tioned, is described as in allusion to the oak of Dodona; that oracular tree of knowledge which grew in the midst of the sacred enclo sure: Collis erat, collemque super planissima campi Orpheus is said once to have dwelt amongst the Edonians, who seem to have derived their name from Eden, as we hear in the scripturest of the children of Eden, who were in "Thelassar." His wife, whom he tenderly loved, soon after her marriage, received a mortal bite from a serpent, which occasioned his descent into Hades; which, as has been shewn, was closely connected with memorials of paradise. He is also represented as in some mysterious connection with the rites of the Rhoia or Pomegranate, which symbolized the malum, or forbidden fruit, by which our first parents fell from their state of innocence, through the mortal venom of the serpent affecting Eve the wife of Adam, and bringing death upon herself, on her *Ovid Metam. x. 86. †2 Kings xix. 12. husband, and all their descendants. It is not a little singular, that Orpheus, we are told, instructed his followers that "woman was the "origin of all evil;" which unwelcome truth is said to have occasioned his destruction. He was the author, moreover, of all sacrifices; and more particularly those, which were in an especial manner propitiatory, or relating to the taking away sin by spilling the blood of certain animals. In consequence of this, he is introduced by the mythologists, as the first high priest. Certainly, the serpent makes a conspicuous figure in his whole history; for not only were the temples erected to his honour oracular, but when his head was carried down the Hebrus to the island of Lesbos, a serpent was affirmed to have attacked it, when Apollo, who is fabled to have been the parent of Orpheus, came upon the monster, and turned him into a stone. He is said to have lived nine ages, or, according to some, eleven, as Suidas relates, and with his death the whole universe is thought to have been affected some tell us that he was buried at the foot of Mount Olympus. It has been observed that many places were sacred to Orpheus, where his history was well known, and honours paid to his memory. His death, indeed, as well as his life, was altogether She is mysterious, for it seems to have been celebrated with frantic and awful rites, such as women gashing themselves with knives, besmearing themselves with their blood, and covering their heads with ashes, as if acknowledging, however ignorantly as it regarded themselves, the dreadful consequences of the fall. There is a personage called Orpha, nearly the same as Orpheus, (for both are merely mythological titles implying an oracle of light,) connected with Laconia, according to Servius. represented as a nymph, who at the close of her life was changed into a tree, which grew in a sacred enclosure. All these legends may be traced up to one and the same source, namely the medial tree of paradise. Before we quite dismiss Orpheus, we may observe that the history of Amphion is, in some few respects, similar. He is reported to have exercised the same wonderful influence over the brute creation, and even to have built the walls of Thebes with the sound of his lyre, connected as those were with emblematical compound figures, derived from distorted legends of the mysterious Cherubim.* The general history of Proserpina, or, as the Bryant. Analys. Anc. Myth. vol. ii. pp. 410—426. Greeks called her, Persephone, and sometimes Cora, is well known. She is said to have been the inhabitant of a beautiful garden in the centre of the island of Sicily. Ancient writers have handed down to us the most ravishing descriptions of its situation and climate, with many other features manifestly borrowed from traditions of Eden. Enna was the name of this paradise of Trinacria, which was moreover termed the Omphalos of Sicily, and considered oracular, in the same manner as other places of the same nature before described. According to some authors, a sacred lake was connected with the enclosure, called Pergus; and its paradisaic situation is described in the Metamorphoses.* Silva coronat aquas, cingens latus omne; suisque From this lovely enclosure, Persephone was affirmed to have been carried off by the king of hell to the shades below, from whence it was * Metam. v. 388. considered impossible she could be redeemed, because, as tradition reported, the unhappy woman had gathered and eaten an apple, or rather a pomegranate; at all events the forbidden fruit. Ovid's description of this transaction is remarkable; cultis dum simplex errat in hortis Puniceum curvâ decerpserat arbore Pomum.* This tree of evil, however, appears to have been esteemed peculiarly sacred to her, and to have been that important one which tradition pointed out as having once grown in the midst of the garden. Claudian, moreover, seems to have looked upon Pluto, her ravisher, as death himself, and in some fine verses pourtrays the effects which the king of terrors produced by his then entrance into the world.† Sanchoniathon has also preserved a singular tradition as extant amongst the Phoenicians, which was, that "Eon, the wife of Protogonus," or the first man, "was the first person, who "gathered fruit from trees;" and from this pair, the ancient historian informs us, all mankind were descended. It may here, perhaps, be inquired, of what particular species was the Metam. lib. v. 535. + De Raptu. Proserp. iii. 235. |