It was in general a characteristic of the Greeks, to mark their productions with a certain chearfulness: the muses love not hideous phantoms: and Homer himself, when by the mouth of some god he cites an Egyptian allegory, always cautiously begins with “We are told.” Nay, the elder Pampho[209], though he exceeds the Egyptian oddities, by his description of Jupiter wrapt up in horse-dung, approaches nevertheless the sublime idea of the English poet:
As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart;
As full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns,
As the rapt seraph, that adores and burns.
Pope.
It will be no easy matter to find, among the old Greek coins, an image like that of a snake encircling an egg[210], on a Syrian coin of the third century. None of their monuments are marked with any thing ghastly: of these they were, if possible, still more cautious than of ill-omen’d words. The image of death is not to be seen, perhaps, but on one gem[211], and that in the shape commonly exhibited at their feasts[212]; viz. dancing to a flute, with intent to make them enjoy the present pleasures of life, by reminding them of its shortness. On another gem[213], with a Roman inscription, there is a skeleton, with two butterflies as images of the soul, one of which is caught by a bird; a pretended symbol of the metempsychosis: but the performance is of latter times.
It has been likewise observed, that[214] among those myriads of altars, sacred even to the most whimsical deities, there never was one set apart to death; save only on the solitary coasts, which were deemed the borders of the world[215].
The Romans, in their best times, thought like the Greeks; and always, in adopting the iconology of a foreign nation, traced the footsteps of these their masters. An elephant, one of the latter mysterious symbols of the Egyptians[216] (for there is on the most ancient monuments neither elephant[217] nor hart, ostrich nor cock, to be found), was the image of different things[218], and perhaps of eternity, as on some Roman[219] coins, because of his longevity. But on a coin of the emperor Antoninus, this animal, with the inscription, MUNIFICENTIA, cannot possibly hint at any other thing but the grand games, the magnificence of which was augmented by those animals.