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OF THE INCREDIBLE THINGS IN THULE.1

That island, of which the position is one of the most doubtful points in ancient geography, was not, according to Diogenes, the most distant of the globe, as he talks of several beyond it: Thule is but a single station for his adventurers, and many of the most incredible things are beheld in other quarters of the world. The idea of the work of Diogenes is said to have been taken from the Odyssey, and in fact many of the incidents seem to have been borrowed from that poem. Indeed the author mentions a number of writers prior to himself, particularly Antiphanes, from whom he had collected these wonderful relations. Aulus Gellius tells us, that coming on one occasion from Greece to Italy, he landed at Brundusium, in Calabria, where he purchased a collection of fabulous histories, under the names of Aristeus, Ctesias, and Onesicritus, which were full of stories concerning nations which saw during night, but were blind during day, and various other fictions, which, we shall find, were inserted in the " 'Incredible Things in Thule." The work of Diogenes is praised by Photius for its purity of style, and the delightful variety of its adventures; yet, to judge from that author's abridgment, it seems to have contained a series of the most improbable incidents. But though filled with the most trifling and incredible narrations, it is deserving of attention, as it seems to have been a repository from which Achilles Tatius and succeeding fablers derived the materials of less defective romances.

Dinias flying from Arcadia, his native country, arrives at the mouth of the river Tanais. Urged by the intensity of the cold, he proceeds towards the east, and, having made a circuit round the globe, he at length reaches Thule [c. 2]. Here he forms an acquaintance with Dercyllis, the heroine of the romance, who had been driven from Tyre along with

1 Αντώνιου Διογένους των ὑπὲρ Θούλην ἄπιστων λογοί. For a discussion of the theories respecting the locality of Thule, see Elton's "Origins of English History," p. 68.

2 Gellius, however, only says that they saw better at night, a circumstance which has reference to the nocturnal solar phenomena in very northern latitudes.

her brother Mantinia, by the intrigues of Paapis, an Egyptian priest. She relates to Dinias how she had wandered through Rhodes and Crete, and also among the Cimmerians, where she had a view of the infernal regions [c. 3], through favour of her deceased servant Myrto;-how, being separated from her brother, she arrived with a person of the name of Ceryllus at the tomb of the Syrens, and afterwards at a city in Spain, where the people saw during the night, a privilege which was neutralized by total blindness during day.-Dercyllis further relates how she travelled among the Celts, and a nation of Amazons [c. 4]; and that in Sicily she again met with her brother Mantinia, who related to her adventures still more extraordinary than her own; having seen all the sights in the sun, moon, and most remote islands of the globe [c. 5]. Dercyllis, after many other vicissitudes, arrives in Thule [c. 6], whither she is followed by her old enemy Paapis, who, by his magic art, makes her die every night and come alive again in the morning; an easy kind of punishment, being equivalent to a refreshing nap. The secret of these incantations, which chiefly consisted in spitting in the victim's face, is detected by Azulis, who had accompanied Dinias into Thule, and the spells of the powerful magician being through his means broken, Dercyllis and Mantinia return to their native country [c. 7, 8]. After the departure of his friends, Dinias wanders beyond Thule, and advances towards the Pole. In these regions he says the darkness continued sometimes a month, sometimes six months, but at certain places for a whole year; and the length of the day was proportioned to that of the night. At last, awakening one morning, he finds himself at Tyre, where he meets with his old friends Mantinia and Dercyllis, with whom he passes the remainder of his life [c. 9].

Besides the principal subject of the romance, of which an abstract has been given by Photius, Porphyrius, in his Life of Pythagoras, has preserved a long and fabulous account of that mysterious philosopher, which, he tells us, formed an episode of the Incredible Things in Thule, and was related to Dercyllis by Aristaus, one of the companions of her flight from Tyre, and an eminent disciple of Pythagoras. Mnesarchus one day found, under a large poplar,

an infant, who lay gazing undazzled on the sun, holding a reed in his mouth, and sipping the dew which dropped on him from the poplar. This child was carried home by Mnesarchus, who bestowed on him the name of Aristæus, and brought him up with his youngest son Pythagoras. At length Aristaus became one of the scholars of that philosopher, along with Zamolxis, the legislator of the Getæ, after he had undergone an inspectio corporis, to which the Samian sage invariably subjected his disciples, as he judged of the mental faculties by the external form. Aristaus was thus enabled to give an account of the travels of his master, and the mystical learning he acquired among the Egyptians and Babylonians; of the tranquil life which he passed in Italy, and the mode in which he healed diseases by incantations and magic poems; for he knew verses of such power that they produced oblivion of pain, soothed sorrow, and repressed all inordinate appetites.

The romance of the Incredible Things beyond Thule was dedicated to the author's sister Isidora, and consisted of twenty-four books, in which Dinias was represented as relating his own adventures, and those he had heard from Dercyllis, to Cymba, who had been sent to Tyre by the Arcadians to prevail on him to return to his native country. The account of these adventures is, at the beginning of the romance, described as having been engraved on cypress tablets by one of Cymba's attendants; at the request of Dinias they were placed in his tomb after his death, and are feigned to have been discovered by Alexander the Great during the siege of Tyre.'

