Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe, page 194
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A religious hubbub, such as the world has seldom seen, was excited, during the reign of Frederic II, by the imagined virulence of a book entitled “The Three Impostors.” It was attributed to Pierre des Vignes, chancellor of the king, who was accused by the Pope of having treated the religions of Moses, Jesus, and Mahomet as political fables. The work in question, however, which was squabbled about, abused, defended, and familiarly quoted by all parties, is well proved never to have existed.
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The word [[Greek text=]]TvXn [[=Greek Text]], or Fortune, does not appear once in the whole Iliad.
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The “Lamentations” of Jeremiah are written, with the exception of the last chapter, in acrostic verse: that is to say, every line or couplet begins, in alphabetical order, with some letter in the Hebrew alphabet. In the third chapter each letter is repeated three times successively.
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The fullest account of the Amazons is to be found in Diodorus Siculus.
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Theophrastus, in his botanical works, anticipated the sexual system of Linnaeus. Philolaus of Crotona maintained that comets appeared after a certain revolution and AEcetes contended for the existence of what is now called the new world. Pulci, “the sire of the half -serious rhyme,” has a passage expressly alluding to a western continent. Dante, two centuries before, has the same allusion.
De vostri sensi ch e del rimanente
Non vogliate negar l’esperenza
Diretro al sol, del mondo sensa gente.
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Cicero makes finis masculine, Virgil feminine. Usque ad eum finem — Cicero. Quae finis standi? Haec finis Priami fatorum — Virgil.
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Dante left a poem in three languages-Latin, Provencal, and Italian. Rambaud de Vachieras left one in five.
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Marcus Antoninus wrote a book entitled [[Greek text=]] Txx xxx xxxx [[=Greek text]] — Of the things which concern himself. It would be a good title for a Diary.
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Lipsius, in his treatise “ De Supplicio Crucis,” says that the upright beam of the cross was a fixture at the place of execution, whither the criminal was made to bear only the transverse arm. Consequently the painters are in error who depict our Savior bearing the entire cross.
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The stream flowing through the middle of the valley of Jehoshaphat, is called, in the Gospel of St. John, “the brook of cedars.” In the Septuagint the word is [[Greek text=]] xxxxx, [[=Greek text]] darkness, from the Hebrew Kiddar, black, and not [[Greek text=]] xxxx, [[=Greek text]] of cedars.
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Seneca says that Appion, a grammarian of the age of Caligula, maintained that Homer himself made the division of the Iliad and Odyssey into books, and evidences the first word of the Iliad, [[Greet text=]] Mxxx, [[=Greek text]] the [[Greek text=]] Mx [[=Greek text]] of which signifies 43, the number of books in both poems. Seneca however adds, “Talia sciat oportet qui inulta vult scire.”
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The tale in Plato’s “Convivium,” that man at first was male and female, and that, though Jupiter cleft them asunder, there was a natural love towards one another, seems to be only a corruption of the account in Genesis of Eve’s being made from Adam’s rib.
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Corneille has these lines in one of his tragedies;
Pleurez, pleurez, mes yeux, et fondez volis en eau —
La moitie de ma vie a mis l’autre au tombeau
which may be thus translated,
Weep, weep, my eyes! it is no time to laugh
For half myself has buried the other half.
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Over the iron gate of a prison at Ferrara is this incription — “Ingresso alla prigione di Torquato Tasso.”
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Hedelin, a Frenchman, in the beginning of the 18th century, denied that any such person as Homer ever existed, and supposed the Iliad to be made up ex tragediis, et variis canticis de trivio mendicatorum et circulatorum — a la maniere des chansons du Pontneuf.
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The Rabbi Manasseh published a book at Amsterdam entitled “The Hopes of Israel.” It was founded upon the supposed number and power of the Jews in America. This supposition was derived from a fabulous account by Montesini of his having found a vast concourse of Jews among the Cordilleras.
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The word assassin is derived according to Hyle from Hassa, to kill. Some bring it from Hassan, the first chief of the association — some from the Jewish Essenes — Lemoine from a word meaning “herbage” — De Sacy and Hammer from “hashish” the opiate of hemp leaves, of which the assassins made a singular use.
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“Defuncti injuria ne afficiantur” was a law of the twelve tables.
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The origin of the phrase “corporal oath” is to be found in the ancient usage of touching, upon occasion of attestation, the corporale or cloth which covered the consecrated articles.
