HENCE THE TURRETED CROWN. 33 sented in front of her famous temple there, thus crowned with the crested peacocks which were attributed to her, because kind Nature had given to them a natural headgear like the kit. The half moon attributed to Diana* is a head ornament which identity with the moon may have suggested, and is but another phase of the full moon that appears between the horns of the Egyptian Apis and the figures of Isis. Natalis Comes (p. 138) has an engraving, under the name of a female muffled figure from top to toe, as one representation; and it is to be lamented that throughout this learned work the engravings and text have so little connection, that no authorities are given whence the former were taken: it is, no doubt, a mobbled Diana, as Shakespeare uses mobbled queen for muffled; as a mob-cap is the same as a muffler, concealing hair and almost features. But to return to Diana as Hecate, the adornments of her head subside into the turreted crown, which the poets and painters of antiquity ultimately preferred; though to their Mystologists the reason was not very plain, as Ovid (Fast. iv. 219) gives no very satisfactory answer to his inquiry "At cur turrita caput est ornata corona ? An Phryiis turres urbibus illa dedit ?” It will be endeavoured to give, in a subsequent * But the modius is also attributed to the Ephesian Diana (vide Creuzer's Symbolik, vol. iii. fig. 123, 5); also to Here Juno (vol. iii. p. 218). Creuzer calls it the symbol of fruitfulness-and so it is; but objectively, as receiving benefits, not subjectively, conferring them. 34 THE MURAL CROWN OF RHEA chapter, a more satisfactory solution from the consideration of the conformity betwixt Thor and Janus considered as gates, doors, or turrets, and Tore, Platt Deutsche Torn. Lucretius (lib. ii. v. 606) has expended some of his most florid lines on the mural turrets of Rhea, or Magna Mater: 'Muralique caput summum cinxere corona: It may have been from the Egyptian and Asiatic conception of androgynous deities, male and female at the same time, particularly in the instance of Deus Lunus, and Dea Luna, of Isis, under the form of Apis, and of Venus, frequently mentioned as male, that the symbols of the different sexes got confounded, and the modius was given also to male deities, particularly to Jupiter, and in later times to Serapis. In Montfaucon (vol. i. p. 46, tab. xiv. fig. 2) we find a head of Jupiter, copied from Maffei, which he unnecessarily calls a Pantheistic sign: 'Jupiter Hammon calathum capite impositum habet, quod ut Symbolum Serapudis." But on Serapis and the modius, we have an older and more satisfactory testimony in Macrob. Sat. (lib. i. cap. xxx.) "Eidem (Guditanæ civitati) Ægypto adjacens civitas quæ AND MODIUS OF SERAPIS 35 conditorem Alexandrum Macedonum gloriatur Serapin atque Isin cultu pene attonitæ venerationem soli sub illius nomen testatur impendere, vel dum calathum capiti ejus infingitur. Creuzer, Symbolik (vol i. p. 315), says :— "In Egypten ward unter den ersten Ptolemäern ein Serapis von gebildeter aufgestellt. Es war ein ernster Gott mit dem Modius (getraide Maas) auf dem Haupte der das von einer Schlange umwundene Thier mit dem Hund's, Loewen und Wolfskopfe neben sich hatte."* Before we leave these Egyptian deities, we may cast a glimpse at the curious figure of Canopus-a jar or kit crowned with the human head, a figure which has all the elements of our kit-bearing deities, only in varying proportions and situation to the usual forms; but its introduction into our European languages, as canopy, has been accompanied by a remarkable illustration of its veneration applied objectively, as imparting dignity and power. The canopy borne over the regal head at coronations is a subject of grave discussion amongst its hereditary supporters of the Cinque Port and Barons, and receptions by royalty under it have been demanded with all the forms and rigours of diplomacy. A translation of a passage by Zoega on Tyche and *The pure Latin Deity Janus is also found with this emblem upon his doubled face; at his shoulders and hips two wings, with a scorpion's tail. The two flames hovering over the head of the Dioscuri owe their origin to the sanctity of the highest part of the human form. The boy Atis, the accompaniment of Esculapius Telesphorus, nay, even the curious Phrygian cap of Paris and Mithras, owe their permanence to their sanctity, and their sanctity to this covering of the head. 36 EXPLAINED FROM ZOEGA. Nemesis, which has something sufficiently curious for insertion, is as follows: "This opinion, more especially that everyone had his peculiar Tyche (rúxn, fortuna), has been the cause that we have in our museums such a number of small figures of these deities in marble and brass, which were formerly placed in the Lararium, and the many inscribed gems which bear their forms. Sometimes with the figure invented by Bupalos, having a Polos on its head, generally called Modius or Kalathos, and the horn of Amalthea on its arm, to which is generally added a rudder, a globe, a wheel, all symbols designating a being from whom the vicissitudes in human affairs and the distribution of the envied blessings of this world depend. The meaning of Polos is doubtful, and capable of various explanations; but the only one answering the spirit of antiquity, and the use we find so often made of it with the tutelary gods, appears to me to be that which interprets it as a sign that the entirety of the prosperity of him who has recommended himself to its protection, depends upon this deity." A note by his German translator, Welcker (p. 37), gives some farther elucidation. Visconti recants the opinion given on the occasion of his explanation in Mus. Piocl. (part ii.), as empty disk, and compares it with the root vertex, whose meaning he thinks he can carry over to Tóλos, so that it can often signify Modius, Kalathos, Tower. The common hood is therefore, in consideration of its propinquity to the head, participator of its privileges. Telesphorus, the invariable concomitant of the statues of the healing Esculapius, is always hooded, and his name, réλos-pépos, from Telos, dignitas, mysteria (English, charm), and pépw, portare, is sufficiently significant to require explanation; the curious figures Telamones have some verbal and THE CÆSAREAN OPERATION A CHARM. 37 more real affinity. So Atys, the favourite of Cybele, is invariably covered with the Phrygian bonnet, which may have given rise to the belief of his country, rather than the contrary; but as it is impossible to British readers to go into the impurities of Catullus's Ode on Atys, or but to allude to the indecency of the name of his and her priests, under the name of Galli, whose unnatural selfdeprivation of the generative power can only remind us at the present day of capons, the reader must be satisfied to be assured that many passages of that author would bear me out. In Beger's Thesaurus (vol. ii.) we have a statue of Atys, where the veil is represented over the whole figure, except in front of the stomach, which may aptly apply to the wide-spread superstition of the great power of a child cut from the womb, so admirably worked up by Shakespeare in Macbeth, and to which Cæsar is said to have owed the great part of his successes in Gaul; for the belief in invincibility, as it takes away the hope, also destroys the power of resistance; at all events, we know that from its successful operation on his person, the practice has gained the name of Cæsarian. But another natural and widely spread superstition is figured by this statue, and perhaps by all others with coverings or things borne on the head this is the child's caul, which may be looked upon as a modius given to the fortunate infant by Nature and Fate, and which, therefore, Ruddeman, in his Glossary to Douglas, Virgil, How "the women call a haly or sely hood; i. e., a holy or fortunate cap, or hood. But the subject is so amply treated in Halliwell's Brand (vol iii. VOL II. E |