olygnotus Amphictyonic council which was composed of the representatives of the principal cities of Greece, ordered olymnes that Polygnotus should be maintained at the public expence wherever he went.

tor.

Of the talents of Polygnotus much honourable mention is made by many of the best authors of antiquity, as Aristotle and Plutarch, Dionysius Halicarnassensis, &c. Pausanis speaks of his pictures of the events of the Trojan war, and, in his Tenth Book, introduces a very long description of other pictures by the same artist, painted also from Homer in the temple at Delphos. The passage, however, gives but a confused and imperfect idea of the painter's performance. How much the art is indebted to this ancient master, what grace and softness he gave to the human countenance, what embellishments he added to the female figure and dress, are much more happily described by Pliny. "Primus mulieres lucida veste pinxit, capita earum mitris versicoloribus operuit, plurimumque picturæ primus contulit: siquidem instituit os ada perire, dentes ostendere, vultum ab antiquo rigore variare."-The same author likewise bears honourable testimony to the liberal spirit of this great artist, who refused any reward for his ingenious labours in the portico." Porticum gratuito, cum partem ejus Mycon mercede pingeret." Plin. lib. xxxv. cap. 8. POLYGON, in Geometry, a figure with many sides, or whose perimeter consists of more than four sides at least; such are the pentagon, hexagon, heptagon, &c. POLYGONUM, KNOT-GRASS; a genus of plants belonging to the octandria class; and in the natural method ranking under the 12th order, Holoraceæ. See BOTANY Index.

POLYGRAPHY, POLYGRAPHIA, or Polygraphice, the art of writing in various unusual manners or cyphers; as also of decyphering the same. The word is formed from the Greek, woλv, multum, and yeapn, scriptura, "writing."

The ancients seem to have been very little acquainted with this art; nor is there any mark of their having gone beyond the Lacedæmonian scytala. Trithemius, Porta, Vigenere, and Father Niceron, have written on the subject of polygraphy or ciphers. See CIPHER.

POLYHYMNIA, in the pagan mythology, one of the nine muses, thus named from the Greek words oλus, “much,” and μvua, “memory." She presided over history, or rather rhetoric; and is represented with a crown of pearls and a white robe; her right hand in action as if haranguing, and holding in her left a caduceus or sceptre to show her power.

POLYHEDRON, in Geometry, denotes a body or solid comprehended under many sides or planes.

POLYHEDRON, in Optics, is a multiplying glass or lens, consisting of several plane surfaces disposed into a convex form. See OPTICS.

POLYMATHY, denotes the knowledge of many arts and sciences. The word is derived from the Greek, zoλv, multum, and μartare, disco.

POLYMNESTOR, was a king of the Thracian Chersonesus. He married Ilione, Priam's eldest daughter; and for the sake of the treasure with which he was entrusted by Priam during the siege of Troy, he murdered Polydorus, (see POLYDORUS). The fleet in which the victorious Greeks returned, together with their Trojan captives, among whom was Hecuba, stopped on the coast of Thrace, where one of the female captives dis

tor

Polyphe

mus.

covered on the shore the body of Polydorus, whom Po- Polymneslymnestor had thrown into the sea. The dreadful intelligence was immediately communicated to Hecuba his mother, who recollecting the frightful dreams she had the preceding night, did not doubt but Polymnestor was the cruel assassin. Resolved to revenge her son's death, she immediately called out Polymaestor, as if to impart to him something of importance. He was drawn into the snare; and no sooner was he introduced into the apartment of the Trojan princess, than the female captives rushing upon him, put out his eyes with their pins, while Hecuba murdered his two children, who had accompanied him. Euripides informs us, that the Greeks condemned Polymnestor to be banished into a distant island for his perfidy. Hyginus, however, relates the whole differently, and tells us, that when Polydorus was sent to Thrace, Ilione his sister took him instead of her son Deiphilus, who was of the same age, being fearful of her husband's cruelty. The monarch, unacquainted with the imposition, looked upon Polydorus as his own son, and treated Deiphilus as her brother. After the destruction of Troy, the conquerors wished the house and family of Priam to be extirpated, and therefore offered Electra the daughter of Agamemnon to Polymnestor, if he would destroy Ilione and Polydorus. He accepted the offer, and immediately dispatched his own son Deiphilus, whom he took for Polydorus. Polydorus, who passed as the son of Polymnestor, consulted the oracle after the murder of Deiphilus, and being informed that his father was dead, his mother a captive in the hands of the Greeks, and his country in ruins, he communicated the answer to Ilione, whom he had always regarded as his mother. She told him the measures she had pursued to save his life, upon which he avenged the perfidy of Polymnestor by putting out his eyes.