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Montgomery in his lectures on Literature (!) has the following — “Who does not turn with absolute contempt from the rings and gems, and filters, and caves and genii of Eastern Tales as from the trinkets of a toyshop, and the trumpery of a raree-show?” What man of genius but must answer “Not I.”
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The Abbee de St. Pierre has fixed in his language two significant words, viz: bienfaisance, and the diminutive la gloriole.
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There is no particular air known throughout Switzerland by the name of the Ranz des Vaches. Every canton has its own song varying in words, notes and even language. Mr. Cooper, the novelist, is our authority.
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Incidis in Scyllam ciiplens vitare Charybdim
is neither in Virgil nor Ovid, as often supposed, but in the “Alexandrics” of Philip Gualtier a French poet of the thirteenth century.
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Under a portrait of Tiberio Fiurilli who invented the character of Scaramouch, are these verses,
Cet illustre Cooedien
De son art traca la carriere:
Il fut le maitre de Moliere
Et la Nature fut le sien.
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A curious passage in a letter from Cicero to his literary friend Papyrius Paetus, shows that our custom of annexing a farce or pantomime to a tragic drama existed among the Romans.
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In Cary’s “Dante” is the following passage —
And pilgrim newly on his road with love
Thrills if he hear the vesper bell from far
That seems to mourn for the expiring day.
Gray has also
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day.
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Marmontel in the “Encyclopedie” declares that the Italians did not possess a single comedy worth reading — therein displaying his ignorance. Some of the greatest names in Italian Literature were writers of comedy. Baretti mentions a collection of four thousand dramas made by Apostolo Zeno, of which the greater part were comedies — many of a high order.
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A comedy or opera by Andreini was the origin of “Paradise Lost.” Andreini’s Adamo was the model of Milton’s Adam.
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Milton has the expression “Forget thyself to marble.” Pope has the line “I have not yet forgot myself to stone.”
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The noble simile of Milton, of Satan with the rising sun in the first book of the Paradise Lost, had nearly occasioned the suppression of that epic: it was supposed to contain a treasonable allusion.
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Campbell’s line
Like angel visits few and far between,
is a palpable plagiarism. Blair has
Its visits
Like angel visits short and far between.
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In Hudibras are these lines —
Each window like the pillory appears
With heads thrust through, nailed by the ears.
Young in his “Love of Fame” has the following —
An opera, like a pillory, may be said
To nail our ears down and expose our head.
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Goldsmith’s celebrated lines
Man wants but little here below
Nor wants that little long,
are stolen from Young; who has
Man wants but little, nor that little long.
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The character of the ancient Bacchus, that graceful divinity, seems to have been little understood by Dryden. The line in Virgil
Et quocunque deus circum caput egit honestum
is thus grossly mistranslated,
On whate’er side he turns his honest face.
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There are about one thousand lines identical in the Iliad and Odyssey.
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Macrobius gives the form of an imprecation by which the Romans believed whole towns could be demolished and armies defeated. It commences “Dis Pater sive Jovis mavis sive quo alio nomine fas est nominare,” and ends “Si haec ita faxitis ut ego sciam, sentiam, intelligamque, tum quisquis votum hoc faxit recte factum esto, ovibus atris tribus, Tellus mater, teque Jupiter, obtestor.”
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The “Courtier” of Baldazzar Castiglione, 1528, is the first attempt at periodical moral Essay with which we are acquainted. The Noctes Atticae of Aulus Gellius cannot be allowed to rank as such.
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These lines were written over the closet door of M. Menard,
Las d’esperer, et de me plaindre
De l’amour, des grands, et du sort
C’est ici que J’attends la mort
Sans la desirer ou la craindre.
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Martin Luther in his reply to Henry VIIIth’s book by which the latter acquired the title of “Defender of the Faith,” calls the monarch very unceremoniously “a pig, an ass, a dunghill, the spawn of an adder, a basilisk, a lying buffoon dressed in a king’s robes, a mad fool with a frothy mouth and a whorish face.”
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The Psalter of Solomon, which contains 18 psalms, is a work which was found in Greek in the library of Ausburg, and has been translated into Latin by John Lewis de la Cerda. It is supposed not to be Solomon’s, but the work of some Hellenistical Jew, and composed in imitation of David’s Psalms. The Psalter was known to the ancients, and was formerly in the famous Alexandrian MS.
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An unshaped kind of something first appeared,
is a line in Cowley’s famous description of the Creation.
