from Samarcand to Cordoba, including also those structures 
 in Hindostan so finely represented by the pencil of Daniell, may be 
 supposed to have been of Byzantine, or, to speak more correctly, of 
 Alexandrian Greek original. It is probable that so early as on the 
 taking of Alexandria (A. D. 620) by Chosroes, who had demolished the 
 
 * Vol. x. p. 38. 
 f Gibbon, vol. x. p. 4*1, 42. 
 
 t The possessions of Mahomet the Second, in the East, were confined to Asia 
 Minor, which had been laid waste by Tamerlane, who destroyed all the principal 
 buildings in it fifty years before. That the Turks possessed no considerable specimens 
 of architecture at that time may be concluded from the church of St. Sophia having 
 served as the model for all the mosques they constructed afterwards. 
 
 u 
 
146 
 
 churches in the East, and carried off the artists of the country, some 
 few Alexandrian architects were removed into Persia ; but that upon the 
 capture of the same city by Amrou, A. D. 640, others were dispersed 
 over the Greek empire, whence they might have spread themselves over 
 Italy and the north of Europe, where their principles were improved 
 upon by men of science and taste, among the more learned northern 
 ecclesiastics. Through these architects were probably received, the 
 canopy or ciborium, the ornament of the Nymphsea Lotus, and the 
 pointed forms suggested by it.* The first of these is an Egyptian word, 
 as we are assured by Hesychius, the latter is the peculiar native of the 
 Nile, and it directs us where to seek the origin of the pointed order in 
 architecture. It is admitted that the Goths could not have furnished 
 this. It may be worthily referred to the church of Alexandria. 
 
 * The pointed arch seems to have been known in Syria rather earlier than 
 A. D. 200, as a friend has observed, directing me to an example of it exhibited in 
 the architectural decoration of a funeral pile upon a family coin of Julia Mam- 
 maea, designed to represent her as of royal birth, and struck at Emesa in Syria, which 
 was her birth place. (In the Colonial Coins of Vaillant.) This coin bears the name 
 of Aphaci, a neighbouring city, where Venus was worshipped with very gross rites ; 
 which may account for the Roman legend, s< Veneri Genetrici.” 
 
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