POLYMNIA, a genus of plants belonging to the syngenesia class, and in the natural method ranking under the 49th order, Composite. See BOTANY Index.

POLYNICES, the son of Oedipus by his mother Jocasta. See JOCASTA, OEDIPUS, and ETEOCLES. POLYPE. See POLYPUS.

POLYPETALOUS, among botanists, an epithet applied to such flowers as consist of several petals or flower-leaves.

POLYPHEMUS (fab. hist.), a celebrated Cyclops, and king of all the Cyclops in Sicily, was the son of Neptune and Thoosa the daughter of Phorcys. He is said to have been a monster of great strength, very tall, and with one eye in the middle of the forehead. He ate human flesh, and kept his flocks on the coasts of Sicily, when Ulysses, at his return from the Trojan war, was driven there. Ulysses, together with 12 of his companions, visited the coast, and with them was seized by the Cyclops, who confined them in his cave, and daily devoured two of them. Ulysses would have shared the fate of the rest, had he not intoxicated the Cyclops, and put out his eye with a firebrand when he was asleep. Polyphemus was awakened by the sudden pain, and stopped the entrance of his cave; but Ulysses escaped, by creeping between the legs of the rams of the Cyclops, as they were led out to feed on the mountains. Polyphemus became enamoured of Galataa; but his addresses were disregarded, and the nymph shunned his presence. The Cyclops was still more earnest; and when he saw

Galatea

Polyphe Galatea surrender herself to the pleasures of Acis, he crushed his rival with a piece of a broken rock. POLYPODIUM, a genus of plants belonging to the cryptogamia class. See BOTANY Index.

mns

Polypus.

POLYPREMUM, a genus of plants belonging to the tetrandria class, and in the natural method ranking under the 22d order, Caryophillei. See BOTANY Index. POLYPUS, a species of fresh-water insects, belonging to the genus of hydra, of the order of zoophytes, and class of vermes. See HELMINTHOLOGY. The name of hydra was given them by Linnæus, on account of the property they have of reproducing themselves when cut in pieces, every part soon becoming a perfect animal. Dr Hill called them biota, on account of the strong principle of life with which every part of them is endowed.

These animals were first discovered by Leeuwenhoeck, who gave some account of them in the Philosophical Transactions for 1703; but their wonderful properties were not thoroughly known till the year 1740, when Mr Trembley began to investigate them. Previous to his discoveries, indeed, Leibnitz and Boerhaave, by reasonings à priori, had concluded that animals might be found which would propagate by slips like plants. Their conjectures have been verified.

Marine POLYPUS, is different in form from the freshwater polype already described; but is nourished, increases, and may be propagated, after the same manner: Mr Ellis having often found, in his inquiries, that small pieces cut off from the living parent, in order to view the several parts more accurately, soon gave indications that they contained not only the principles of life, but likewise the faculty of increasing and multiplying into a numerous issue. It has been lately discovered and sufficiently proved by Peyssonel, Ellis, Jussieu, Reaumur, Donati, &c. that many of those substances which had formerly been considered by naturalists as marine vege

ton.

tables or sea-plants, are in reality animal productions; Polyper and that they are formed by polypes of different shapes and sizes, for their habitation, defence, and propagation. PolysyndeTo this class may be referred the corals, corallines, keratophyta, eschara, sponges, and alcyonium: nor is it improbable, that the more compact bodies, known by the common appellations of star-stones, brain-stones, pe trified fungi, and the like, brought from various parts of the East and West Indies, are of the same origin. To this purpose Mr Ellis observes, that the ocean, in all the warmer latitudes, near the shore, and wherever it is possible to observe, abounds so much with animal life, that no inanimate body can long remain unoccupied by some species. In those regions, ships bottoms are soon covered with the habitations of thousands of animals : rocks, stones, and every thing lifeless, are covered with them instantly; and even the branches of living vege tables that hang into the water are immediately loaded with the spawn of different animals, shell-fish of various kinds and shell-fish themselves, when they become impotent and old, are the basis of new colonies of animals, from whose attacks they can no longer defend themselves. See CORALLINA, HELMINTHOLOGY Index.

