V. et 390. V.

$ L. P. Deguerrois, La Sainteti Ckritienne, fol. 33, 34, 38, 39, 48. In a life of St. Par, one of these three martyrs, printed at Nogent-sur-Seine in 1821, this marvellous narration is repeated.
58 EMBLBMS AND METAPHORS.
although beheaded, the martyrs had walked from the place of their decapitation to that of their sepul- ture.
Sixthly. To what lengths will not a credulous curiosity extend when from various explanations it selects the most marvellous ? The veil of an allegory or a fable, however transparent it may be, arrests attention.
The crowing of the cock makes the lion fly — is an old remark, believed in its literal sense by the ignorant ; the better informed know that at the dawn of day, which is announced by the crowing of the cock, carni- vorous animals voluntarily return to their dens.
Moral proverbs clothed in equally transparent garbs have, nevertheless, passed as axioms of natural science. Love vanquishes all things, even the most formidable : the ferocity of the lion is appeased, we are told, at the sight of a woman unveiled.
In spite of the facility of proving the contrary, Aelian relates that, from the vernal to the autxunnal equinox, the ram sleeps lying upon his right side, and upon his left from the autumnal equinox to the vernal.* In natural history this is a ridiculous tale, but it is an evident truth in the allegorical language of ancient astro- nomy.
It is related that in the army which Xerxes led against the Greeks, a man gave birth to a hare ; a prodigy which presaged the issue of that gigantic enterprise :f it was nothing more than the fable of the moun-
* Aelian, de Nut, Anim, lib. x. cap. xviii. t Valer, Maaim, lib. i. cap. vi. § 10.
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tain bringing forth a mouse improved, perhaps, by lessening the distance between the physical relations, and by a sarcastic aUnsion, through the hare, to an army of fugitives.
Was it intended that we should understand and believe as a miracle, the story, that innumerable rats, by gnawing the bowstrings and the straps of the bucklers of Sennacherib^s soldiers, effected the delive- rance of the King of Egypt, besieged by that leader ?* Assuredly not : it was an expression used to designate an army incapable, from want of discipline and from negligence, of resisting the sudden attack of the Ethio- pians, who arrived to the assistance of the King of Egypt, and which consequentiy fell almost entirely beneath their conquering sword. The priests, to whose caste the Egyptian King belonged, willingly favoured a literal interpretation of the allegory and the belief in it as a miracle, which they ascribed to their tutelar divinity, and which saved the national pride from the humiliation of acknowledging that the victory was due to the delivering allies. The tradition of this mira- culous deliverance extended farther than the fable which had given it birth ; Berosus, quoted by Josephus,t says, that the Assyrian army was the victim of a scourge, a plague sent by Heaven, which at once struck down one hundred and eighty-five thousand men. Thus the Chaldean vanity covered with an unavoidable misfor- tune, the opprobrium of a merited defeat. In the same manner, fictions which are purely moral, and unconnected
* Herodot, lib. ii. cap. cxli.
t Fl. Josephus, Ant, jud, lib. i. cap. ii.
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with any fact, become historical traditions. I might quote the touching parable of the Samaritan assisting the wounded man, when neglected by the priest and the levite. In the present day, in Palestine, it is looked upon not as a parable, but as an historical fact, and the scene of it was shown by the monks to the traveller Hasselquist.* There is, after all, in this nothing extra- ordinary nor repugnant to reason ; and the heart, being interested, is tempted to believe in its reality. Less mindful of probabilities, a sage wishing to perpetuate in a fable the maxim, " that it is not enough to sacri- fice for the good of one's country, riches, luxury, and pleasure, but more is necessary; and although held back by the dearest affections, life itself should be devoted to it ;" he related that a frightful gulf, which nothing could fill up, suddenly opened in the middle of a city ; the Gods when consulted, declared that it would only close on the most precious possessions of mankind being thrown into it. Gold, silver, and precious stones were instantly but vainly precipitated into it. At length a generous man, tearing himself from a father and a wife, volimtarily plunged into it, and the abyss closed for ever over him.
In spite of the evident improbability of the result, this fable, invented in Phrygia, or borrowed fi-om a still more ancient civilization, has passed into history. The name of the hero was Anchurus, son of Midas,t
* Hasselquist, Voyage dans le Levant, tome i, p. 184.
t Parallels bettoeen Grecian and Roman Histories, § x. This work, falsely attributed to Plutarch, merits in general but little confidence ; but its testimony, it seems to me, may be admitted
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one of the Kings of the heroic times. But such is the charm attached to the marveQous, that Rome, some centuries afterwards, appropriated to herself this fable which, in place of a gena*al precept, displays only an individual example. It was not because the Sabine chief, Metius Curtius* who, when almost overcome in the midst of Rome, left his name to the marsh famed as the scene of his vigorous defence against the efforts of Romulus ; it was not because a Consul,t directed by the Senate, enclosed with a wall this marsh upon which the thunderbolt fell; but it was to perpetuate to the veneration of the people a patrician, on whom the name of Curtius was bestowed, as having nobly in the same place thrown himself completely armed into a gulf, which had miraculously opened, and not less miraculously closed, that Rome borrowed from Phrygia this fable of Anchurus, and introduced it mto her own history.J The desire of increasing the reputation of a coimtry, has favoured such plagarisms. It is one object of our
when its object is to take from history those fects evidently fiEibU' Ions, regarding which the ancient annalists of Rome do not agree. Callisthenes, quoted by Stober {Sermo xlviii), also relates the devotion of the son of Midas, whom he calls iEgystheos.
* Such is the real origin of the name of the Lacus Curtius, according to the historian L. Calpurmaa Piso, quoted by Varro (Varro de Lingua Latino), lib. iv. cap. xxxii. See also Titus Liv, lib. I. cap. XII. and xiii.
t This was also the opinion of C. ^lius, and of Q. Lutatius (Varro loc. cit.)
X Varro (loco citato) also relates this tradition ; but with the air of a man who hardly believes it, since he terms the hero who precipitated himself into the gulf a certain Curtius, " quemdam Curtium."
62 ALLEGORIES.
task, to show how often, imposture assisting the vanity of a nation, or a family, in effacing a stain, or adding an ornament, has given birth to the history of prodigies. From an immense number of instances, we shall select but one. It was constantly repeated that, from the amours of the God of war, sprung the founders of a city which was destined to be raised to the highest pitch of power, by the fiivour of that God ; and this story was credited, notwithstanding the tradition preserved by two grave historians, that^ the ferocious Aurelius violated his niece Rhey Sylvia, who became the mother of Romulus and Remus.*
* C, Licinius Macer et M. Octavius, quoted by Marcus Aure- lius Victor. De origine gmtU romana, cap. xix.
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