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"Attend to the Syrian poem:-The birth of Ophioneus (the serpent-like). and the tree.'"-MAX. TYR. diss. 29.

"Whom had the serpent struck,

Mighty in bulk, and terrible in look,

That, armed with scales, and in a dreadful fold,

Twin'd round the tree and watched the growing gold ?"

LUCRET. de rer. nat. 1. v. v. 33.

"What a snaky (i.e. subtle) genius you both have!"-PLAUT. Trucul. Act IV. sc. 3. "Around the trunk of a barren oak a fierce serpent, called in Africa the Jaculus, wreathes itself, and then darts forth."-LUCAN. Phars. 1. IX. v. 822.

"The Basilisk is produced in the province of Cyrene, being not more than 12 fingers in length. It has a white spot on the head, strongly resembling a sort of diadem. When it hisses all the other serpents fly from it; and it does not advance its body, like the others, by a succession of folds, but moves along upright and erect."-PLIN. Hist. Nat. 1. vIII. c. 33.

8. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God, amongst the trees of the garden.

"I dare not, shepherd, at the hour of noon,

My pipe to rustic melodies attune;

'Tis Pan we fear."-THEOCR. Idyl. 1.

15. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shall bruise his heel.

16.

Virgil says that subsequently to the Saturnian age—

"Jove added venom to the viper's brood."-Georg. 1. 1. v. 129.

Eurydice died, bitten by a serpent on the heel.”—Ov. Metam. 1. x. v. 10.

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Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children. "All other animals give birth to their young without pain; endure the severest sufferings."-ARISTOT. de Hist. Anim. 1. vII. c. 9.

Thus, like a sailor by the tempest hurl'd
Ashore, the babe is shipwreck'd on the world:
Naked he lies, and ready to expire,

Helpless of all that human wants require:

Exposed upon inhospitable earth,

From the first moment of his hapless birth;

Straight, with foreboding cries he fills the room,

Too sure presages of his future doom.

But flocks and herds and ev'ry savage beast,

but woman must

By more indulgent nature are increas'd."-LUCRET. de rer. nat. 1. v. v. 207.

"Man alone, at the very moment of his birth, cast naked upon the earth, is abandoned by nature to cries, to lamentations, and, (which is the case with no other animal whatever), to tears: this, too, from the very moment that he enters upon existence."-PLIN. Hist. Nat. 1. vII. c. 1.

17.

Cursed is the ground for thy sake. In sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life.

18. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field:

19. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.

Hesiod speaks of woman as the original cause of all man's sufferings and sorrows. His account of Pandora, who was endowed with gifts from the gods to deceive

Epimetheus, though he was warned against the danger, and who deprived mankind of all good, leaving only hope, is supposed by Hales to be an allegorical fiction, built on the circumstances of the fall, which introduced all evil, and left men destitute of everything but the hope of redemption through the seed of the woman.

"At Jove's behest

Famed Vulcan fashion'd from the yielding clay
A bashful virgin's likeness;

Now when his plastic hand instead of good

Had framed this beauteous bane, he led her forth

Where were the other gods and mingled men.

From her the sex of tender woman springs:
Pernicious is the race: the woman tribe

Dwell upon earth, a mighty bane to man."-HES. Theog. 571-592.
"Whilom on earth the sons of men abode
From ills apart, and labour's irksome load,
And sore diseases, bringing age to man :
Now the sad life of mortals is a span.
The woman's hands a mighty casket bear;
She lifts the lid; she scatters griefs in air:
Alone beneath the vessel's rims detain'd,
Hope still within th' unbroken cell remain'd,
Nor fled abroad; so will'd cloud-gatherer Jove:
The woman's hand had dropp'd the lid above.

Issued the rest in quick dispersion hurl'd,

And woes innumerous roam'd the breathing world.

With ills the land is rife, with ills the sea;

Diseases haunt our frail humanity."-IBID. Oper. et dier. v. 90.

