The Popes themselves have indulged a smile at the credulity of the vulgar*; but a false and obsolete title still sanctifies their reign, and by the same fortune which has attended the Decretals and the Sibylline oracles, the edifice has subsisted after the foundations have been undermined. * Baronius n'en dit guères contre; encore en a-t-il trop dit, et l'on vouloit sans moi (Cardinal du Perron), qui l'empêchai, censurer cette partie de son histoire. J'en devisai un jour avec le Pape, et il ne me répondit autre chose que “Che volete? i canonici la tengono:" il le disoit en riant. (Perroniana, p. 77.) Chaldees, from whom astrological ideas flowed westward at so early a period, that a poem by Solon on the climacteral years was founded upon such a derivation*. The Chaldæans, as Varro shows, considered seven to be a periodical number of the greatest influencet; and later tradition ascribes to them, as well as to the Egyptians, the institution of the days of the week. But this is also found among the Hindoos, with collateral circumstances: the number Seven is considered highly sacred, and is frequently mentioned in the Indian myths; as for instance in the seven holy Rishis, the seven horses of Surya, the seven tongues of Agnis, the seven-headed Dragon, the seven mouths by which the Ganges, like the Nile, empties itself into the sea, and the seven caverns of purification, which represent the same number of Mithra's gates. The planets were mentioned in ancient writings, and there exist even prayers appropriated to them§. They appear in the same legends as in other parts of Asia. Venus (here a male deity) and Mercury are lucky stars; Jupiter, as the instructor of the gods, was held in high honour; and on the contrary, Saturn (Sanis, the Slow), to whom, as a source of evil, the raven was dedicated, always appears as the token of ill luck, division, and the rainy period||. The days of the week were distributed by the Hindoos according to the planets, in our manner : * See Weber, Elegische Dichter der Hellenen, p. 60. Varro, in Gellius Noct. Attic. iii. 10. Joan. Lydus de Mensib. p. 40, edit. Roether. § Asiat. Res. vii. p. 239. || Moor, Hindúpanth. p. 312. tab. 89; Porphyrius de Abst. 3, 4:"Apaßes коρáкwν ȧкоvοvσι. Comp. my Commentat. de Molenabbio, p. 50. Also Virgil (Georg. i. 388) says:— "Tum cornix plena pluviam vocat improba voce." For the representations of the Persians, see Hammer, Fundgruben des Or. i. p. 1, etc. Rhode (ii. p. 300) confounds all the planets, according to a print in Creuzer. |