CYNEWULF

Across the centuries we spell thy name, Wrought deep within thy verse by runic sign, For though thy soul was rapt with things divine, Thou yet couldst not forego the dream of fame. The virgin martyr's faith thou dost acclaim ; Dost sing the cross revealed by Heaven's design ; The Advent's hope, the Ascent of Christ benign, The trump of Judgment, and its hurtling flame.

ELENE, PHCENIX, AND PHYSIOLOGUS

EDITED BY ALBERT STANBURROUGH COOK

PROFESSOR OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE IN YALE UNIVERSITY

NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS 'LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXIX

COPYRIGHT, 1919 BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

1505

CONTENTS

Introduction vii

Elene vii

Manuscript vii

Author and Date xiii

Sources of the Legend xiv

Constantine and the Vision of the Cross xxii

Phcenix xxv

Manuscript xxv

Author and Date xxvi

Lactantius xxviii

Lactantius and the De Ave Phoenice xxxiii

The Phoenix as a Symbol xxxviii

Heliopolis xlv

The Earthly Paradise Hi

Physiologus Ivii

The Physiologus in General Ivii

The Old English Physiologus Ix

Manuscript Ix

Coherence of the Poems Ix

Author and Date Ixi

The Panther Ixii

The Whale (Asp-Turtle) Ixiii

The Growth of the Legend Ixiii

The Name of the Monster Ixxiii

The Partridge Ixxxv

The Text of the Poems ... i

Elene 3

Phoenix 47

vi CONTENTS

Physiologus 75

1. Panther 75

2. The Whale (Asp-Turtle) 77

3. Partridge 80

Notes 83

Notes on Elene 85

Notes on Phoenix 102

Supplement to Notes on Phoenix 124

Translation of Lactantius, De Ave Phccnice 124

The Late Old English Version of the Phoenix ... 128

Notes on Physiologus 133

Bibliography 141

Elene 141

Phoenix 145

Physiologus 149

Glossary 151

INTRODUCTION

ELENE MANUSCRIPT

The manuscript in which the Elene is found is No. cxvn of the library of the Cathedral of Vercelli, in Northern Italy, mid way between Turin and Milan, and is hence known as the Codex Vercellensis, or Vercelli Book. It was discovered in 1822 by a German jurist, Friedrich Blume, who then and there copied out the poetical pieces; the result of his investigations in this and other Italian libraries was made known in his book Iter Italicum? the first volume of which was published in 1824.

The manuscript belongs to the later decades of the tenth cen tury.2 It contains 135 written leaves, and the average size of the written page is 9^/2 by 6 inches, while that of the complete page approximates 12^4 by 8.3 It comprises twenty-three homilies and six interspersed poems, the arrangement of the latter being as follows: Andreas (fol. 2Qb — 52b) and Fates of the Apostles (52b — 54a), after the fifth homily; Address of the Soul to the Body (ioib — iO3b), Falsehood of Men (iO4a — iO4b), Dream of the Rood (iO4b — io6a), after the eighteenth; and Elene (i2ia — I33b), after the twenty-second. The language is Late West Saxon, interspersed with occasional Early West Saxon

1 1. 99. It seems to be mentioned by G. F. Leone in an inventory of the Cathedral Library compiled in 1602 (cf. Forster, II Codice Vercellese, p. 40), and is certainly mentioned in a letter written by Giuseppe Bianchini (printed by Forster, p. 41), who suspected that it was German ('lingua Theotisca'), and reproduced a portion of one of the homilies, with many errors. Cf. Festschrift fiir Lorens Morsbach, pp. 54-5.

2Brandl, in Paul, Grundriss der Germ. Phil., 2d ed., 2. mo; Forster, p. 14 (Festschrift, p. 26). Wiilker and others have said the early part of the eleventh century; cf. Forster, p. 12.

8 Forster, p. 7; Festschrift, p. 21.

viii INTRODUCTION

and many Anglian forms, and a few traces of Kentish. The poems were probably Anglian, and have been changed by passing through West Saxon hands, but it is not necessary to suppose that the West Saxon elements were introduced by the latest scribe. The manuscript perhaps originated at Worcester, and in any case resembles the language as written at Worcester in that period.1

Nothing is known as to the manner in which the manuscript reached Vercelli, but various theories have been proposed. That of Wulker may thus be translated from his own words2 :

As I was informed in Vercelli, there sprang up there in early times a hospice for Anglo-Saxon pilgrims on their journeys to and from Rome. This is intelligible enough if one considers that Vercelli lies directly on the road to Rome by Mont. Cenis or the Little or Great St. Bernard, and that th'ese were the passes over which English pilgrims in the Middle Ages journeyed toward Rome. At this hospice a library of edifying books may gradually have been formed, to which our manuscript may have belonged.