POLYPUS of the Heart. See MEDICINE, No 97, 98, 274, and 290.

POLYSARCIA, or CORPULENCY. See MEDICINE, No 335.

POLYSPERMOUS (from w。λe and ́oñigua, seed),

in Botany, is applied to such plants as have more than four seeds succeeding each flower, without any certain order or number.

POLYSYLLABLE, in Grammar, a word consisting of more than three syllables: for when a word consists of one, two, or three syllables, it is called a monosyllable, a dissyllable, and trisyllable.

POLYSYNDETON. See ORATORY, No 97.

Definition.

'HE doctrine of a plurality of gods or invisible powers superior to man.

"That there exist beings, one or many, powerful above the human race, is a proposition (says Lord *Sketches Kames *) universally admitted as true in all ages and of the Hist. among all nations. I boldly call it universal, notwithof Man. standing what is reported of some gross savages; for reports that contradict what is acknowledged to be general among men, require more able vouchers than a few illiterate voyagers. Among many savage tribes, there are no words but for objects of external sense: is it surprising that such people are incapable of expressing their religious perceptions, or any perception of internal sense? The conviction that men have of superior powers, in every country where there are words to express it, is so well vouched, that in fair reasoning it ought to be taken for granted among the few tribes where language is deficient."

Source of These are judicious observations, of which every man religious will admit the force whe has not some favourite system principles to build upon the unstable foundation which his Lordship overturns. Taking it for granted, then, that our

traced.

conviction of superior powers has long been universal, the important question is, From what cause it proceeds? The same ingenious author shows, with great strength of reasoning, that the operations of nature and the government of this world, which to us loudly proclaim the existence of a Deity, are not sufficient to account for the universal belief of superior beings among savage tribes. He is therefore of opinion, that this universality of conviction can spring only from the image of Deity stamped upon the mind of every human being, the ignorant equally with the learned. "Nothing less (he says) is sufficient: and the original impression which we have of Deity, must proceed (he thinks) from an internal sense, which may be termed the sense of Deity."

66

We have elsewhere expressed our opinion of that philosophy which accounts for every phenomenon in human nature, by attributing it to a particular instinct (see INSTINCT); but to this instinct or sense of Deity, considered as complete evidence, many objections, more than usually powerful, force themselves upon us. All nations, except the Jews, were once polytheists and idolaters. If therefore his Lordship's hypothesis be ad

mitted,

},

present article to trace the rise and progress of polytheism Theism and idolatry; and to ascertain, if we can, the real opinions of the Pagan world concerning that multitude of gods with which they filled heaven, earth, and hell. In this inquiry, though we shall have occasion to appeal to the writings of Moses, we shall attribute to them no other authority than what is due to records of the earliest ages, more ancient and authentic than any others which are now extant.

Theism. mitted, either the doctrine of polytheism must be true theology, or this instinct or sense is of such a nature as to have at different periods of the world misled all mankind. All savage tribes are at present polytheists and idolaters; but among savages every instinct appears in greater purity and vigour than among people polished by arts and sciences; and instinct never mistakes its object. The instinet or primary impression of nature, which gives rise to self-love, affection between the sexes, love of progeny, &c. has in all nations, and in every period of time, a precise and determinate object which it inflexibly pursues. How then comes it to pass, that this particular instinct, which if real is surely of as much importance as any other, should have uniformly led those who had no other guide to pursue improper objects, to fall into the grossest errors and the most pernicious practices? To no purpose are we told, that the sense of Deity, like the moral sense, makes no capital figure among savages. There is reason to believe that the feeling or perception, which is called the moral sense, is not wholly instinctive; but whether it be or not, a single instance cannot be produced in which it multiplies its objects, or makes even a savage express gratitude to a thousand persons for benefits which his prince alone had power to confer.