After the composition of the Dinias and Dercyllis of

Photius, Bibliotheca Cod. 156, p. 355, ed. 1653, Rothomagi. In the "Reisefabulistik" Rohde discerns one of the points of departure whence the Greek imaginary romance was developed. He is accordingly anxious to establish the date of Diogenes, which upon a numerous array of authorities he gives as the first half of the third century. (Gr. Rom. p. 252.) The long series of adventures in the Romance of Iamblichus is merely a development upon the kind of work represented by the story of the incredible things beyond Thule. The movement is entirely objective, there is no play of the emotions. A couple of lovers fly before their pursuers from land to land, amid a gloomy alternation of misfortunes imminent ruin is ever averted at the last moment, and virtue finally obtains its triumph and reward in plenary happiness. (Ibid. p. 378.)

Diogenes, a considerable period seems to have elapsed without the production of any fictitious narrative deserving the appellation of a romance.

Lucius Patrensis and Lucian, who were nearly contemporary, lived during the reign of the emperor Marcus Aurelius: Lucius collected accounts of magical transformations; Photius remarks, that his style is delightful by its perspicuity, purity, and sweetness, but as his work comprehends a relation of incidents professedly incredible, without any attempt on the part of the author to give them the appearance of reality, it cannot perhaps be properly admitted into the number of romances.

A considerable portion of the Metamorphoses of Lucius were abridged and transferred by Lucian into his Ass, to which he also gave the name of Lucius; a work which may perhaps be again mentioned when we come to speak of the Golden Ass of Apuleius, a longer and more celebrated production of the same species.

About the time these authors lived, Iamblichus 2 wrote his

BABYLONICA.

The romance itself has been lost, but the epitome given by Photius shows that little improvement had been made

1 Called by Photius (Biblioth. Cod. 129) Meraμoppoσéwv λóyoi diapopor. According to Photius, Lucius himself believed in these marvels, including the transformation of men into animals, and vice versa.-Lieb. Whether the supposed Lucius of Patræ, or Lucian, is the prior author of the story, the original of which, probably derived from early Aryan sources, and formed one of the Milesian Tales, has been much contested (See the matter discussed in J. P. Courier's "La Luciade ou l'Ane de Lucius de Patras," Paris, 1828, preface, p. x; E. Rohde's "Lucian's Schrift," 1869; and De Luciano libelli qui inscribitur Lucius sive asinus actore, scripsit C. F. E., Knaut. Lipsiæ, 1868). The weight of argument, as of authority, is in favour of the supposition that Lucian drew from Lucius, or a prior source, and Apuleius from Lucian. (See further, art. Apuleius, p. 107.)

2 He was born of Syrian parents. In his youth he was placed under the care of a learned Babylonian, who instructed him in the manners and customs of his country, and particularly in its language, which by this time must have been somewhat simplified. His Babylonish preceptor, however, was taken prisoner, and sold as a slave at the time of Trajan's Syrian conquest. After this Iamblichus applied himself chiefly to Greek literature, but he informs us that he did not forget his magic, for, when Antoninus sent his colleague Verus against Vologesus, king

in this species of composition, during the period which had elapsed since the production of the Dinias and Dercyllis of Diogenes.

Garmus, king of Babylon, having fallen in love with Sinonis, but not being agreeable to the object of his affections, the lady escapes from his power along with her lover Rhodanes. The probability of this event having been anticipated, Damas and Saca, two eunuchs who had been appointed to watch them, (after having their nose and ears cut off, for their negligence in allowing their flight,) are sent out by the king to re-commit them [c. 2]. The romance principally consists of the adventures of the fugitives, and their hair-breadth escapes from these royal messengers. We are told that the lovers first sought refuge with certain shepherds in a meadow, but a demon, or spectre, which haunted that quarter in the shape of a goat, (rpάyov т páσμa,) having become enamoured of Sinonis, she is compelled to leave this shelter, in order to avoid his fantastic addresses. It is then related how Sinonis and Rhodanes conceal themselves in a cavern, in which they are beleaguered by Damas; but the eunuch and his forces are routed by a swarm of poisonous bees.1 By

of the Parthians (A.D. 167), he predicted the progress and issue of that contest.

Photius has given a pretty full account of the Sinon and Rhodanes of Iamblichus, in his Myriabiblia. A MS. of the romance was (says Huet) formerly extant in the library of the Escurial, which was burnt in 1670. Another copy was in possession of Jungerman, who died in the beginning of the seventeenth century, but it has since disappeared. (See PassowScriptores Erotici, i. p. iii.) Some fragments originally transcribed by Vossius, from the Florentine library, were published in 1641 by Leo Allatius, in his excerpts from the Greek Rhetoricians (Mém. de l'Acad. des Inscriptions, vol. xxxiv. p. 57). This mémoire, by Lebeau, has been shown by Chardon de la Rochette (Mélanges, i. p. 18) to contain many errors, and the fragments not to belong to the Babylonica.

Iamblichus, the author of this romance, must not be confounded with either of the Platonic philosophers of that name, both of whom lived in the reign of the Emperor Julian, and were great favourites of the Apostate. The name 'Iάuẞixos, says Mueller, seems to be an Arabic form, and should be pronounced with the penultima long. It is probably the same as yam (2), (in 1 Chron. iv. 34). There is no reason for identifying it with Iambulus.

1 This incident, as well as the subsequent one of the dog (p. 19), are closely imitated in Marino's " Adone," c. 14.-Lieb.

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