Ingens ara fuit.—— Æne. II.
Servius upon the IIId Georg. says, in the middle of a temple was the place of the Deity: the rest was only ornamental. This altar is plac’d a little above the focus of the upper end of the ellipsis. Mr. Webb says, p. 56. the altar is 4 foot broad, 16 in length. 4 foot is 2 cubits 2 palms, which at four times measures 16 foot. I believe its breadth is 2 cubits 3 palms, i. e. 1 and a half: and that its first intended length was 10 cubits, equal to the breadth of the trilithon before which it lies. But ’tis very difficult to come at its true length. ’Tis 20 inches thick, a just cubit, and has been squar’d. It lies between the two centers, that of the compasses and that of the string: leaving a convenient space quite round it, no doubt, as much as was necessary for their ministration.
P. 30. TAB. XVI.
The Section of Stonehenge looking towards the Entrance.
Mr. Webb says, the heads of oxen, and deer, and other beasts have been found upon digging in and about Stonehenge, as divers then living could testify, undoubted reliques of sacrifices, together with much charcoal, meaning wood-ashes. Mr. Camden says, mens bones have been found hereabouts. He means in the barrows adjacent, and I saw such thrown out by the rabbets very near the temple. But eternally to be lamented is the loss of that tablet of tin, which was found at this place, in the time of King Henry VIII. (the Æra of restitution of learning and of pure religion) inscrib’d with many letters, but in so strange a character, that neither Sir Thomas Elliot a learned antiquary, nor Mr. Lilly master of St. Paul’s school, could make any thing out of it. Mr. Sammes may be in the right, who judges it to have been Punic; I imagine if we call it Irish, we shall not err much. No doubt but it was a memorial of the founders, wrote by the Druids: and had it been preserv’d till now, would have been an invaluable curiosity. To make the reader some amends for such a loss, I have given a specimen of supposed Druid writing, out of Lambecius’s account of the Emperor’s library at Vienna. ’Tis wrote on a very thin plate of gold, with a sharp-pointed instrument. It was in an urn found at Vienna, roll’d up in several cases of other metal, together with funeral exuviæ. It was thought by the curious, one of those epistles, which the Celtic people were wont to send to their friends in the other world. So certain a hope of a future state had the Druids infus’d into them. The reader may divert himself with endeavouring to explain it. The writing upon plates of gold or tin is exceeding ancient, as we see in Job xix. 24.
Plutarch in his pamphlet de dæmonio Socratis tells a similar story. “About the time of Agesilaus, they found a brazen tablet in the sepulchre of Alcmena at Thebes, wrote in characters unknown, but seem’d to be Egyptian. Chonuphis, the most learned of the Egyptian prophets then, being consulted upon it, confirm’d it, and said it was wrote about the time of Hercules and Proteus king in Egypt.” Tzetzes, chil. 2. hist. 44. mentions Proteus a king in lower Egypt by the sea side, pretends he was son of Neptune and Phœnicia, throwing him up thereby to very ancient times, those of the first famous navigators, our Hercules and the Phœnicians. He is said to have lived in the island afterward call’d Pharos, from the watch-tower there erected. Here Homer sings, that Proteus diverts himself with his phocæ or sea-calves, most undoubtedly his ships. But at that time of day, every thing new and strange was told by the Greeks in a mythologic way.
In the year 1635, as they were plowing by the barrows about Normanton ditch, they found a large quantity of excellent pewter, as much as they sold at a low price for 5l. says Mr. Aubry in his manuscript collections, relating to antiquities of this sort. There are several of these ditches, being very small in breadth, which run across the downs. I take them for boundaries of hundreds, parishes, &c. Such as the reader may observe in my [Plate XXXI.] of the barrows in Lake-field. I suspect this too was a tablet with an inscription on it, but falling into the hands of the countrymen, they could no more discern the writing, than interpret it. No doubt but this was some of the old British stannum, which the Tyrian Hercules, sirnam’d Melcarthus, first brought ex Cassiteride insula, or Britain. Which Hercules liv’d in Abraham’s time, or soon after.
Mr. Webb tells us, the Duke of Buckingham dug about Stonehenge: I fear much to the prejudice of the work. He himself did the like, and found what he imagin’d was the cover of a thuribulum. He would have done well to have given us a drawing of it. But whatever it was, vases of incense, oil, flower, salt, wine and holy water, were used by all nations in their religious ceremonies.