3

evela

For these, and other reasons which might easily be assigned, we cannot help thinking, that the first religious principles must have been derived from a source different as well from internal sense as from the deductions of reason; from a source which the majority of mankind had early forgotten and which, when it was banished from their minds, left nothing behind it to prevent the very first principle of religion from being perverted by various accidents or causes, or, in some extraordinary concurrence of circumstances, from being perhaps entirely obliterated. This source of religion every consistent theist must believe to be revelation. Reason, it is acknowledged, and we shall afterwards show (see RELIGION), could not have introduced savages to the knowledge of God; and we have just seen, that a sense of Deity is an hypothesis clogged with insuperable difficulties. Yet it is undeniable, that all mankind have believed in superior invisible powers: and if reason and instinct be set aside, there remains no other origin of this universal belief than primeval revelation, corrupted, indeed, as it passed by oral tradition from father to son, in the course of many generations. It is no slight support to this doctrine, that if there really be a Deity*, Hist. ofit is highly presumable that he would reveal himself to the first men-creatures whom he had formed with faculties to adore and to worship him. To other animals, the knowledge of a Deity is of no importance; to man, it is of the first importance. Were we totally ignorant of a Deity, this world would appear to us a mere chaos. Under the government of a wise and benevolent Deity, chance is excluded; and every event appears to be the result of established laws. Good men submit to whatever happens without repining, knowing that every event is ordered by Divine Providence: they submit with entire resignation; and such resignation is a sovereign balsam for every misfortune or evil in life. Admitting, then, that the knowledge of Deity was it pure originally derived from revelation, and that the first men professed pure theism, it shall be our business in the

ee

tches of!

h

Whether we believe, with the author of the book of Genesis, that all men have descended from the same progenitors; or adopt the hypothesis of modern theorists, that there have been successive creations of men, and that the European derives his origin from one pair, the Asiatic from another, the woolly-headed African from a third, and the copper-coloured American from a fourth-polytheism and idolatry will be seen to have arisen from the same causes, and to have advanced nearly in the same order from one degree of impiety to another. On either supposition, it must be taken for granted, that the original progenitors were instructed by their Creator in the truths of genuine theism and there is no room to doubt, but that those truths, simple and sublime as they are, would be conveyed pure from father to son as long as the race lived in one family, and were not spread over a large extent of country. If any credit be due to the records of antiquity, the primeval inhabitants of this globe lived to so great an age, that they must have increased to a very large number long before the death of the common parent, who would of course be the bond of union to the whole society, and whose dictates, especially in what related to the origin of his being and the existence of his Creator, would be listened to with the utmost respect by every individual of his numerous progeny.

5

stances

which led

Many causes, however, would conspire to dissolve this family, after the death of its ancestor, into separate and independent tribes, of which some would be driven by violence, or would voluntarily wander, to a distance from the rest. From this dispersion great changes would take place in the opinions of some of the tribes respecting the object of their religious worship. A single family, or a small tribe banished into a desert wilderness (such as the whole earth must then have been), would find employment for all their time in providing the means of subsistence, and in defending themselves from beasts of prey. In such circumstances they would have Circumlittle leisure for meditation, and being constantly conversant with objects of sense, they would gradually lose to polythe power of meditating upon the spiritual nature of theism that Being by whom their ancestors had taught them that all things were created. The first wanderers would no doubt retain in tolerable purity their original notions of Deity; and they would certainly endeavour to impress those notions upon their children: but in circumstances infinitely more favourable to speculation than theirs could have been, the human mind dwells not long upon notions purely intellectual. We are so accustomed to sensible objects, and to the ideas of space, extension, and figure, which they are perpetually impressing Bishop upon the imagination, that we find it extremely difficut Law in bis to conceive any being without assigning to him a form Consideraand a place. Hence a learned writer has supposed, tions on the that the earliest generations of men (even those to whom Theory of

he Religion.

Origin of the contends that frequent revelations were vouchsafed) Polytheism. may have been no better than anthropomorphites in their conceptions of the Divine Being.

gress.

Be this as it may, it is not conceivable but that the members of those first colonies would quickly lose many of the arts and much of the science which perhaps prevailed in the parent state; and that, fatigued with the contemplation of intellectual objects, they would relieve their overstrained faculties, by attributing to the Deity First steps a place of abode, if not a human form. To men toin the pro- tally illiterate, the place fittest for the habitation of the Deity would undoubtedly appear to be the sun, the most beautiful and glorious object of which they could form any idea; an object, too, from which they could not but be sensible that they received the benefits of light and heat, and which experience must soon have taught them to be in a great measure the source of vegetation. The great spirit therefore inhabiting the sun, which they would consider as the power of light and heat, was in all probability the first object of idolatrous adoration.

