in paradise. The same may be also said of the Thyrsus of Bacchus, the Caduceus of Mercury, and even the Club of Hercules; and it is observable that all these deities were often looked upon as connected more or less with Hades. Even Adonis was said to have derived his origin from the Branch of a tree, which grew in the midst of a sacred garden. There There was another Hades besides that of Campania, on the shores of Epirus in Thesprotia, near the Ambracian Gulph, and opposite the island of Corcyra. The same paradisaical features are also here discoverable. was a river "parting into four heads," which seem to have had similar titles conferred upon them. Here was an Acheron; an Avernus, like that in Italy and Spain, exhaling pestilential vapours; a Cocytus; and a Stygian stream. Near a lake Acherusia,† into which the Ache *Palæph. de incred. hist. p. 51. Apul. Metam. ut supra, as to the Caduceus of Mercury being derived from the golden bough in Hades. + The title Acherusia appears as well in this, as in other instances, to have been conferred upon the lake, the cave, and the eminence or high-place which overhung both. Crowning the whole was a solemn grove of plane trees Περι των επ' ακρης αυτης πεφυκυων πλατάνων και του επ'αυτη πεδιου, και δοκει αυτοθι καταβασις εις αδου υπαρχειν. Aret. ron flowed, was an ancient temple called Chimærium, once sacred to the compound figure Chimæra, which represented as well the traditional vestiges of the Cherubim, as also of the revolving fire, or "flaming sword," which served as the defence of paradise. Hard by was a spot called Phoenice,* answering, I apprehend, to the Baiæ in Italy, and formerly consecrated to the worship of the palm or pour Phoenix, the emblem of the Tree of Life. A river Acheron will be found in many other parts of the world; a fact that evinces how universally these traditions once prevailed, and how far the idolatrous worship had spread, which sprang out of them. There was an Acheront in the country of the Brutii, with several places near it of the same name with those in Thresprotia; and connected with them was the history of Proserpine, who was fabled to have come over thither, and gathered flowers. Her history will be mentioned again hereafter, and shewn to be wholly derived from paradisaical tradition. There p. 59. Cnid. lib. rer. Maced. secundo. Nat. Comes. lib. iii. Pausanias mentions an Acherusia near Corinth, lib. ii. p. 196. And there were also many others. Strabo, lib. vii. p. 499. Polybius, lib. i. pp. 94, 95. † Strabo, lib, vi. P. 466. was an Acherontia* also im Apulia, mentioned as a mountain, and probably so called from the river Acheron, which flowed at its foot. There was a sacred cave called Acherusia in the Chersonesus Taurica, through which Hercules was said to have dragged the dog Cerberus from hell; and the same story is connected with other places of the same kind. Now Cerberus, in his compounded figure and other circumstances, presents to our view only another trace of the cherubic exhibition on the east of Eden, which guarded the way to the Tree of Life, as Cerberus is also represented for ever watching over the gates of Hades and the entrance into Elysium. From the last mentioned cave in the Chersonesus, rushed the river Acheron, and the whole place was looked upon as the descent into the invisible world ; Ενθα μεν εις Αίδαο καταιβατις εστι κελευθος * Hor. lib. iii. od. 4. ver. 14. † Apollon. Rhod. apud Nat. Com. lib. iii. cap. 1. p. 58. F Here also was a Chimærium, or Cimmerium, as Pomponius Mela* writes it, of the same nature with that in Epirus. There were moreover many sacred places bearing the appellation of Avernus, and which were all, more or less, considered as exhaling noxious vapours. Sometimes the name was given to lakes, as in the instances of the Hades in Campania, Spain, and Thesprotia. It was also conferred upon rocks and some of the most celebrated highplaces, which derived their origin from the same source, up to which all garden and grove worship is in fact to be traced. There was a famous rock of this name in India,† or as some authors think, more than one. It is mentioned, -both by Strabo and Dionysius, and was situated near the source of the Indus, which river, as will be seen hereafter, was anciently called Phison or Pison, the immediate name of one of the rivers of paradise mentioned by Moses. Upon it, or in its neighbourhood, and perhaps surrounding it, was a sacred grove, which Alexander the Great caused to be cut down when he besieged the place, according to Curtius; although the whole enclosure was looked Pomp. Mela, lib. i. cap. 19. + Strabo xv. p. 1008. Dionysius Perieg. v. 1151. Quint. Curt. viii. 11. upon as so holy, that Hercules himself was, said to have desisted from assaulting it, being deterred by an earthquake. Aristophanes* speaks of a consecrated eminence or high-place, which had the title of Acheron. He names it Αχερόντιος σκοπελος αιματοςαγης the rock of "Acheron dropping with blood;" the origin of which was, the cruelties practised by the priests in their offering human sacrifices;† and from whence that custom was derived will be ex-. * Βατραχ 474. + One mode of their offering these human expiatory sacrifices, was by shoving off the victim headlong from the edge of the precipice. Possibly this may explain the story of Sisyphus, represented in Hades, as for ever rolling a stone up a high hill, the summit of which is no sooner apparently reached, than the burden is again tumbled to the bottom. Odyss. xi. 592. Rocks and eminences were sometimes called Patora, an Egyptian title of these sacred places. Mythology rendered the Patora, in this case, by a word somewhat similar in the Greek language, πɛтpa; and the poets represented it as a moving stone, broken perhaps from the verge of the precipice in hurling him off, and with the ghost of the victim eternally rolling down the mountain. We shall have occasion to notice hereafter these Tɛrpaι more particularly, and demonstrate their connection with paradisaical rites. Not strangers, however, only were sacrificed on places of this nature, but also criminals; and Sisyphus might have been one of these, as he bears the character of a thief in the annals of antiquity. |