Corrupt the race, with toils and griefs oppress'd,

Nor day nor night can yield a pause of rest :

Still do the gods a weight of care bestow,

Though still some good is mingled with the woe."-IBID. v. 174.

The following, though referred by Aratus to the "Golden Age," applies with more propriety to the period immediately after the fall:

"Then justice ruled supreme, man's only guide:

No fraud-no violence-no strife-no pride.

No sailor ventured then to distant clime,

And brought back foreign wealth and foreign crime.

All tended then the flock or tilled the soil,

And milk and fruit repaid their easy toil."-ARAT. Phænom. v. 105.

Calanus, the sophist, said to Onesicritus

"Formerly there was abundance everywhere of corn and barley as there is now of dust; fountains then flowed with water, milk, honey, wine, and oil; but mankind, by repletion and luxury, became proud and insolent. Jupiter, indignant at this state of things, destroyed all, and appointed for man a life of toil."-STRAB. 1. XV. c. 1.

"Earth corn, and wine, and oil at first did bear,

And tender fruit, without the tiller's care:

She brought forth herbs, which now the feeble soil
Can scarce afford to all our pain and toil :
We labour, sweat, and yet by all this strife,
Can scarce get corn and wine enough for life:
Our men, our oxen groan, and never cease;
So fast our labours grow, our fruits decrease!"

LUCRET. de rer. nat. 1. 11. v. 1156.

"The sire of gods and men, with hard decrees,
Forbids our plenty to be bought with ease,

And wills that mortal men, inur'd to toil,
Should exercise with pains, the grudging soil:
Himself invented first the shining share,
And whetted human industry by care;
Himself did handicrafts and arts ordain,
Nor suffered sloth to rust his active reign.
Ere this no peasant vex'd the peaceful ground,
Which only turfs and greens for altars found."

"Succeeding times a silver age behold,

Excelling brass, but more excelled by gold.
Then summer, autumn, winter did appear;

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. 1. 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

feared a thief for his cabbages or apples, but lived with garden unenclosed. Then by 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. Il. 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,
Walks his short journey through the vale of life;
Watchful, attends the cradle and the grave,

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. I. 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. I. 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
Conveys the dead—a lamentable train!
The golden wand that causes sleep to fly,

Or in soft slumbers seals the wakeful eye,

That drives the ghosts to realms of night or day,

Points out the long, uncomfortable way."-Hoм. Odyss. 1. XXIV. v. 1.

"Now Hermes grasps within his awful hand

The mark of sovereign power, his magic wand :
With this he draws the ghosts from hollow graves,
With this he drives them down the Stygian waves;
With this he seals in sleep the wakeful sight,
And eyes, though clos'd in death, restores to light.”

"Unspotted spirits you consign

To blissful seats and joys divine,

And pow'rful with your golden wand,
The light unbodied crowd command;
Thus grateful does your office prove,

VIRG. En. 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,
Your offspring you, their fathers, will disgrace.
War will soon desolate these fruitful lands;
A brother's blood will stain a brother's hands:
Rising to view I see a ghastly train-
Revenge oppression-woe-despair-and pain."

ARAT. Phanom. 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 Ætolian, for murder, banished from his native home."

HOM. Odyss. 1. XIV. v. 380.

"Of my own tribe an Argive wretch I slew;
Whose powerful friends the luckless deed pursue
With unrelenting rage, and force from home

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:
No other roof receives me; so the god
Enjoined."-Escн. Choeph. v. 1035.

"Kindred pollutions are difficult of purification calamities falling from the gods to the earth, upon the

to mortals; correspondent 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.
Peace or remission, none for them remain'd;
Eternal wisdom this decree ordain'd,
That guiltless blood should agitate the band,
And vengeful furies hunt from land to land,
Till rites, which Circé might perform alone,
Should chase those horrors, and that guilt atone.

APOL. RHOD. Arg. 1. Iv. 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;

Rever'd the suppliant's right with pious awe,

And bow'd submiss to Jove's imperial law,

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