tomb offered up by the confederate chieftains on their departure for Troy. During the ceremony a serpent glides from the base of the altar into a tree, where it devours a sparrow and her eight young ones, and is then converted into stone; whence it was understood that the war would last nine years, with victory in the tenth year. In the holy island of Samothrace was celebrated the mysterious worship of the Cabiria word usually rendered "the mighty ones," but derived, according to Bryant, from the Semitic Ca-ab-ir "the temple of the serpent of the sun:"* from the same root comes the Ca-ab-a of Mecca, and Abury, or Ab-ir, the name of the famous Druidical temple of the Sun in Wiltshire, England, which was built in the shape of a serpent. These facts will suffice to establish the prevalence of serpent-worship in Greece. In Italy we find traces of it in the name Opici or Ophici, the principal Ophite colony of Campania, and so called from the snakes they worshipped : Οφικοι από των οήεων. They were also called Pitanatæ, or votaries of Pitan or Python, the serpent. They carried their worship into Sicily, Latium, and Etruria. We have already noticed the snakes' cave at Lanuvium and the annual ceremonies there, a full account of which is given by Propertius. Also the formal institution of divine honors to the serpent brought from Epidaurus to Rome, B. C. 462. Many instances of ophiomancy, or divination by snakes, are recorded by Roman historians and poets. All scholars are familiar with the appearance of a serpent from the tomb when Æneas was sacrificing to the manes of his father Anchises, and his doubt as to whether it was the genius loci, or an attendant on his deceased parent. The destruction of Laocoön by the snakes sent by Minerva is another instance. And there is reason to believe that it Anal., i, 122. Eleg. viii, lib, iv. Bryant, ii. 214. § Valerius Maximus, lib. i, c. 6.; Cicero de Divinatione, lib. i; Horace, lib. iii, ode 27; Terence, Pharmio, act iv, sc. 4. | Virgil, Æneid, lib. v, 35, et. seq. ¶ Ibid. 1, ii, 200, et. scq. was the practice to paint serpents on the walls of buildings to denote that the latter were holy. But, on the whole, it cannot be said that the Italians were a serpent-worshipping race; certainly not under the Empire. Nor do we find traces of this superstition in those parts of Europe which were peopled by purely Teutonic races, although the latter were addicted to worshipping trees. When the Scythians migrated from Turan, or upper Central Asia, into Europe, they carried with them their indigenous serpent-worship. Hence we find traces of it in Russia Poland, Lithuania, Prussia, Sweden, and Denmark; among the Amazons there were priestesses of both forms of the superstition, the simple and primitive serpent-worship and the worship of the solar serpent. Obscure notices of these Ophites are to be met with in the classic historians, which tend to prove that the superstition prevailed extensively in eastern Europe, even down to so late a period as the middle ages. Olaus Magnus says that the Poles and Lithuanians worshipped fire, serpents, and trees down to the year 1386, when their prince, Jagellon, and his brethren were converted to Christianity, and the idolatrous practices were suppressed; but he adds that in his time (1555) some remains of them were still to be met with in remote parts of Norway and Wermeland.† And Mr. Fergusson, in his elaborate work, has produced evidence to show that both trees and serpents were worshipped by the peasantry of Esthonia and Finland within the limits of the present century. According to the traditions of the Laplanders, snakes live in societies, each with a captain and subordinate officers; once a year each community meets in general assembly, and not only has each serpent a right to bring his own grievances forward, but the jurisdiction of the chief extends to men who have slain or offended any of his subjects.§ Perseus, Sat. i, 112. See Appendix A. § Castren, Travels in Lapland in 1838-44, Lib. iii, ch. 1. 58-77. The Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, and Bohemians were in the habit of keeping serpents in their houses as household gods, and when any adversity happened it was considered to have been caused by negligently serving them. Jerome of Prague, it is said, upon rather doubtful authority, ordered these snakes to be killed and publicly burned. In Sweden, in the sixteenth century, serpents were kept in houses as gods, and fed with sheep's and cow's milk, and to hurt them was a deadly sin. The Danes exhibited a sacred dragon on their royal standard, and there exist proofs that they offered sacrifices, perhaps human victims, to serpents. The celebrated Scandinavian tradition of the Yggdrasil ash and the great Midgard serpent Jörmungandt has been supposed to be derived from and be an amplification of the Scripture narrative of the fall of man. Mr. Fergusson, however, with more reason, thinks that it is borrowed from India; he recognizes therein the Nagas of Eastern fable, and the churning of the ocean and the renewal of all things by Vishnu through the instrumentality of the great serpent.