Tyre, in Phoenicia, where is a temple of Hercules held in great veneration. Among the various offerings which enriched and adorned it, I saw two pillars; the one was of the purest gold, the other of emerald 82, which in the night diffused an extraordinary splendour. I enquired of the priests how long this temple had been erected, but I found that they also differed in their relation from the Greeks. This temple, as they affirmed, had been standing ever since the first building of the city, a period of two thousand three hundred years. I saw also at Tyre another temple consecrated to the Thasian Hercules. At Thasus*, which I visited, I found a temple erected to this deity by the Phoenicians, who built Thasus

82 Of emerald.]-This pillar, of which Herodotus here speaks, could not, says Mr. Larcher, have been a true emerald, it was probably a pseudosmaragdus. The learned Frenchman agrees in opinion with the authors of the Universal History, that it was of coloured glass illuminated by lamps placed within.

Whether at so early a period they had knowledge of glass, may be disputed; but it is well known, that before the discovery of glass, or the application of it for windows, the rich used transparent stones for this purpose, which will solve the difficulty quite as well.

It may be added that we have specimens of Roman glass, of very great antiquity, preserved as well in other places as in the British Museum.-T.

Thasus.]-Thasus is an island on the coast of Thrace, and said to have contained rich mines of gold and silver, and to have produced excellent wine. It received its name from Thasus, a son of Neptune. Its modern name is Thuso.

Thasus while they were engaged in search of Europa; an event which happened five generations before Hercules, the son of Amphitryon, was known in Greece. From all these circumstances I was convinced that Hercules must be a very ancient deity. Such therefore of the Greeks as have erected two temples to the deity of this name, have, in my opinion, acted very wisely to the Olympian Hercules they offer sacrifice as to an immortal being; to the other they pay the rites of an hero.

XLV. Among the many preposterous fables current in Greece, the one concerning Hercules is not the least ridiculous. He arrived, they say, in Ægypt, where the inhabitants bound him with the sacred fillet, and the usual ornaments of a victim, and made preparations to sacrifice him to Jupiter. For a while he restrained himself,

but

83 Of a victim.]-The gradations by which mankind were led from offering the produce of the earth to the gods, to sacrifice animals, are related by Porphyry, in his second book, de Abstinentiâ. He relates the following story on this subject: "So abhorrent,” says he, 66 were the antient Athenians from the destroying of any kind of animals, that a woman, named Clymene, was deemed guilty of a very criminal act, from her having without design killed a hog. Her husband, from the supposition that she had committed an impiety, went to consult the oracle on the occasion. But as the deity did not consider it in a véry heinous light, men were afterwards induced to make light of it also." See Porphyr. lib. ii. chap. 9.-T.

but upon his being conducted with the usual solemnities to the altar, he exerted his strength, and put all his opponents to death. This story of the Greeks demonstrates the extremest ignorance of Ægyptian manners; for how can it be reasonable to suppose, that a people will offer human beings in sacrifice, who will not for this purpose destroy even animals, except swine, bulls, male calves without blemish, and geese? Or how could Hercules, an individual, and as they themselves affirm, a mortal, be able to destroy many thousands of men?—I hope, however, that what I have introduced on this subject, will give no offence either to gods or heroes.

XLVI. The Mendesians of whom I have before spoken, refuse to sacrifice goats of either sex, out of reverence to Pan, whom their traditions assert to be one of the eight deities, whose existence preceded that of the twelve. Like the Greeks, they always represent Pan in his images, with the countenance of the she-goat 4 and the legs of the male; not that they believe this has any resemblance to his person, or that he in any re

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spect

44 Countenance of the she-goat, &c.]-Montfaucon observes, that what Herodotus says in this place of the Ægyptian manner of representing Pan, does not agree with the statues and images of Pan which have come down to us. Both the Greeks and Romans, if we may credit their monuments, which are very numerous, pictured Pan with a man's face, and with the horns, ears, and feet of a she or he-goat.-T.

spect differs from the rest of the deities: the real motive which they assign for this custom I do not choose to relate. The veneration of the Mendesians for these animals, and for the males in particular, is equally great and universal: this is also extended to goat-herds. There is one he-goat more particularly honoured than the rest, whose death is seriously lamented by the whole district of the Mendesians. In the Egyptian language the word Mendes is used in common for Pan and for a goat. It happened in this country, within my remembrance, and was indeed universally notorious, that a goat had indecent and public communication with a

woman.

XLVII. The Ægyptians regard the hog as an unclean animal", and if they casually touch one they

* Males in particular.]—The Ægyptians venerated the he-goat as a deity, for the same reason that the Greeks do Priapus. This animal has a strong propensity to venery, and the member which is the instrument of generation they esteem honourable, because from it, animals derive their existence. Diodorus Sic. lib. i. 98.

36 Unclean animal.]—The abhorrence of the Jews to the flesh of swine is generally supposed to have been imitated from the Egyptians; they differed in this, the Jews would never eat it, the Egyptians occasionally did. The motives assigned by Plutarch for the prejudice of both these nations in this particular instance, is curious enough: "The milk of the sow," says he, " occasioned leprosies, which was the reason why the Egyptians entertained so great an aversion for this animal."

VOL. I.

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The

they immediately plunge themselves, clothes and all, into the water. This prejudice operates to the exclusion of all swine-herds, although natives of Egypt, from the temples: with people of this description, a connection by marriage is studiously avoided, and they are reduced to the necessity of intermarrying among those of their own profession. The only deities to whom the Egyptians offer swine, are Bacchus and Luna; to these they sacrifice them when the moon is at the full, after which they eat the flesh. Why they offer swine at this particular time, and at no other, the Ægyptians have a tradition among themselves, which delicacy forbids me to explain. The following is the mode in which they sacrifice this animal to Luna: as soon as it is killed, they cut off the extremity of the tail, which, with the spleen and the fat, they enclose in the cawl, and burn; upon the remainder, which at any other time they would disdain, they feast at the full moon, when the sacrifice is performed. They who are poor make figures of swine with meal, which having first baked, they offer on the altar.

The same author in another place explains in this manner the dislike of the Jews to swine. The religion, the ceremonies, and feasts of the Jews, were, as he pretends, the same as those practised in Greece with respect to Bacchus. Bacchus and Adonis are the same divinities; and the Jews abstain from swine's flesh, because Adonis was slain by a boar.

It is no less worth remarking, that Plutarch explains the derivation of Levites from Lysios, Avotos, a name of Bacchus. -T.