[145] Loss of sensation or a depraved state of sensation in the extremities, is a common symptom of madness. Where the former exists, it is not uncommon for patients to burn themselves dreadfully, from mere insensibility to the action of fire. The latter is often manifested by a sort of irritation which leads the sufferer to cut and lacerate the hands and feet. These facts, with a little allowance for exaggeration, may do something to explain rather a startling passage.—See Dr. Conolly on Insanity.
[146] Philo Περὶ Ἀρετῶν. sub fin.
[147] Carr’s Northern Summer.
[148] This sketch of Paul’s life is chiefly taken from Masson, Mémoires Sécrets sur la Russie. Several of the anecdotes rest on Dr. Clarke’s authority.
[149] Hist. of Greece, p. 18.
[150] The Furies. These goddesses were worshipped with mysterious veneration by the Athenians, who held it an ill omen to call them by their proper name, and spoke of them as the venerable goddesses (σεμνὰι θεὰι), or the Eumenides, because they had been propitious (ἐυμενεῖς) to Orestes after his acquittal by the court of Areopagus. This was owing partly to a general dislike of alluding to gloomy subjects, which led them, among other things, to avoid speaking openly of death or the dead (hence the phrases ὁι καμόντες, ὁι κατοιχόμενοι, those who are worn out, the departed, &c.); partly to wishing to propitiate an object of dread by fair words, as the Highlanders called fairies “men of peace,” especially on a Friday, when their power was greatest, and the Lowlanders entitled them “good neighbours,” and the devil himself the “goodman,” keeping reverentially out of sight his territorial designation.
[151] See Greece, p. 55.
[152] Ἐκ τῶνἀλιτηρίων σἐ φημὶγ εγονέναι τῶν τῆν θεοῦ.
Ιππ. 445.
[153] Gyges. Candaules, whom he murdered, was one of the Heraclidæ, or descendants of Hercules. The story is told in Herodotus, i. 8.