And wills that mortal men, inur'd to toil, "Succeeding times a silver age behold, Excelling brass, but more excelled by gold. And spring was but a season of the year. VIRG. Georg. l. I. v. 121. Then ploughs for seed the fruitful furrows broke, And oxen labour'd first beneath the yoke."-Ov. Met. 1. I. v. 114. "I believe that while Saturn still was king, chastity lingered upon earth. Many traces of primeval chastity may have existed under Jove when no one Then by feared a thief for his cabbages or apples, but lived with garden unenclosed. degrees Astræa retired to the realms above, with chastity for her companion, and the two sisters fled together.-Juv. Sat. vi. 14. 19. Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. "May you return to the earth and water of which you were made."-HOм. N. 1. VII. v. 99. "The spirit is the gift and image of God in mortals, but the body we have of the earth, and this is resolved again into dust, while the air receives the spirit.”—PHOCYL. v. 100. "Allow the dead to be now hidden in the earth; for, from whence each entered into the body, thither has it gone-the spirit indeed towards the sky, but the body to the earth."-EURIP. Suppl. v. 531. · "Man, doom'd to care, to pain, disease, and strife, And passing generations longs to save. Last dies himself. Yet wherefore should we mourn! For man must to his kindred dust return— Submit to the destroying hand of fate As ripen'd ears the harvest-sickle wait." EURIP. Hyps. frag. 6. apud Cic. Tusc. 1. III. c. 25. "Is not everything that had a beginning subject to mortality?" CIC. de Nat. Deor. 1.1. c.10. See notes on Eccles. XII. 7. 21. Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them. There can be no doubt that the skins of beasts were the most ancient kind of clothing for all people. We read of the lion's skin worn by Hercules, and the leopard's skin of Bacchus. The surplice which was worn by Pagan priests derived its name from its being worn super pelliceum over a coat of skins, which was the usual undergarment of those who offered sacrifice. The Jewish doctors maintain that the coat of skins given to Adam was his priestly garment, and descended as such to his successors, and that Noah, Abraham, and the rest of the patriarchs wore it when offering their sacrifices. "The beauteous Paris came : In form a god! The panther's speckled hide Flow'd o'er his armour with an easy pride.-Hoм. N. 1. III. v. 17. "The son of Tydeus o'er his shoulders flung A lion's spoils, that to his ankles hung; Then seized his pond'rous lance and strode along."-IBID. 1. x. v. 177. "A club and lion's skin may agree well enough with the times of the ancient Hercules, for the use of arms not being known at that period, men fought with clubs and staves, and covered their bodies with the skins of beasts."-DIOD. SIC. 1. 1. c. 24. "Alcides threw off the skin of the lion of Cleonæ, and Antæus that of the Lybian lion which he wore."-LUCAN. Phars. 1. IV. v. 612. "The Germans wear the skins of savage beasts—a dress which those bordering on the Rhine use without any delicacy. They ornament the hides with spots, and also wear the skins of monsters of the deep."-Tac. Germ. c. 17. 24. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life. "The flaming sword of the cherubim may have given rise to the tradition of Mercury's caduceus and its twisted serpents, with which he conducted the souls of the dead on their way to Hades or Paradise.-See also Exod. vII. 10.” "Cyllenius now to Plato's dreary reign That drives the ghosts to realms of night or day, Points out the long, uncomfortable way."-Hom. Odyss. 1. XXIV. v. 1. "Now Hermes grasps within his awful hand The mark of sovereign power, his magic wand : And eyes, though clos'd in death, restores to light." 66 Unspotted spirits you consign To blissful seats and joys divine, And pow'rful with your golden wand, Thus grateful does your office prove, VIRG. Æn. 1. Iv. v. 242. To gods below and gods above."-HOR. 1. I. carm. 10. GENESIS IV. 3. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. "In former times the sacrifices to the gods were not animals, but cakes moistened with honey, and fruits, and other innocent offerings of a similar kind."PLAT. de leg. 1. vI. c. 22. "In days of old it was plain spelt, and the sparkling grain of unadulterated salt that had efficacy to render the gods propitious to man. The altar used to send forth its smoke, contented with the Sabine herbs, and the laurel was burnt with no small crackling noise. If there was any one who could add violets to the chaplets wrought from the flowers of the meadow, that man was rich. The knife of the present day which opens the entrails of the stricken bull had in those times no employment in the sacred rites."-OVID. Fast. 1. 1. v. 338. 8. Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. Aratus, describing the silver age, makes Justice, as she flees from the earth, to prophesy of the wickedness and violence to come. "Ye, of your sires a vile, degenerate race, ARAT. Phænom. v. 123. 11. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; 12. When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. "An Etolian, for murder, banished from his native home." HOм. Odyss. 1. XIV. v. 380. "Of my own tribe an Argive wretch I slew; The blood-stained exile, ever doom'd to roam.”—IBID. 1. XV. v. 274. "If one man's blood, though mean, distain our hands, The homicide retreats to foreign lands."-IBID. 1. XXIII. v. 118. "I will approach his shrine, his sacred throne, And his eternal fires, there to be cleansed From the pollution of this kindred blood: "Kindred pollutions are difficult of purification to mortals; correspondent calamities falling from the gods to the earth, upon the houses of the murderers." EURIP. Medea, v. 1268. "When I had avenged the blood of my father, by slaying my mother, by successive attacks of the Furies was I driven an exile and an outcast from the land.” IBID. Iph. in Taur. v. 78. "There is a tradition that Apollo, by an oracle, made a grant of the Isles of the Echinades to Alcmeon, the son of Amphiaraus, when a vagabond, after the murder of his mother, telling him that he never should be freed from the terrors that haunted him till he found a place for his residence, which, at the time he slew his mother, had never been seen by the sun, and was not then land; because every other part of the earth was polluted by the parricide."