[98]. “Isis,” says Gale, “is the moon. And a dog attended Isis when she was diligently seeking her husband Osiris. But the moon perpetually seeks the sun, and therefore that sagacious animal, the dog, accords with Isis. In the solemnities, also, of Isis, dogs preceded the procession.” After this manner others besides Gale; who have not penetrated the depths of the philosophy and theology of Plato, would doubtless explain what is fabulously said of Isis. In reality, however, Isis is not the moon, but one of the divinities that revolve in the lunar sphere as an attendant on the moon, and who, in modern language, is one of the satellites of that planet. For, as I have shown from Proclus, in the Introduction to my translation of the Timæus of Plato, every planetary sphere is an ολοτης, or a part of the universe having a total subsistence, i. e. ranking as a whole, and is surrounded with a number of satellites analogous to the choir of the fixed stars. Of these satellites, likewise, the leaders of which are the planets, the first in order are Gods; after these, dæmons revolve in lucid orbicular bodies; and these are followed by partial souls, such as ours. See Proclus in Tim. p. 275 and p. 279· This theory, as I have elsewhere observed, is the grand key to the theology and mythology of the ancients, as it shows at one view why the same God is so often celebrated with the names of other Gods; which induced Macrobius to think that all the Gods were nothing more than different powers of the sun. The English reader will find an abundant confirmation of what is here said in the fourth book of my translation of the above mentioned admirable work of Proclus.
[99]. “The Egyptians,” says Horapollo, lib. i. “wishing to signify the moon, paint a cynocephalus, because this animal is variously affected by the course of the moon.”
[100]. In the original μυγαλη. “This word,” says Gale, “is written variously, viz. as μυγάλη, μυγαλὴ, and μυγαλῆ. It is also variously translated, for it is either rattus, or mus araneus.” Plutarch, in the fourth book of his Symposiacs, Quest. 5, says, “that the Egyptians were of opinion that darkness was prior to light, and that the latter was produced from mice in the fifth generation, at the time of the new moon. And further still, they assert that the liver of the weasel diminishes in the wane of the moon.”
[101]. With the Egyptians many animals were sacred; for the worship of which the following admirable apology is made by Plutarch in his treatise of Isis and Osiris:
“It now remains that we should speak of the utility of these animals to man, and of their symbolical meaning; some of them partaking of one of these only, but many of them of both. It is evident, therefore, that the Egyptians worshiped the ox, the sheep, and the ichneumon, on account of their use and benefit, as the Lemnians did larks, for discovering the eggs of caterpillars and breaking them; and the Thessalians storks, because, as their land produced abundance of serpents, the storks destroyed all of them as soon as they appeared. Hence, also, they enacted a law, that whoever killed a stork should be banished. But the Egyptians honoured the asp, the weasel, and the beetle, in consequence of observing in them certain dark resemblances of the power of the Gods, like that of the sun in drops of water. For at present, many believe and assert that the weasel engenders by the ear, and brings forth by the mouth, being thus an image of the generation of reason [or the productive principle of things]. But the genus of beetles has no female; and all the males emit their sperm into a sphericle piece of earth, which they roll about, thrusting it backwards with their hind feet, while they themselves move forward; just as the sun appears to revolve in a direction contrary to that of the heavens, in consequence of moving from west to east. They also assimilated the asp to a star, as being exempt from old age, and performing its motions, unassisted by organs, with agility and ease. Nor was the crocodile honoured by them without a probable cause; but is said to have been considered by them as a resemblance of divinity, as being the only animal that is without a tongue. For the divine reason is unindigent of voice, and proceeding through a silent path, and accompanied with[[102]] justice, conducts mortal affairs according to it. They also say it is the only animal living in water that has the sight of its eyes covered with a thin and transparent film, which descends from his forehead, so that he sees without being seen, which is likewise the case with the first God. But in whatever place the female crocodile may lay her eggs, this may with certainty be concluded to be the boundary of the increase of the Nile. For not being able to lay their eggs in the water, and fearing to lay them far from it, they have such an accurate presensation of futurity, that though they enjoy the benefit of the river in its access, during the time of their laying and hatching, yet they preserve their eggs dry and untouched by the water. They also lay sixty eggs, are the same number of days in hatching them, and those that are the longest lived among them live just so many years, which number is the first of the measures employed by those who are conversant with the heavenly bodies.
