545

Quatuor his aras alta ad delubra Deorum
Constitue, et sacrum jugulis demitte cruorem:
Corporaque ipsa boum frondoso desere Juco.
Post, ubi nona suos Aurora ostenderit ortus,
Inferios Orphei Lethœa papavera mittes,
Placatam Eurydicen vitulâ venerabere cæsâ,
Et nigram mactabis ovem, lucumque revises."
Haud mora: continuò matris præcepta facessit:
Ad delubra venit; monstratas excitat aras;
Quatuor eximios præstanti corpore tauros
Ducit, et intactâ totidem cervice juvencas.
Post, ubi nona suos Aurora induxerat ortus
Inferios Orphei mittit, lucumque revisit.
Hic verò subitum ac dictu mirabile monstrum
Adspiciunt; liquefacta boum per viscera toto 555
Stridere apes utero, et ruptis effervere costis;
Immensasque trahi nubes: jamque arbore summa
Confluere, et lentis uvam demittere ramis.

550

Though an intention has been before expressed of subjoining some extracts from Homer to those which have been set out from Virgil, yet there is no need that they should be other than very short. If the representative characters of Chryses and Chryseis of the Iliad, and the incidents in which they are employed there, be recollected, there can be little doubt that the Peruvian bark was in the poet's contemplation in the devising of those incidents; and I very much incline to think that the abstruse matters described in the otherwise inexplicable lines of the first Iliad, from the 457th to the 47 1st line, were intended to be descriptive of the stripping the bark-trees of their bark, reducing it to powder, and making it up in decoctions or other preparations; while the lines that immediately follow them,

Οι δε πανημέριοι μολπη θεον ιλασκοντο
Καλον αείδοντες παινονα κὅροι Αχαιων
Μελποντες Εκάεργον

by their frequent allusion to songs (under the idea above repeatedly noticed,) are referable to the

gum lac, and perhaps (by the end of the first of those lines) even nominatim. And when it is recollected that Hpalotos (who represents China, as above shewn, of which country Cochin-China where the gum lac is found, is an important dependency ;) is introduced at the end of the first Iliad

Τοισιν δ ̓ Ηφαιςος κλυτοτέχνης ερχ' αγορεύειν

for the purpose of composing the differences between Jupiter and Juno relative to Achilles ; and the connexion that subsists between the representative character of Achilles (as having the Nile or Africa for his prototype,) and the plague or pestilence shall also be recollected, I think it cannot be denied that in the advice given by Ηφαιςος to Juno,

Αλλα συ τονγ' επέεσσι καθαπτεσθαι μαλακοισιν Αντικ επειτ' ίλαος Ολύμπιος εσσεται ημιν

there are special allusions to the countries of Malacca and Laos that produce the gum lac, and

at the same time to the lac itself; and the good effects of it are observable from the chearful countenance which Juno assumes on receiving a draught of it from her son;

Μειδήσασα δε παιδος εδέξατο χειρι κυπελλον

and if this part of the Iliad has been above interpreted as having a reference to the tea of China as a preventive, it does not follow that it is not at the same time susceptible of an application to the lac likewise as a remedy.

I proceed to make a remark or two upon Livy, referable to the subjects in question. It cannot be forgotten by any reader of that author, how very frequently he introduces the mention of prodigies and pestilences, and I select the two following passages as examples. The first extracted from book xxiii, section 63, begins as follows: Romæ autem et circa urbem multa eâ byeme prodigia facta," and after enumerating many such prodigies (the fall of stones from the heavens, of which there have been so many modern instances, being one,) he thus proceeds :

"Ob cætera prodigia libros adire 'decemviri jussi

*

lectisternium imperatum, et supplicatio; nomi

The lectisternia of the Romans are commonly interpreted to be ceremonies of carrying about to the temples images of the gods upon couches; but may they not rather simply allude to decrees, enjoining the destruction or disuse of beds of woollen materials, and instead of them scattering litter of straw (lectum, and sterno, stratum) in the churches, for the people to lie upon, in a more open air there, in order to check the progress of infection? and then the name of the pulvinaria, couches, or pillows, supposed to be used on such occasions, may intimate that those pillows were medicated with drugs, as with the powder of bark perhaps, pulvis: it may be that the meaning of the old Greek incantation εκας, εκας οστις αλιτρος, may refer to the wish of avoiding such persons as, in times of pestilence, did not follow the practice of lying upon such litters of straw. And it accords with these conjectures, that in Mr. Hope's most interesting picture of the plague of Athens, the sick are, almost all, nearly naked, with straw mats and fragments of straw scattered about them, whilst only the female figure dying, (in the principal groupe), seems to be wrapped up warm in a bed, the apparent seat of infection and putre