-THUCYD. 1. II. c. 103. "Jove, from on high, beheld Absyrtus bleed, And doom'd to punishment that impious deed. APOL. RHOD. Arg. 1. rv. v. 557. 15. And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him seven-fold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. Jason, and his companions; after the murder of Absyrtus, came to Circé to expiate the crime. "Fair Circé mark'd their deep, desponding mood, And recognis'd the fugitives from blood; C Who makes the suppliant his peculiar care, APOL. RHOD. Arg. 1. iv. v. 698. 16. And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord. "Contiguous to Tripolis is Theoprosopon (the face of God), where the mountain Libanus terminates."-STRAB. 1. XVI. c. 2. 21. Jubal, the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. The name Jubal becomes, by a very natural mutation, Apollo, the god of song and music in the Greek mythology. The Greeks ascribed the invention of the pipe to Pan, and of the lyre to Apollo, both of whom were, like the family of Jubal, devoted to a pastoral life. "Every one knows that in former ages music was not only studied but adored, and its professors were esteemed prophets and sages. Were not Orpheus and Linus (to name no more) believed to be descended from the gods ?"-QUINTIL. I. I. c. 10. 22. Zillah bare Tubal-Cain, an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron The name Tubal-cain is said by Vossius to be the same as Vulcan; the initial syllable Tu being cast away and the labial being changed to v, which is a very usual mutation, in the Hebrew orthography. "Renowned in arts, The crippled Vulcan."-HES. Theog. v. 945. "Men used formerly to live in caverns in the mountains, like wild beasts; but now, being taught by the renowned artist, Vulcan, they dwell comfortably in their own houses." HOм. Hymn. in Vulcan, v. 4. "Vulcan, they say, found out the working of iron, brass, silver, and gold, and other metals that require forging by fire; and the general use of fire was shewn by him to artificers and other men. Therefore all cunning workmen offer their sacrifices chiefly to this god, and both they and all others call fire Vulcan."-DIOD. SIC. 1. 5. c. 74. GENESIS V. 24. And Enoch walked with God, and he was not: for God took him. Hesiod says of those who lived during the golden age : "When earth's dark breast had closed this race around, HES.' Oper. et Dier. v. 120. "Socrates said that those who while on earth proposed to themselves as a model the life of the gods, found, after death, the return to those beings from whom they had come, an easy one."-Cic. Tusc. disp. 1. 1. c..30 "The spirit of the best man flies away the most easily in death, as from the prisonhouse and chains of the body."-Cic. de Amic. c. 4. "Romulus was thought worthy of being added to the number of the gods,-an honour to which no mortal man ever was able to attain, but by a glorious pre-eminence of virtue.-Cic. de rep. 1. II. c. 10. 27. All the days of Methuselah were nine hundred sixty and nine years. In the silver age"A hundred years beheld the boy Beneath the mother's roof, her infant joy, All tender and unform'd."-HES. Oper. et Dier. v. 129. "The lives of the Seres (a people of India), exceed the age of two hundred years." STRAB. 1. XV. c. 1 "The Seres are said to live commonly three hundred years. Of the inhabitants of Mount Athos it is related that they extend their lives to one hundred and thirty years."-LUCIAN. Macrob. c. 5. "Then man was hard, as hard as parent stones; And built on bigger and on firmer bones: The nerves that join'd their limbs were firm and strong; Nature not yet grew weak, nor yet began To shrink into an inch the larger span."-LUCRET. de rer. nat. 1. v. v. 923. "When bold Prometheus stole th' enlivening flame, Of fevers dire a ghastly brood, Till then unknown, th' unhappy fraud pursu'd; On earth their horrors baleful spread, And the pale monarch of the dead, Till then slow-moving to his prey, Precipitately rapid swept his way."-HOR. 1. 1. carm. 3. "Isogonus informs us that the Cyrni, a people of India, live to their 400th year; and he is of opinion that the same is the case also with the Ethiopian Macrobii, the Seræ, and the inhabitants of Mount Athos. 66 According to Onesicritus, in those parts of India where there is no shadow, the bodies of men attain a height of five cubits and two palms (eight feet); and their life is prolonged to one hundred and thirty years: they die without any symptoms of old age, and just as if they were in the middle period of life. "Ctesias mentions a tribe known by the name of Pandore, whose locality is in the valleys, and who live to their two-hundredth year; their hair is white in youth, and becomes black in old age."-PLIN. Hist. Nat. 1. VII. c. 2.-See also 1. xv. c. 34. GENESIS VI. 4. There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. The tradition of the existence of giants in the earliest ages of the world is common both to the historians and poets of the ancients. Hesiod, speaking of the offspring of earth and heaven, which signifies, perhaps, "the sons of God and the daughters of men," says: "Other sons Were born of earth and heaven; three mighty sons A vigor strong, Immeasurable, filled each mighty frame. Of all the children sprung from earth and heaven "SOCRATES. Do you not know that heroes are demigods? "SOCRATES. All of them were doubtless begotten, either from a god falling in love with a mortal woman, or from a mortal man falling in love with a goddess." PLAT. Cratyl. c. XVI. |