This theory has but little to recommend it. The existence of the Anglo-Saxon hospice reposes upon modern hearsay, so far as appears ; the library is purely hypothetical ; and the presence of this volume in the hypothetical library is at least equally hypo thetical. Is it likely that so large and precious a volume would have been contributed to the library of a mere hospice? And is it likely that pilgrims on their way to Rome would have had time to pore over any edifying books but their breviaries ?

The other theory was first broached by an unnamed writer in the Quarterly Review for December, 1844, and March, 1845 ; it is to the effect that the book was presented to the church of St. Andrew in Vercelli by Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, not long after 1219. This theory I revived, and supported with new considera tions, in Library Bulletin No. 10 of the University of California (1888). I thus briefly summarized the earlier arguments:

1 Forster, pp. 19-21 ; Festschrift, pp. 33-5. A facsimile of the poetical texts was published by Wulker in 1894, and of the whole manuscript by Forster in 1913.

2 Codex Vercellensls, pp. vi, vn.

ELENE IX

1. Cardinal Guala was in England from 1216 to 121 8.

2. While in England he had in his possession a priory of St. Andrew.1

3. After his return to Italy he founded the collegiate church of St. Andrew at Vercelli, and bestowed upon it relics of English saints.

4. The income from his English benefices perhaps enabled him to establish and endow the church at Vercelli.

5. The plan and many of the details of the church are Early English.

6. One of the chief poems of the Vercelli book is St. Andrew.

To the foregoing I added :

The facts not hitherto adduced in support of the hypothesis, and which seem to be as conclusive as circumstantial evidence can well be, are: Guala was a learned man, zealous for learning and religion, and the owner of perhaps the finest private library possessed at that time in Western Europe. The funds for the establishment of the monas tery and the purchase of his books must have come largely from England — and why not certain books also? He must have been open- minded, and appreciative of the good he found in foreign parts, and especially anxious to testify his appreciation of English art; then why not of English letters? His spirit of good-will toward England was to some extent reciprocated there, and he sought to perpetuate it by selecting as abbot an ecclesiastic who, though French, should have English connections and sympathies, and a stake in English prosperity. The wisdom of his course is attested by the renown of the monastery school, and the fact that it immediately attracted one of the greatest Englishmen of the Middle Ages, who remained a firm friend after his departure, and perhaps gained other friends for its head. Guala must have thought oftenest of St. Martin and St. Andrew, patrons of France and North Britain respectively, especially revered by the two foreign nations in which his lot was cast, and which he afterwards honored on his return to his native country and his native town. Several circumstances must have conspired to deepen the impression thus made, particularly with reference to St. Andrew. We need not be surprised, then, at his immediate commemoration of that saint (by founding the monastery of St. Andrew in 1219), nor should we be surprised if a book once belonging to him commemorated both St. Martin and St. Andrew. By evincing a special interest in the Vercelli Book, he would have been honoring another saint (St. Helena) pecu-

1 Of Chesterton, near Ely. Cf . Forster, p. 25 ; Festschrift, p. 39.

X INTRODUCTION

liarly dear to the English heart. Finally, his library did contain one or more books in English chirography, was bequeathed to this monas tery, and, with whatever augmentations it had received, was a notable one at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

In replying to the above arguments, Wiilker admits (Codex Vercellensis, p. vi) the possibility of this mode of transmission, but urges that Guala probably understood no English, let alone Anglo-Saxon, and that if he be supposed to have presented this book to his foundation because it contained a poem on St. Andrew, that implies a good knowledge of Old English on his part. Besides, asks Wiilker, who among his countrymen was to read the manuscript? To this it may be answered: Collectors of rare and precious volumes are not always familiar with the languages in which they are written, and yet are frequently aware of the notable matters they contain. In the case of a fine book like the Vercelli manuscript, we may either assume that there were Eng lishmen living who could read it, or that its contents were known in a general way by tradition. If it were venerated by the Eng lish, that would be a reason why a collector might be anxious to acquire it, whether he could read it or not ; but we have seen, besides, that his monastery school at Vercelli attracted into resi dence a great Englishman (Adam de Marisco), so that his book may not have lacked readers on Italian soil, though we should grant that Italians found it unreadable.