“Moreover, of those animals that were honoured for both reasons, we have before spoken of the dog. But the ibis, killing indeed all deadly reptiles, was the first that taught men the use of medical evacuation, in consequence of observing that she is after this manner washed and purified by herself. Those priests, also, that are most attentive to the laws of sacred rites, when they consecrate water for lustration, fetch it from that place where the ibis had been drinking; for she will neither drink nor come near unwholesome or infected water; but with the distance of her feet from each other and her bill she makes an equilateral triangle. Farther still, the variety and mixture of her black wings about the white represents the moon when she is gibbous.
“We ought not, however, to wonder if the Egyptians love such slender similitudes, since the Greeks also, both in their pictures and statues, employ many such like resemblances of the Gods. Thus in Crete there was a statue of Jupiter without ears. For it is fit that he who is the ruler and lord of all things should hear no one.[[103]] Phidias also placed a dragon by the statue of Minerva, and a snail by that of Venus at Elis, to show that virgins require a guard, and that keeping at home and silence become married women. But the trident of Neptune is a symbol of the third region of the world, which the sea possesses, having an arrangement after the heavens and the air. Hence, also, they thus denominated Amphitrite and the Tritons. The Pythagoreans, likewise, adorned numbers and figures with the appellations of the Gods. For they called the equilateral triangle, Minerva Coryphagenes, or begotten from the summit, and Tritogeneia because it is divided by three perpendiculars drawn from the three angles. But they called the one Apollo, being persuaded to this by the obvious meaning of the word Apollo [which signifies a privation of multitude] and by the simplicity of the monad[[104]]. The duad they denominated strife and audacity, and the triad justice. For since injuring and being injured are two extremes subsisting according to excess and defect, justice, through equality, has a situation in the middle. But what is called the tetractys, being the number 36, was, as is reported, their greatest oath, and was denominated the world. For this number is formed from the composition of the four first even and the four first odd numbers, collected into one sum.[[105]] If, therefore, the most approved of the philosophers did not think it proper to neglect or despise any occult signification of a divine nature when they perceived it even in things which are inanimate and incorporeal, it appears to me that they, in a still greater degree, venerated those peculiarities depending on manners which they saw in such natures as had sense, and were endued with soul, with passion, and ethical habits. We must embrace, therefore, not those who honour these things, but those who reverence divinity through these, as through most clear mirrors, and which are produced by nature, in a becoming manner, conceiving them to be the instruments or the art of the God by whom all things are perpetually adorned. But we ought to think that no inanimate being can be more excellent than one that is animated, nor an insensible than a sensitive being, not even though some one should collect together all the gold and emeralds in the universe. For the divinity is not ingenerated either in colours, or figures, or smoothness; but such things as neither ever did, nor are naturally adapted to participate of life, have an allotment more ignoble than that of dead bodies. But the nature which lives and sees, and has the principle of motion from itself, and a knowledge of things appropriate and foreign to its being, has certainly derived an efflux and portion of that wisdom which, as Heraclitus says, considers how both itself and the universe is governed. Hence the divinity is not worse represented in these animals than in the workmanships of copper and stone, which in a similar manner suffer corruption and decay, but are naturally deprived of all sense and consciousness. This then I consider as the best defence that can be given of the adoration of animals by the Egyptians.”
[102]. Instead of και δικης, I read και μετα δικης.
[103]. i. e. Should be perfectly impartial.
[104]. Instead of διπλοτατοις μοναδος as in the original, which is nonsense, it is necessary to read, as in the above translation, απλοτητι της μοναδος.