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It is probable that the queen of Sheba was Balkis — that Sheba was a kingdom in the Southern part of Arabia Felix, and that the people were called Sabaeans. These lines of Claudian relate to the people and queen,
Medis, levibusque Sabreis
Imperathic sexus; reginarumque sub armis
Barbariae magna pars jacet.
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Sheridan declared he would rather be the author of the ballad called Hosier’s Ghost, by Glover, than of the Annals of Tacitus.
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The word Jehovah is not Hebrew. The Hebrews had no such letters as J or V. The word is properly Iah-Uah-compounded of Iah Essence and Uah Existing. Its full meaning is tile self-existing essence of all things.
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The “Song of Solomon” throwing aside the heading of the chapters, which is the work of the English translators, contains nothing which relates to the Savior or the Church. It does not, like every other sacred book, contain even the name of the Deity.
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In the Vatican is an ancient picture of Adam, with the Latin inscription “Adam divinitus edoctus, primus scientiarum et literarum inventor.”
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The word translated “slanderers” in I Timothy iii, 2, and that translated “false accusers” in Titus ii, 3, are “female devils” in the original Greek of the New Testament.
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The Hebrew language contains no word (except perhaps Jehovah) which conveys to the mind the idea of Eternity. The translators of the Old Testament have used the word Eternity but once.
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“The slipper of Cinderella,” says the editor of the new edition of Warton “finds a parallel in the history of the celebrated Rhodope.” Cinderella is a tale of universal currency. An ancient Danish ballad has some of the incidents. It is popular among the Welch — also among the Poles — in Hesse and Sweden. Schottky found it among the Servian fables. Rollenbagen in his Froachmauseler speaks of it as the tale of the despised Aschen-possel. Luther mentions it. It is in the Italian Pentamerone under the title of Cenerentola.
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Porphyry, than whom no one could be better acquainted with the theology of the ancients, acknowledged Vesta, Rhea, Ceres, Themis, Priapus, Proserpina, Bacchus, Attis, Adonis, Silenus, and the Satyrs to be one and the same.
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Servius on Virgil’s AEneid speaks of a bearded Venus.The poet Calvus in Macrobius speaks of Venus as masculine. Valerius Soranus among other titles calls Jupiter the Mother of the Gods.
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In Suidas is a letter fiom Dionysius, the Areopagite, dated Heliopolis, in the fourth year of the 202d Olympiad (the year of Christ’s crucifixion) to his friend Apollophanes, in which is mentioned a total eclipse of the sun at noon. “Either,” says Dionysius “the author of nature suffers, or he sympathizes with some who do.”
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The most particular history of the Deluge, and the nearest of any to the account given by Moses is to be found int Lucian (De Dea Syria.)
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The Greeks had no historian prior to Cadmus Milesius, nor any public inscription of which we can be certified, before the laws of Draco.
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So great is the uncertainty of ancient history that the epoch of Semiramis cannot be ascertained within 1535 years, for according to
Syncellus, she lived before Christ 2177,
Patavius,’’’’ 2060,
Helvicus,’’’’ 224S,
Eusebius,’’’’ 1984,
Mr. Jackson’’’’ 1964,
Archbishop Usher,’’ 1215,
Philo-Biblius from Sanconiathon, 1200,
Herodotus about’’’ 713.
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The book of Jasher, said to have been preserved from the deluge by Noah, but since lost, was extant in the time of Joshua, and in the time of David. Mr. Bryant thinks, however, very justly, that the ten tables of stone were the first written characters. The book of Jasher is mentioned Joshua x. 13, and 2 Samuel i. 18.
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Andre Chenier, imprisoned during the French Revolution, began thus some lines on his unhappy situation,
Peut-htre avant que l’heure en cercle promenee
Ait pose sur l’email brillant
Dans les soixante pas ou sa route est bornoe
Son pied sonore et vigilant,
Le sommeil du tombeau pressera ma paupiere
At this instant Andre Chenier was interrupted by the officials of the guillotine.
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Archbishop Usher, in a MS. of St. Patrick’s life, said to have been found at Louvain as an original of a very remote date, detected several entire passages purloined from his own writings.
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An extract from the “Mystery of St. Denis” is in the “Bibliotheque du Theatre Francois, depuis son origine, Dresde. 1768.” In this serious drama, St. Denis, having been tortured and at length decapitated, rises very quietly, takes his head under his arm and walks off the stage in all the dignity of martyrdom.
