upon her head, sitting upon a rock in a state of security. In her right hand she holds some ears of corn, to denote the promise of plenty and return of the seasons; and there is often near her the mystic hive. At some distance stands an altar; and over her head a bird. Below at her feet are water, and waves, and a person who seems to be in danger, and ready to sink. There is a coin to this purpose of the empress Julia Severa, which was struck at Antioch upon the Orontes. Vaillant and other learned antiquaries suppose the water to relate to the stream, which ran by the city: and that the person in the water was the Deity of the river. But river Gods were generally represented as aged persons, with their heads crowned with sedge and reeds; and in a very different attitude. Besides, if this figure related to the Orontes, how comes it to pass that we find it upon coins of other cities at a distance, which had no connexion with that river? We find the story with very little variation upon coins of Julia Mæsa at Edessa; of Severus at Charra; of Gordian at Singara; of Barbia Orbiana at Side; of Philip at Nisibis; of Alexander Severus at Rhesain. The history must have been general, where the representations were so uniform and common. It was undoubtedly taken from the religion of the Syrians and Mesopotamians; and from the emblems in their several temples; all which related to one great event. In some of these representations there is close by this towered Goddess the symbolical hive; which could have no relation to the Orontes. The Patriarch and his family, when they came from their state of confinement, must have had a most deary prospect from the mountain, upon which the ark had rested: and wherever they turned their eyes could discover nothing but a ruined world. It therefore pleased God to immediately afford them some comfortable promises. Among other things he assured them, upon an altar being raised, and a sacrifice offered, that the earth should be no more accursed: that ↔ seed time and harvest, cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night should not cease: and as a testimony of it, he placed his bow in the cloud. This divine hope, so graciously afforded them, was afterwards many ways recorded: and as in the first ages they had not the use of letters, they commemorated these blessings in their rites: and described them by various symbols, which were too reverentially regarded. Hence Da Mater was represented with an handful of ripe corn: and there is a statue of her still preserved, under the character of Divine " Hope, 45 44 Genesis. c. 8. v. 22. 45 See Gruter. Spes Divina, vol. 1. p. 102. |