The report of the mountain having been call’d Larnassus, is another argument of the high antiquity of this first serpentine temple here built by Phut, and throws us up to the patriarchal church, and to the times immediately after the great deluge. Stephanus of Byzantium before quoted, says it: and the interpreter of Apollonius, and Ovid makes Apollo’s engagement with Python to be immediately after the flood. They pretend the name Larnassus comes from Larnax, the ark of Deucalion landing here, agreeable to the Greek method of drawing all antiquity to themselves.
The central obeliscal stone in some of the circular works here, which was the Kebla, as in the southern temple of Abury, was afterward, in idolatrous times, worshipped at Delphos for the statue of Apollo, as Clemens Alexandrinus writes, Strom. I. ’till art and Grecian delicacy improv’d and produc’d elegant images, like that aforemention’d of the vatican, and innumerable more, still remaining.
In Vaillant’s colony coins vol. I. page 242. is an elegant coin struck at Cæsarea, to the emperor Antoninus Pius. On the reverse, Apollo standing, leans on a tripod, holds in his right hand a snake extended. The learned author is at a loss to explain it, therefore I may be allowed to give my opinion, that it relates to our present subject.
It was the method of the ancient planters of colonies, to begin their work with building temples, I mean our patriarchal temples, for there were then no other. And they instituted festival and religious games, which contributed very much to polish and civilize mankind, and make them have a due notion and practice of religion, without which it is impossible for any date to subsist. Of this Strabo writes very sensibly in IX. treating on this very place. The Pæanick or Pythian are the most ancient games we have any account of. Strabo writes very largely concerning them.
These great festivals were at the four solar ingresses into the cardinal signs, which were the times of publick sacrificing, as I suppose, from the creation of the world. The Pythian festival was celebrated on the sixth day of the Athenian month Thargelion, Delphick Busius. ’Tis between April and May.
But we learn, from the scholiast of Pindar, prolegom. ad Pythia, that Apollo instituted the Pythia on the seventh day after he had overcome the serpent Python; and that at Delphos they sung a hymn called Pæan to Apollo every seventh day. The Athenians did the like, every seventh day of the moon, whence Hesiod’s
Ἑβδόμη ἱερὸν ἦμαρ——
Because, says he, Apollo was born on that day.
The learned Gale observes from this, in his court of the Gentiles, p. 150. that it means the sabbath as the patriarchal custom, before the Jewish institution. Usher before him, of the same opinion, in his discourse on the sabbath. Porphyry in his book concerning the Jews, quoted by Eusebius pr. ev. I. 9. tells us, the Phœnicians consecrated one day in seven as holy; he says indeed, it was in honour of their principal deity Saturn, as they call’d him, and Israel. We are not to regard his reason, any more than Hesiod’s aforementioned, but his testimony of a matter of fact, has its just weight. He means to prove a custom older than Judaism.
I take all this to be an illustrious proof of the patriarchal observation of the sabbath, before the Mosaick dispensation. Their sabbath was intirely like our Christian, the greatest festival of all, and deservedly the most to be regarded, as being religion properly, or practical religion.