many arts have been lost—amongst others, the purple dye for which Tyre was celebrated.”[180] He supposes it to have been first communicated by Solomon to the Jews. Bochart,[181] in confuting him, uses the argument which I have already disposed of—the impossibility of the Phœnician steersman concealing what he was about, from the crew and the passengers, often Greeks or Romans—the impossibility, that once discovered, it should be lost. Those arts alone he owns, had perished which belonged to luxury, not those which were of universal use; and he concludes, that this invention is to be considered a benefit of God reserved for the old age of the human race, in order that the Gospel might be promulgated throughout the world. He adopts as the explanation of the name Herculean, its being found near the town of Heraclea, noticing but not meeting the objection, that in that case it would have been called Heraclean. Lastly, he asks, why should the name be referred to a Phœnician and not to a Greek Hercules? These are the objections of the most learned of modern antiquaries, and urged by the most devoted partisan of the Phœnicians.
So far Greek mythology and poetry; and taken in conjunction with the explanation I have given of the cup, the stone, I think they are conclusive: for there can be but one explanation for vessels endowed with instinct to find their way, for an arrow to steer by, for a stone called by the name of the Columbus of antiquity, from the association of a stone and a cup with navigation, and of the sun with Hercules. But Hellas does not bound our sight: there are beyond higher springs and more sacred fountains, and to these I pass on. The Greek tongue has preserved, though it may have disfigured, the oracular accents of Palestine.
In the abstract of the Cosmogony of Sanchoniathon, translated into Greek by Philo Byblius, and preserved by Eusebius, these words appear;—Ἐπενόησε Θεὸς Οὐρανὸς, Βαιτύλια, λίθους ἐμψύχους μηχανησάμενος. “Ouranos contrived Batylia, stones with life.”
This has been taken to be a metaphorical representation of creative power; but the thing made or contained is mentioned, a thing well known by its name; and being so named, it is then described as being stones with life. Besides the words of Homer, describing the Phæacian ships, I know of no other passage in writings of antiquity, in which inanimate bodies are so spoken of. The λίθους ἐμψύχους of Sanchoniathon, and the νοήματα καὶ φρένας ἀνδρῶν of Homer, apply to the same thing, the one being descriptive of the instrument, the other of its effects. These Batylia are often mentioned, not on board ship, but in temples; they are described by travellers down as late as the fourth century of our era. They were many in number in the same temple. They were not in all temples; I find no mention of them in any Greek temple, or consequently in Greece or Asia Minor; the stones endowed with life, might be supposed to mean statues, but these were not images nor things that could be classed in any known category of objects of worship or ornament. The Greek writers do not know what to make of them: they looked upon them not as a mystery, but as a piece of necromancy: a thousand wonderful things were narrated of them, amongst which were the upturning of walls, and the capturing of cities; they were said to move in the air, and to have little demons inside.[182] We are not, however, destitute of description of their figure. They were in size and shape like cricket balls, of a dark indistinct colour, πόρφυροτίδης, or black; of the substance nothing is said.
The name Batylia is spoken of as Greek, and is given as the translation of another term used by the Phœnicians. The Greeks, however, could find no more a meaning for the word than for the thing; but as Greeks always have recourse to a fable when they are in want of an etymology, they gave us the following. When Rhea gave a stone instead of Jupiter to Saturn, to cover the deceit she wrapped it in a skin: the skin was Βαίτη, hence Batylia, but unluckily, the very stone swallowed for Jupiter, and which, at his son’s request, Saturn afterwards vomited, was itself preserved at the temple of Delphi.[183] This is all that Greek ingenuity can effect in the way of explanation. In this shape this “indigesta moles” descends to the learned hands of modern critics.
What do the critics do with it? They look at it, handle it, turn it over and over, taste it, chew it, kick it, and do everything with it but explain it; exerting all the while the extremest ingenuity to avoid the simple explanation before their eyes. Some make them to be pillars set up like those of Hercules,[184] some “votive offerings,” some “rocking stones,”[185] some “amulets.” Of course there is not a shadow of ground for any one of these interpretations, and they are each directly at variance with the description which the ancients have left us of the thing; their explanation, in every case, consisting in making out the thing to be different from that which it is described. Some indeed go further, and scoff and jeer; set Sanconiathon right, and undertake the revision of all the writers, and of all the copyists who have ever described Batylia, or transcribed the description.
We learn by a line in Priscian, the name or a name, by which the Phœnicians knew them. He says, “they call Abadir, the stone given by Rhea to Saturn;” elsewhere the word Abadir occurs, as said to be applied by the Phœnicians to “unknown gods.” Abadir is not Hebrew, and an emendation has been suggested by Bochard, aban-dir, which means round stone.
These round stones[186] supply the last link in the chain. The magnet must have been consulted with ceremonies, and considered as an oracle or a god. When the vessels returned into harbour it would be carried to the Temple, and exposed, like the other mysteries, to the gaze of the vulgar and uninitiated. Here, laid up in the Temples, are the compasses of the Phœnician argosies, preserved as sacred to the latter days of Paganism, although the secret would have died out centuries before.
The Batylia would be placed only on board the vessels destined for Lybia, Southern Africa, Spain, or Britain; and they would not be shipped like a bale of goods, or invoiced like a case of instruments. But whatever ceremonies were employed in Tyre, the Straits themselves must have been the scene of the initiation connected with their use. We may assume, with perfect confidence, that, in passing the Straits, every means were taken that craft could devise or superstition enforce, to preserve secret all the means through which this exterior commerce was carried on; whether the knowledge of the currents, the winds, the tides, the seas, the shores, the people, or the harbours. The traffic of the Phœnicians and Carthaginians was a mystery, and that mystery lay beyond the Straits. The Phœnician vessel running herself on the rocks that the Roman might not find the passage, tells the whole story; and this secrecy was enforced by the most sanguinary code: death was the penalty of indiscretion. We know from the Greek writers that particular ceremonies were performed in passing the Straits. They approached the Groves of Hercules with votive offerings, and departed in haste, oppressed by the sanctity of the spot. Hercules is the name associated with these mysteries, which seem to possess all the character of initiation, although there is no Dimeter, Dionysius, or Astarte.
Sailors are a primitive people: like children, they retain usages and traditions long forgotten by the other classes of a community. This spot is above all others on earth, fitted to imbibe such a superstition, and to retain such a ceremony. The races have remained undisturbed: I therefore hoped to find, even still, some remnants, and diligently made inquiries amongst Spaniards and Moors, but was not rewarded by any discovery.[187]