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and the sportsman to Diana the huntress, Apollo, Pan, the nymphs, and the deities of the mountains.

The characters of the gods of Greece were as distinct as the provinces, over which they were supposed to preside. Apollo, with the muses about him, was a most accomplished deity; Pan a very rustic. Some were of a social turn and gods of pleasure; while others preferred retirement, and lived sequestered in the country. The city-Bacchus was present in the theatres; the nymphs were discovered by springs and fountains. Their offerings also had commonly a relation to their nature, office, and ideal superintendency. Their altars differed in height, shape, or ornaments. The subterraneous gods had their trenches; the terrestrial, and the heroes their hearths. The tenants of Olympus were worshipped in temples; the nymphs with Pan, and the rural class in caves.

The Panéum or Nympæum by Vary is a singular curiosity, of a species, it is apprehended, not described by any traveller. It is found in the mountain-side, near a brow. You descend through a small mouth; the forked trunk of a tree, with branches fastened across, serving as a ladder. At the landing-place is a Greek inscription, very difficult to be read. It is cut on the rock first smoothed, and informs us, that Archidamus of Phere made the cave for the nymphs, by whom he was possessed. Opposite is a small niche or cavity; with some letters, part of a word, signifying that the offering for fruits, perhaps a small piece of money, was to be placed there. From the landing-place two ways lead into the cavern. Going down by the narrow stairs cut in the rock, on the left hand is inscribed in very ancient characters, "Archidamus the Pheræan.' When you are down and face the stairs, at the extremity, on the right hand, is an ithyphallus,

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the symbol of Bacchus; and near it is Isis, the Egyptian Ceres. The Athenians had early an intercourse with Egypt, and, some writers have asserted, were originally a colony from that country. Under some niches, in two places, is inscribed, "Of Pan." On the other side of the stairs are two more niches, and beneath each, "Of Apollo. Offer." Beyond these is a very rude figure of the sculptor represented with his tools, as working, and by it his name, Archidamus, twice repeated, the letters irregular and badly cut. On removing some mould, we discovered that his feet are both turned inward. Near the image of Isis lay a stone, with two sides inscribed, once set up so that both might be visible. From one I copied "Archidamus the Pheræan and Chollidensian made this dwelling for the Nymphs;" from the other," Archidamus the Pheræan planted the garden for the Nymphs." The stairs, which are continued by the side of the rock below the figure of Archidamus, are covered with soil formed by leaves, or washed in by rain from above; and the descent to the lower grotto, to which they led, is become steep and slippery. That is entered by a narrow passage left in the partition, which has been rendered picturesque by petrifactions. It is of a circular form, the sides adorned with fantastic incrustation, and the roof with sparry icicles. Of these several are growing up, pointed, from beneath, and some have already met and united with those pendant from above. At the bottom is a well of very clear and cold water. On the left hand, going up again, near the landing place, is a square horizontal cavity; and farther on is an inscription on the rough rock, not legible. The cavity probably contained the garden of the nymphs before mentioned, consisting of a little soil set with such herbs and flowers, as were reputed grateful

to them. If a small trench be deemed unworthy of the appellation, it may be noted, that gardens were planted for Adonis, not equal in magnitude even to this plat, each being a shell or pot with earth, in which certain vegetables thrived awhile and then withered. Such were the flower-gardens, in the hall called by his name, in the palace of Domitian at Rome.

