Limehouse, March 31. 1851.
Arms of Isle of Man.—The arms of the Isle of Man are gules, three legs conjoined in the fess point, &c. &c. or. These arms were stamped on the old halfpence of the island, and we may well call them the current coin.
In an old edition of the Mythology of Natalis
Comus, Patavii, 1637, small 4to., at page 278., I find an Icon of Triptolemus sent by Ceres in a chariot drawn by serpents, hovering in the clouds over what I suppose to be Sicily, or Trinacria; and on a representation of a city below the chariot occurs the very same form of coin, the three legs conjoined, with the addition of three ears of corn.
This seems to me to be a curious coincidence.
Merviniensis.
Doctrine of the Resurrection.—Can any of your readers inform me of any traces of the doctrine of the Resurrection to be found in authors anterior to the Christian era? The following passage from Diogenes Laertius is quoted in St. John's Manners and Customs of Ancient Greece, vol. i. p. 355.:
"Καὶ ἀναβιώσεσθαι, κατὰ τοὺς Μάγους, φησὶ (θεοπομπος), τοὺς ἀνθρώπους, καὶ ἔσεσθαι ἀθανάτους."
How far does the statement in this passage involve the idea of a bodily resurrection? I fancy the doctrine is not countenanced by any of the apparitions in the poetical Hades of Virgil, or of other poets.
Zeteticus.