‡ The traces of serpent-worship in western Europe are very faint. There is no positive evidence that it existed among the ancient Gauls, although it may be inferred from the fact that their Druids were accustomed to immolate human victims to the god Teutates, who is identical with the Phonician Thoth, or Mercury; and also from certain pieces of sculpture found at Arles and in Poitou, wherein snakes play a prominent part.§ Mr. Fergusson observes that recent researches have brought to light circumstances which would lead to the belief that there existed in France an earlier preCeltic race, allied to the Esthonians and the Finns, who may have been serpent-worshippers, but seem to have been obliterated by the Celts in very early pre-christian times.|| There is considerable difference of opinion as to whether Deane, p. 236. Ibid., p. 25. I p. 28. snake-worship ever prevailed in England. Mr. Deane devotes twelve pages to proving that it did; while Mr. Fergusson is disposed to doubt the fact, mainly because there are only two very short paragraphs in any classical authors which mention Druids in connection with Britain, and not one that mentions serpent-worship; and no English author, prior to the thirteenth century, alludes to either the one or the other. He admits, however, that there may have been, and probably were, two races in England-an older and less civilized people-who, in the time of the Romans, had already been driven by the Celts into the fastnesses of the Welsh mountains, and who may have been serpent-worshippers, and have sacrified human victims, and that the uncritical Romans confounded the two. The evidence adduced by Mr. Deane is, however, derived from the Breton traditions of Hu Gadarn and Coridwen, and Welsh bards, and is superficial. Certain remains of megalithic monuments in Scotland unquestionably relate to ophiolatry, but it was confined to the parts of that country north of the Forth. As regards Ireland, the evidence is so slight that Mr. Deane can do little more than suggest that the legend of St. Patrick's having banished all the snakes from the island by his prayers may imply that, in evangelizing the country, the saint overthrew the superstitious practices of the serpent-worshippers.* Nevertheless, the Irish derived many of their customs and religious notions from the Phoenicians of Spain, and most probably that of worshipping the solar serpent; for wherever the Phoenicians and their kinsmen, the Carthaginians, settled, they carried this worship and the immolation of human sacrifices with them. Hence the ancient Spaniards were serpent-worshippers, their country having for a long time been under Phoenician and Carthaginian rule. Mr. Squier, in his learned and valuable work, has accumulated such a mass of testimony as to the universal practice of serpent-worship among the primitive races of America, p. 254. that it would be a waste of time to do more than allude to it. The only point of interest in connection with it is, whether this worship was indigenous or imported. Mr. Fergusson notices the fact that in America the snake that was worshipped was always the indigenous rattlesnake; and Bernal Diaz tells us that live rattlesnakes were kept in the great temple at Mexico as sacred and petted objects. They were kept in a cabin of diversified form, in which a quantity of feathers had been strewed, and there they laid their eggs and nursed their young. They were fed with the bodies of sacrificed human victims, and with dogs' meat: human sacrifices attended serpent-worship everywhere. We cannot here enter into the question of the origin of that worship on this continent; the subject is discussed by Fergusson and Squier; the former being inclined to the importation theory, the latter to the indigenous; but those who believe that mankind are descended from one couple, placed on the banks of the Euphrates, will be compelled to adopt the doctrine that serpent-worship was introduced into America from abroad. At a remote period it prevailed from the Canadian lakes to Patagonia; and the races who practised it were also the constructors of the serpentine mounds in Ohio, Iowa, and Wisconsin.† It will thus be seen that the universality of serpent-worship in primitive times has been established, though varying in its forms in different climates and countries. It was a curious belief among these progenitors of the modern races of mankind, that snakes attended on the spirits of their deceased ancestors; and this idea prevails among the Zulus of South Africa at the present day. They hold the snake in great respect, and do not willingly kill it, because their dead ancestors are supposed to reappear in the form of serpents. The reflections engendered by the study of this phase of human nature are calculated to confirm theologians in their views of *Fergusson, p. 38. Squier, see chap. v, and introductory observations. |