Archidamus was solicitous, as may be inferred from his figure, to transmit a knowledge of his person to future ages. He was a native of Pheræ, a city of Thessaly, who had settled in Attica, and was admitted to his freedom in Chollis, one of the borough-towns. The inscriptions, as may be collected from the diversity in the characters and in their powers, are of different dates. That at the landing-place was added, it is likely, long after his decease, as a memorial of his labour and its cause; which was nympholepsy. From those, which appear to be contemporary with the sculptor, it may be argued, that he lived when the Attic or Cadméan and Palamedéan alphabet, consisting of sixteen letters, was in use; or before the Athenians were prevailed on* to adopt the Ionic alphabet, in which the number was twenty-four. The figure of Archidamus, so unshapely and unsightly, will coincide with a period, when design was in its infancy, and not commonly professed. It is certainly among the oldest specimens extant of the beginnings of the art; furnishing an example of the rough outline and proportionless sketch, from which it gradually rose to correctness, precision, and sublime expression; animating marble, and giving to statues a perfection of form unequalled by nature, and a dignity of aspect superior to human.

* In the fourth year of Olympiad xcIv; or, before Christ 399 years.

The nymphs were supposed to enjoy longevity, but not to be immortal. They were believed to delight in springs and fountains. They are described as sleepless, and as dreaded by the country people. They were susceptible of passion. The Argonauts, it is related, landing on the shore of the Propontis to dine in their way to Cholcos, sent Hylas, a boy, for water, who discovered a lonely fountain, in which the nymphs Eunica, Malis, and Nycheia were preparing to dance; and these, seeing him, were enamoured, and, seizing him by the hand, as he was filling his vase, pulled him in. The deities, their co-partners in the cave, are such as presided with them over rural and pastoral affairs. If Priapus be substituted in the place of Bacchus, he also was honoured where goats and sheep fed, and where bee-hives stood.

The old Athenians were ever ready to cry out, a god! or a goddess! The tyrant Pisistratus entered the city in a chariot, with a tall woman dressed in armour to resemble Minerva, and regained the acropolis, which he had been forced to abandon, by this stratagem; the people worshipping and believing her to be the deity, whom she represented. The nymphs, it was the popular persuasion, occasionally appeared; and nympholepsy is characterized as a frenzy, which arose from having beheld them. Superstition disposed the mind to adopt delusion for reality, and gave to a fancied vision the efficacy of full conviction. The foundation was perhaps no more than an indirect, partial, or obscure view of some harmless girl, which had approached the fountain on a like errand with Hylas, or was retiring after she had filled her earthen pitcher.

Among the sacred caves on record, one on Mount Ida, in Crete, was the property of Jupiter, and one by Lebadea in

Boeotia of Trophonius. Both these were oracular, and the latter bore some resemblance to that we have described. It was formed by art, and the mouth surrounded with a wall. The descent to the landing place was by a light and narrow ladder, occasionally applied and removed. It was situated on a mountain above a grove; and they related, that a swarm of bees conducted the person, by whom it was first discovered. But the common owners of caves were the nymphs, and these were sometimes local. On Citharon in Boeotia, many of the inhabitants were possessed by nymphs called Sphragitides, whose cave, once also oracular, was on the summit of the mountain. Their dwellings had generally a well or spring of water; the former often a collection of moisture condensed, or exsuding from the roof and sides; and this, in many instances, being pregnant with stony particles, concreted, and marked its passage by incrustation, the ground work in all ages and countries of idle tales framed or adopted by superstitious and credulous people.*

The description of a cave of this species in the Odyssey has been understood as symbolical, and furnished, contrary to all natural interpretation, with mystic meaning, by Porphyry, a philosopher, who flourished in the third century. This cave was situated near the head of a port in Ithaca. It * Intus aquæ dulces, vivoque sedilia saxo, Nympharumque domus. Virg.

See Theocritus v. 136, and Strabo, p. 343. Philostratus, p. 411, mentions a nymphæum by the sea near Puteoli, in which was a well, with a rim of white stone. The interpreter has mistranslated the passage. The author, p. 746, describes likewise a picture, in which the cave of Achelous and the nymphs was represented, he observes, properly; the images seeming of bad stone and workmanship, as injured by time, and cut by the young thoughtless boys of the herdsmen and shepherds.

See Pope's Odyssey, the notes on v. 124 and v. 134 of the thirteenth book.

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