The matter has recently been reopened by Forster,1 who adduces the following facts as bearing upon the problem :

1. Guala's church, or rather monastery, was erected on the site of a former church of St. Andrew.

2. The monastery was erected by, and for the use of, Augus- tinians whom Guala brought from St. Victor, near Paris, and a well-known French archaeologist has declared the architecture to be Gothic of Northern France.

3. The catalogue of the books which Guala left to his mon astery contains no mention of our manuscript.

4. In 1748, and perhaps in 1602, the manuscript belonged to

1 Op. cit., pp. 23 ff. ; Festschrift, pp. 35 ff.

ELENE XI

the cathedral library, and we are not sure that it was ever in the possession of the monastery.

5. No member of the higher clergy at the time of Guala's residence in England would probably have cared for an Old Eng lish manuscript, or have been able to read it, or even have been able to spell out the characters in which it was written.1 Even the English themselves could hardly understand Old English perfectly at the end of the I2th century. Hence the 'Andrea (s)' of the manuscript (occurring 32 times, by the way) would not have been likely to attract their attention, especially as it is nowhere conspicuous on the page.

Forster then suggests that, as Blume found in 1822 in the cathedral library a Gregorian sacramentary which had been lent by Erkanbald, Abbot of Fulda, to Henry, Bishop of Wiirzburg between 997 and ion, either Fulda or Wiirzburg, both centres of British learning, might perhaps have been the means of trans mitting the Vercelli Book to Italy in the nth or I2th century. Other monasteries which might be thought of are Luxeuil and Fleury.

The objections raised by Forster under (i) and (2) seem valid. To (3) it might be replied, as Forster himself admits, that Guala might already have presented the manuscript to his monastery; to (4) that the books of the monastery may have been turned over, at least in part, to the cathedral library, since no one seems to know what became of them.2 With respect to (5), I will quote from Earle3 (pp. cviii-cxix) a few sentences already used in my brief paper, 'Archaic English in the Twelfth Century'4 : 'Priority of attention to Latin, with a growing neglect of the mother tongue, was the prevailing tendency in the first half of the twelfth century; but then came a reaction, perhaps only

1 Forster explicitly says (p. 33) that the period between 1000 and 1175 is the only one in which the writing and the language could have been read, and that, in fact, at any time after 1125, the dominant French theology would have rendered a knowledge of Old English manuscripts the posses sion of only the occasional amateur. Cf. Festschrift, p. 47.

2 So Forster, pp. 28-9 ; Festschrift, pp. 42-3.

8 Hand-book to the Land Charters, and other Saxon Documents. 4 Scottish Historical Review 12. 213-5.

xii INTRODUCTION

partial and local, of which our best specimens are in a book from Winchester. . . . Consequently we observe all the tokens of a Renaissance of the mother tongue. . . . The study has mani festly engendered a real taste for the royal style of the old language, and a sincere passion to master the charm of it.' Earle then speaks of 'the genuine early forms that here and there peep out through the scholastic text' [of the charters that he cites], and adds : 'This brings us to the end of the twelfth or the begin ning of the thirteenth century.' Again he speaks (p. 348) of the 'scholastic attention to the ancient forms of the language,' and of 'an Anglosaxon Renaissance at the close of the twelfth cen tury,' and remarks of one of the charters in question1 that it is 'a work of the thirteenth century.'2 Evidently, then, there were ecclesiastics, higher or lower, who could read Old English at this time, and who would strive to communicate their enthusiasm to others.8

As to the transmission of English manuscripts to Vercelli by way of French or German monasteries, is it not more likely that any such should have come direct from England by the passes that Wiilker designates? As late as the fourteenth century, at least, parties descending the Alps by the Mont Cenis passed through Vercelli on their way to larger and more important towns.4

1 Cott. Claud. C. ix of the British Museum.

2 For examples of the influence of a dominating foreign culture in stimu lating the spirit of nationality, and reviving a vernacular literature, see Gaston Paris, La Poesie du Moyen Age 2. 35, 72, 74 ; Ker, English Litera ture: Medieval, pp. 65, 75 ff., 80; Morley, English Writers 3. 206; Wells, Manual of the Writings in Middle English, p. 195 ; Taylor, The Medieval Mind 2. 164, 223; Zielinski, Cicero im Wandel der Jahrhunderte, 26. ed., PP- 235, 397-8.

3 Since Layamon's 'English book that St. Bede made' is held to refer to Alfred's translation of the Ecclesiastical History, we must agree with Skeat that he 'could read the old version of Bede intelligently' (Encyc. Brit., nth ed., 16. 311). Of his language Sir James Murray has said (ibid. g. 59i ) : 'The language, though forty years later than the specimen from the Chronicle [1140], is much more archaic in structure, and can scarely be considered even as Early Middle English.' Cf. Morley, English Writers 3.

