tions, and all the sacred figures inseparable from them, were in the ancient language called Manes, that is, regulations. This the Greeks rendered Thismoi. The extravagant attitudes of these mad women, who strove to outvie cach other by the lamentations and representing gestures authorised by custom, were thence called Mania. These women again were called the Thyades, that is vagrant or wandering, when they dispersed themselves in the mountains like so many huntresses. They were called Bassarides or grape-gatherers, because these feasts were celebrated after vintage, and when new wine began to be drinkable.* After the vagaries and the whole train, at last appeared an old man upon an ass, who advanced with a sedate countenance, offering wine to the tired youth, and inviting everybody to take some rest.† If anybody should complain that this explication of the origin of the Bacchanals does not establish a relation sufficiently sensible between wine and the feasts of Bacchus, who from all antiquity has been looked upon as the inventor and propagator of the vine, whereas we reduce it to the proclamation of a few instructions, which the people stood in need of; I shall reply, that the feasts of Bacchus and Ceres are everywhere styled among the Greeks and Romans, the feasts of the regulations; because they confusedly remembered, that the purport and intention of the figures of Isis and Horus was to regulate the conduct of the people. And I shall at the same time desire such to take notice of what Horus carries over his head at the solemnity of the Pamylia, or at the beginning of the winter. Among other objects capable of pleasing, there appear three large pitchers of wine. This was the finest part of the ceremonial: and the feasts where this liquor was drunk in plenty could not but be the most brisk and most enlivened of all. I have considerably abridged the preceding article. That the Bacchus honoured in the processions here described was not, as the author states, a man that ever lived, is very evident; but that the figure representing him was merely a symbol of husbandry, as he endeavours to show, is not so clear. The festivals were religious thanksgivings, in which grateful acknowledgments were rendered for the favours received from the hand of divine providence, and the image intended to represent the god who was *After the virgins, followed a company of men carrying poles, at the end of which were fastened phalloi. The heads of these men were crowned with ivy and violets, and their faces covered with other herbs. They marched singing songs upon the occasion of the festival.-Anthon's Lemp. Class. Dict.-EDIT. + Ibat pando Silenus asello. "It was the custom, at the celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries, as we are told by the Scholiast on the place, to have what was wanted in those rites carried upon Asses. Hence the proverb, Asinus portat mysteria." Warb. Div. Leg.—EDIT. supposed to bestow these blessings, was ceremoniously carried in procession. The Bacchanals were similar to the feasts noticed in the memorials of past events, with trifling variations, arising from a difference of taste, and misconceptions in the conveyance of customs from one country to another. The Roman Catholic processions of the Host are of the same nature as the above, and no doubt the custom, like most of the practices of the church of Rome, has been derived from the ancient pagan ceremonies. The catholic processions, it seems, are conducted with more mystic, solemn pomp than those of the ancients, but the ruffian assaults of the guards or assistants in this affair, of persons walking in the streets, who are not even within the pale of their order, for neglecting to fall upon their knees, on the passage of the host, are more outrageous than the extravagancies of their prototype. The masonic processions are identically the same thing as the Bacchanals, but got up with more taste and refinement, owing to the influence of civilization. In these are carried, besides other articles, which will hereafter be enumerated, a box or chest, called the lodge, about which much secrecy is pretended, and which is kept covered from the eyes of the profane or uninitiated. The utmost decorum is observed, and no person is annoyed for not paying homage to the sacred contents of the mysterious chest. The author himself, in the next article to the foregoing, has told us who Bacchus really was, and which fully explains the understanding that should be applied to these Bacchanalian processions, as follows: The sceptre and empire of heaven and earth fell to the share of Osiris. The chariot, the whip, and the reins were assigned to Apollo; whence it is that we so commonly find in one god the characters of another. The Horus Apollo, who was only related to the rural year or the order