The spirit

From looking upon the sun as the habitation of their of light the god, they would soon proceed to consider it as his first god of body. Óf pure mind entirely separated from matter, paganism. men in their circumstances could not long retain the faintest notion; but conscious each of power in himself, and experiencing the effects of power in the sun, they would naturally conceive that luminary to be animated as their bodies were animated. They would feel his influence when above the horizon; they would see him moving from east to west; they would consider him when set as gone to take his repose: and those exertions and intermissions of power being analogous to what they experienced in themselves, they would look upon the sun as a real animal. Thus would the Divinity appear to their untutored minds to be a compound being like man, partly corporeal and partly spiritual; and as soon as they imbibed such notions, though perhaps not before, they may be pronounced to have been absolute idolaters.

When men had once got into this train, their gods would multiply upon them with wonderful rapidity. Darkness and cold they could not but perceive to be contrary to light and heat; and not having philosophy enough to distinguish between mere privations and positive effects, they would consider darkness and cold as The spirit entities equally real with light and heat; and attribute or power of these different and contrary effects to different and conthe second, trary powers. Hence the spirit or power of darkness

8

darkness

was in all probability the second god in the Pagan calendar; and as they considered the power of light as a benevolent principle, the source of all that is good, they must have looked upon the contrary power of darkness as a malevolent spirit, the source of all that is evil. This we know from authentic history to have been the belief of the Persian magi, a very ancient sect, who called their good god Yazdun, and also Ormuzd, and the evil god Polytheism Ahraman. Considering light as the symbol, or perhaps of the Per- as the body, of Ormuzd, they always worshipped him before the fire, the source of light, and especially before the sun, the source of the most perfect light and for the same reason fires were kept continually burning on his altars. That they sometimes addressed prayers to the evil principle, we are informed by Plutarch in his life of Themistocles; but with what particular rites he

sian magi.

was worshipped, or where he was supposed to reside, is Magianism. not so evident. Certain it is, that the worshippers held him in destestation; and when they had occasion to write his name, they always inverted it (upшpayp), to denote the malignity of his nature.

*

The principles of the Magi, though widely distant from pure theism, were much less absurd than those of other idolaters. It does not appear that they ever worshipped their gods by the medium of graven images, or had any other emblems of them than light and darkness. Indeed we are told by Diogenes Laertius and Clemens Alexandrinus, that they condemned all statues and images, allowing fire and water to be the only proper emblems or representatives of their gods. And we learn from Cicero, that at their instigation De LegiXerxes was said to have burnt all the temples of Greece, bus, lib, n. because the builders of those edifices impiously presu-§ 10. med to inclose within walls the gods, to whom all things ought to be open and free, and whose proper temple is the whole world. To these authorities we may add that of all the historians, who agree, that when magianism was the religion of the court, the Persian mionarchs made war upon images, and upon every emblem of idolatry different from their own.

13

The Magi, however, were but one sect, and not the largest sect of ancient idolaters. The worship of the sun, as the source of light and heat, soon introduced into the calendar of divinities the other heavenly bodies, the moon, the planets, and the fixed stars. Men could not but experience great benefit from those luminaries Sabian in the absence of their chief god; and when they had polytheism. proceeded so far as to admit two divine principles, a good and an evil, it was natural for minds clouded with such prejudices to consider the moon and the stars as benevolent intelligences, sent to oppose the power of darkness whilst their first and greatest divinity was absent or asleep. It was thus, as they imagined, that he maintained (for all held that he did maintain) a constant superiority over the evil principle. Though to astronomers the moon is known to be an opaque body of very small dimensions when compared with a planet or a fixed star, to the vulgar eye she appears much more magnificent than either. By those early idolaters she was considered as the divinity second in rank and in power; and whilst the sun was worshipped as the king, she was adored as the queen, of heaven.

The earth, considered as the common mother of all things; the ocean, whose waters are never at rest; the air, the region of storms and tempests, and indeed all the elements were gradually added to the number of divinities; not that mankind in this early age had so far degenerated from the principles of their ancestors as to worship brute matter. If such worship was ever practised, which to us is hardly conceivable, it was at a later period, when it was confined to the very lowest of the vulgar, in nations otherwise highly civilized. The polytheists, of whom we now treat, conceived every thing in motion to be animated, and animated by an intelligence powerful in proportion to the magnitude of the body moved.

This sect of idolaters, which remains in some parts of the east to this day, was known by the name of Sabians, which they pretended to have derived from Sabius a son of Seth; and among the books in which their sacred doctrines are contained, they have one which they