XLII. 1. The Egyptian myth runs that the death of

Osiris took plaoe on the seventeenth, when the full- moon is most conspicuously at the full
2. Wherefore the Pythagoreans call this day also *' Interception," ^ and regard this number as expiable.
3. For the " sixteen " being square and the '' eighteen " oblong^ — which alone of plane numbers happen to have their perimeters equal to the areas contained by them ^ — the mean, '' seventeen," coming between them, inter- cepts and divorces them from one another, and divides
1 Cy. Ixii 2
* Of. the Stoic attributes of Heracles in zL 7.
' If this is intended for the Qreat Sea of Space, it would be credible. * kmi^pc^tw,
' Square and Oblong were two of the fundamental '' pairs of oppodtes " among the Pythagoreans. Cf, zlviiL 5.
•
320 THRICR-QRKAXBST HERMBS
the ratio of "nine" to "eight *'^ by being cot into unequal intervals.
4 And eigbt-and-twentj is tiie number of yean which aome say Osiris lived, and others that he reigned;' for this is the number of the lights of the Mooo, and it rolls out its own circle in this number of days.
5. And at what they call the Burials of (Mris thej cut the tree-trunk and make it into a creaoent-ahi^ coffin, because the Moon, when it approaches the S^ becomes crescent-shaped and hides itself away.
6. And the tearing of Osiris into fourteen pieees they refer enigmatically to the days in which the luminary wanes after fuU-moon up to new-moon.
7. And the day on which it first appears, eeoaping from his beams and passing by the Son, they ctll " Imperfect Good."
8. For Osiris is ''Good-doer." The name, indeed, means many things, but chiefly what they call ^ Mig^ energising and good-doing." And the other name of the God, — Omphis, Hermseus' says, means [also] when translated, " Benefactor."