FOOTNOTES
[18] We know from Homer (Il. vi.) that when Prætus sent Bellerophon to the king of Lycia he gave him, not a written letter, but σηματα λυγρα, mournful signs; (probably like the picture-writing of the Mexicans:) writing could not be common till many centuries afterwards, since the first written laws were given in Greece only six centuries B. C. (Herod. lib. ii. Strab. lib. vi.) Dr. Gillies.
[19] “The Trœzenian histories,” observes Ælian, book xi. ch. 2, “relate that the poems of Oræbantius, a native of Trœzene, were in existence before Homer; and I know they affirm that Dares the Phrygian, whose Iliad is even now extant, lived before Homer’s time. Melisander, the Milesian, likewise, composed the battle of the Lapithæ and the Centaurs.”
[20] Brucker, Historia Critica Philosophiæ, tom. i. Homer represents father Oceanus as the generator of all things: and the Chaos of Hesiod is merely the watery element.
[21] So Orpheus:
Night, source of all things, whom we Venus name.
Night and Chaos, or the aqueous mass, seem reciprocally considered as the source of nature.
[22] La Mythologie, ou la Fable expliquée par l’Histoire.
[23] Monde Primitif.
[24] Wotton’s Reflections on ancient and modern Learning.
[25] See Sir William Jones’s Dissertation on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India.
[26] The working of metals was not among the ancient attributes of Vulcan: but a diversity of character or attributes is not always an objection. Each god had not only a twofold nature, celestial, and human or heroical, but his history and qualities changed with change of place. Thus Hercules was the Sun; he was also a vagabond hero; but he may have been one person in Greece, and another in Phœnicia. Gerard Vossius, in his treatise “de Origine et Progressu Idolatriæ,” may therefore be right in his conjecture, that among the Phœnicians both Joshua and Samson were commemorated in the Tyrian Hercules. Bacchus was the Sun, and an Indian conqueror. His history also assimilates with that of Noah. He was likewise in all probability Caphtor, the grandson of Ham; the great Ægyptian warrior who dispossessed the Avim of that part of the land of Canaan, afterwards called Philistia. (See Priestley’s Lectures on History, i. 5.) But it is natural that the Phœnicians, who visited Greece when the memory of Moses was still vivid among the Canaanites, should have brought with them miraculous reports of the Jewish lawgiver, which were added to the history of Bacchus. Bacchus is called by Orpheus, Μισης; and by Plutarch (de Iside et Osiride) Palæstinus. Bacchus was exposed in an ark upon a river: a double coincidence with Noah and Moses, which is exactly in the spirit of the old mythologists. Nonnus, in his Dionysiacs, mentions the flight of Bacchus to the red sea, and his battles with the Princes of Arabia; and relates that he touched the rivers Orontes and Hydaspes with his thyrsus, and that the rivers dried up, and he passed through dry-shod. The Indians are in darkness, while the Bacchic army are in light. The ivy-rod of Bacchus is thrown on the ground, and creeps to and fro like a live serpent. Snakes twist themselves about the hair and limbs of Bacchus; which may be a shadow of the fiery serpents in the wilderness. The host of Bacchus, like the multitude led by Moses, is accompanied by women. One of the Bacchæ touches a rock, and water gushes out; at another time wine and honey; and the rivers run with milk. These circumstances are very remarkable. See Stillingfleet, Origines Sacræ, ch. v. Nonnus, Dionysiacs.