of works, was the more easily mistaken for the sun which rules nature, that they put the whip and the attributes of the sun into the hands of the Horus, in order to shorten and abbreviate the marks of the solar year, and of the works suitable to each season. Thus Horus became the same with the Moloch of the Ammonites, the Adonis of Byblos, the Bel of the other Phenician cities, and the radiant Belenus honoured in Gaul. This driver of the chariot, which gives light to the world, is the son of Jupiter; but the son of Jehov, the son par excellence, liber, is no other than Horus, Bacchus or Dionysius. Osiris, Horus, Apollo, Bacchus, and the sun, are then confounded. This the author of the Saturnals has sufficiently demonstrated. Virgil himself makes no distinction between Bacchus and Apollo or the sun, when he gives Bacchus and Ceres or Isis the government of the year and the light. Vos, o clarissima mundi Lumina, labentem coelo quæ ducitis annum, Atlas. The Hyades and Pleiades. Atias, according to the fable, was an ingenious master of astronomy, a doctor who knew nature in general, and gave information about it. Homer gives us Atlas as a very learned god, who knew all the obliquitios of the coasts, and all the depths of the sea. Virgil ascribes to the informations of the great Atlas the knowledge men had acquired of the moon, the eclipses of the sun, and the whole order of nature. The name signifies a support (atlah, support, prop), which gave occasion for the invention of the metamorphosis of the doctor Atlas into a column or high mountain, that props up the arch of the heavens. The Phenicians, in the voyages they repeated every third year to Tarshish, that is, to Cadiz and to Botica (now Andalusia) through the Red Sea, and in carrying on the commerce of all the coars of Africa, often saw the highest mountain of Mauritania, whose top is generally covered with snow, and seems joined with the heavens. The name of Atlas or column given to that mountain caused the fable of Atlas to be applied to it. They said he was king of Mauritania, a great astrologer and geographer, who at last was by the gods changed into a high mountain, reaching from the earth to the heavens. The Hyades or Huades, who took their name from the figure V, which they form in the forehead of the celestial bull, and the Pleiades, which are that small platoon of stars so remarkable, near the foregoing, are the most known and the easiest to be distinguished of all the constellations of the zodiac. They particularly were of use to regulate the informations given to the disciples of the priests by means of an Atlas, that is, of a Horus bearing a celestial sphere. Atlas humanized, became the father of the Hyades and Pleiades; and Orion, which rises immediately after them, easily passed in the imagination of the fabulists for a libertine, who incessantly pursues them. Among the other fables which the Phenician travellers were sufficiently at leisure to devise in their courses, or to recount when they came home, the two finest doubtless are those of the garden of the Hesperides, and of Atlas freed by Hercules of the burden of the celestial globe. What can be the origin of the first? Three nymphs placed round a tree that bears golden apples, of which they have the disposition and management; a dragon that watches to interdict the use of and access to this admirable fruit, to any other; a wild goat that browses on the grass at the foot of the tree; or, instead of the goat, a horn of abundance placed either at the foot of the tree or in the hand of one of the three nymphs. This is the picture of the garden of the Hesperides. The picture is nothing more than the ancient symbol of the rich commerce of which the Phenicians made the preparations in winter. It was the commerce of Hesperia or of the western countries, particularly of Spain, whence they drew exquisite wines, rich metals, and that superfine wool which the Syrians dyed in purple. (See Diod. and Strab. or Spect. de la nat., vol. 4, part 2, dialog. 2.) They brought back the finest corn from the coast of Africa; and when they went round the continent through the Red Sea, they exchanged all sorts of iron-ware, knives, and edge-tools, for ebony and other precious woods, for gold dust, and provisions of all kinds. This branch of their commerce was the most esteemed of all. It was the chief object that did then take up the thoughts of the Phenicians; nor did they fail to expose the public sign of it in the assemblies. One may easily guess at the meaning of that tree which afforded such precious things. The great dragon that surrounded the tree, turned the mind of the beholders to the subsistence and benefits whereof it was the sign. The capricorn, or barely one horn of this animal placed at the foot of the tree, was the character of the season. The