21 1 -2.

* See my paper, The Last Months of Chaucer's Earliest Patron (Trans. Conn. Acad. of Arts and Sciences 21. 43).

ELENE Xlll

We are evidently reduced to hypotheses ; and, of all that have been proposed, that concerning Guala still seems to me the most olausible.

plausible.

AUTHOR AND DATE

On the evidence of the interpersed runes near the end of the poem, the Elene, like the Juliana, the Christ, and the Fates of the Apostles, was written by Cynewulf . The Juliana and the Elene spell the name Cynewulf, while the Christ, and probably the Fates of the Apostles, have Cynwulf. Cyne- in such words is the earlier spelling, and obtains from about 750 A. D. ; Cyn- belongs almost wholly to the ninth century, but does not altogether crowd out the earlier Cyne-, which in turn had succeeded a still earlier Cyni-, again without completely displacing it.1 The prevailing view among scholars is that Cynewulf was a Northumbrian, or at least an Anglian, ecclesiastic, who wrote in the second half of the eighth century,2 or possibly as late as the very beginning of the ninth.3 Greater precision than this does not at present seem

1 Christ, ed. Cook, p. Ixviii ; Tupper, in Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc. 26 (1911). 240-244.

2 See Carleton F. Brown, in Eng. Stud. 33 (1907). 225; Brandl, Gesch. der Altengl. Lit. (1908), p. 100.; cf. Christ, ed. Cook, p. Ixxi.

8 So H,enry Bradley, in Encyc: Brit., nth ed., 7. 691. Certain reasons which I advanced in 1892 (Angl. 15. 9-20; cf. Christ, pp. Ixix-lxx) in favor of this view were proved untenable by Carleton F. Brown (following Trautmann in Anglia Beiblatt II. 325) in 1903 (Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc. 18. 308-334). The date could be established more exactly if the poet could be identified with the Bishop of Lindisfarne who died in 783, as conjec tured by Bouterwek (1857), and accepted by Dietrich (1865), Grein (1880), Trautmann (1898), and Brown (1907) ; cf. Christ, ed. Cook, pp. Ixx-lxxiii; Brown, in Eng. Stud. 38. 225-233. The latter says (p. 226) : 'Bishop Cynewulf was appointed to the see of Lindisfarne in 740. After forty years' service, he resigned his office in 780, and died in 783. The date of his birth may by reasonable inference be fixed between 705 and 710.' After traversing my objections, he concludes (pp. 232-3) : 'The poet was certainly an ecclesiastic ; he was in all probability a Northumbrian ; his poems were written during the second half of the eighth century. All these conditions are satisfied by Bishop Cynewulf. Outside of York, there is no place in Northumbria more likely to have been the poet's home than Lindisfarne — from the time of Aidan a distinguished seat of Christian learning. In the library of this ancient monastery Cynewulf would certainly have found

Xiv INTRODUCTION

possible. A terminus a quo for the composition of the Elene may be assumed, if my conjecture regarding I2o6b — I2a is accepted. According to this, he would have written after 731.

SOURCES OF THE LEGEND

The Elene is based upon a Latin version of a legend which, in its fully developed form, seems to be Syriac in origin,1 and which probably, though not certainly, entered Latin through the medium of Greek. This elaborated legend must have arisen about the beginning of the fifth century, though its larger outlines may have established themselves about 375 A. D.2 It became pretty well diffused over Latin Christendom from about the middle of the fifth century.3 Cynewulf's direct source, as Carleton F.

the writings of the Fathers, which he used so extensively, and the "books" to which he refers in the epilogue of Elene. Everything, in a word, which we know of Lindisfarne and of the bishop accords well with what we infer concerning Cynewulf from a study of the poems to which he has signed his name. Further than this, present evidence will not carry us.'

1 Probably at Edessa, the seat of Syrian learning and literature in that period. Cf. Tixeront, Les Origines de l'£glise d'£desse, pp. 7-8: '£desse a ete la premiere fondee de ces chretientes [de Mesopotamie] ; c'est de son sein que sont partis les missionnaires qui les ont evangelisees ; elle est restee le centre des eglises de langue . syriaque. Admirablement situee entre le monde grec et le monde oriental, communiquant, d'une part, avec Antioche, dont elle relevait, et de 1'autre, avec la Perse, la grande Armenie, et meme avec 1'Inde, la capitale d'Osrhoene etait bien placee pour profiter a la fois et de la culture hellenique et de la puissante originalite des pays barbares. Elle etait comme le confluent ou les idees de deux mondes venaient se meler et se confondre.' See also Holthausen's second edition of the Elene, p. xi.