three moons during which the companies were formed, had their name of Hesperides, or Hesperia, as well as all the west, from the word which signifies the good share, the best lot (per, 2 Sam. 6, 19). -es The public sign, used upon this occasion, was doubtless three golden balls, having reference to the three moons, personified by three nymphs, in which the companies were formed, the figure and colour corresponding with those of the full moon. An allusion may also be made to the gold dust and other precious articles, the best lot, which the Phenicians received in exchange for their merchandise. The Lombards, the money-lenders of former times, are said to have adopted this sign for their offices; and pawnbrokers still use it to designate their profession. I am sensible that some writers conjecture the golden apples of the Hesperides to be nothing more than oranges; but it is hardly probable that an article of so little value, in a mercantile point of view, should have given rise to the fable. Hercules is a name of the sun, and bis relieving Atlas of his burden alludes to his dissolving the snow with which Atlas or the mountain of Moritania was loaded. Mercury, Hermes, Camillus. We have now a pretty large number of very famous men and women, which we, methinks, have an acquired right to strike out of history. We must no longer inquire into their country, antiquity, or genealogy, since we have proved that they all of them are nothing more than the Osiris, the Isis, and the Horus of Egypt; that is, the three principal keys of the ancient writing, or the symbols of the solar, the civil, and the rural year. We know a fourth key, viz., the Thot or Taaut, that is the dog. Thence again springs a multitude of kings and gods, of whom we shall in few words find out and explain the names, ranks, and employments. The Egyptians in after-times, no doubt, made him one of their kings, who had been transported into this fine star. They give him as the son of Menes, and the grandson of Osiris, and ascribe the invention of the symbolical characters to him. They say that he was the counsellor of Menes, whom he assisted in the regulation of their feasts. But this fine story had no other foundation than the report that went among the Egyptians of old, that Thot introduced the Manes, and renewed the proclamations. And indeed he opened the year, since that always began at the rising of the dog-star; whence the first of their months had the name of Thot. It was out of mere superstition that the Egyptians forbore calculating exactly the sacred or civil year, when they began to know that, besides the 365 days, there remained a quarter of a day to be added to complete the revolution of a year. Four quarters of a day overlooked, made a whole day in four years' time; and neglecting to intercalate that day at the four years' end, and to reckon 366, instead of 365, their civil year on this account began one day too soon, and by retrogradation differed a whole day from the calculation of the natural year. The beginning of the sacred year went successively therefore through every one of the days of the natural year in the space of 365 times four years, which make 1460 years. They fancied they blessed and made all the seasons to prosper, by making them thus enjoy one after another the feast of Isis, which was celebrated along with that of the dog-star; though it was frequently very remote from that constellation: and it was in consequence of the ancient custom of celebrating the feast of Isis, or the renewal of the year at the exact rising of the dog-star, that they afterwards, in whatever season that feast might fall, to be sure, introduced not only the figure of a dog, but even real and live dogs, which always preceded the chariot of Isis (Diod. l. 1); a circumstance which I beg my reader to take particular notice of. Thus in after-times they took a special pleasure in introducing a marvellous and mysterious air into everything. The calculation just mentioned, and many others which they had received from the priests their predecessors, were things of the utmost plainness. They, in process of time, mistook them for the durations of the several kings whom they quartered in the dog-star and other celestial bodies. One had lived 1460 years; another had reigned so many thousands of years together. The astronomical observations grounded on several suppositions and combinations of the stars, were one of the chief employments of the priests These calculations, found in the registers of the most laborious among the learned, being always joined with names of men, such as Anubis, Thot, Menes, Osiris, and others whom they lodged in the stars, passed for the term of the terrestrial life of these gods. Such is indeed the true origin of that antiquity of the Egyptian history, which they trace |