The foundation of the developed story is not Syrian, as the various extracts quoted below will show.

2 Tixeront, pp. 189-191; Lipsius, Die Edessenische Abgar-Sage', pp. 91-2; Ryssel, in Herrig's Archiv 93. 2; Bys. Zs. 4. 342 if.; Holder, Inventio Sancta Crucis, pp. x-xi; Lejay, in Revue Critique, 1890, p. 40; Wotke, in Wiener Studien 13. 300-2.

8 For bibliographies of the various versions, see Nestle, in Byz. Zs. 4 (1895). 319-345; Holthausen, in Zs. fiir Deutsche Phil. 37 (1905). 2-4. Holthausen lists, besides a prose version in Old English (Morris, Legends of the Holy Rood), others in Icelandic, Old Swedish, Middle English, and Middle High German, not to speak of those in Syriac, Greek, and Latin.

ELENE "XV

Brown has shown, may well have been derived from Ireland, and he even inclines to suppose that 'the legend made its way to Ireland in a Greek text, and was there translated into Latin.'1

If one undertakes to trace the growth of the legend, he finds it extremely difficult to determine where authentic history ends, and embellishment and invention begin. In what follows, the principal documents are quoted or summarized in order, begin ning in the later years of Constantine's reign, and continuing down to about 500 A. D.2

Our earliest authority is Eusebius of Csesarea (ca. 260 — ca. 340), the most learned man of his age, highly esteemed by Con- stantine, and favored with access to many original sources of information which are now lost.

(ABOUT 335 A. D.)

Eusebius, Life of Constantine, Book 3, chaps. 26-30.

[The heathen had endeavored to obliterate from memory the sep ulchre of Christ by covering it with earth, and laying over this a stone pavement. Eusebius continues :] They prepare on this foundation a truly dreadful sepulchre of souls, by building a gloomy shrine of life less idols to the impure spirit whom they call Venus.3 . . . He [Con stantine] . . . gave orders that the place should be thoroughly purified. . . . He gave further orders that the materials of what was thus destroyed, both stone and timber, should be removed and thrown as far from the spot as possible. . . . Once more, ... he directed that the ground itself should be dug up to a considerable depth. . . . This also was accomplished without delay. But as soon as the original sur face of the ground, beneath the covering of earth, appeared, immedi-

1 Engl. Stud. 40. 14-29. Cf. Scnirmer, Die Kreuzeslegenden im Leabhar Breac (St. Gall, 1886).

2 See Lipsius, pp. 71 ff. ; Tixeront, pp. 163-170. For the original texts see Holder, pp. 45 ff. ; Nestle, De Sancta Cruce, pp. 100, 101, 114.

3 This is also asserted by Rufinus, Eccl. Hist. 10. 7 ; Paulinus of Nola, Epistle to Severus 31 (u). 3; Jerome, Epistle to Paulinus 58. 3 (Migne, Pair. Lot. 22. 581) : Tor about 180 years, from the time of Hadrian to the reign of Constantine, an image of Jupiter was worshiped on the site of the resurrection, and a statue of Venus, erected by the heathen, on the site of the cross ; the authors of the persecution imagining that if they polluted the holy places with idols, they would rob us of our faith in the resurrection and the cross.' Cf. Schiirer, Hist. Jewish People I2. 314-320.

Xvi INTRODUCTION

ately, and contrary to all expectation, the venerable and hallowed monument of our Saviour's resurrection was discovered.1 . . . Imme diately after the transactions which I have recorded, the emperor sent forth instructions, . . . commanding that a house of prayer worthy of the worship of God should be erected near the Saviour's tomb, on a scale of rich and royal greatness. . . . He also dispatched the follow ing letter to the bishop who at that time presided over the church at Jerusalem :

VICTOR CONSTANTINUS MAXIMUS AUGUSTUS, TO MACARIUS :

. . . That the monument of his most holy passion, so long ago buried beneath the ground, should have remained unknown for so long a series of years, until its reappearance to his servants, is a fact which truly surpasses all admiration. . . . With regard to the erection and decoration of the walls, this is to inform you that our friend Dracilianus,2 the deputy of the praetorian prefects, and the governor of the province, have received in charge from us.

Independent contemporary testimony to the discovery of the tomb and the erection of the church is furnished by the fol lowing :

(332 A. D.)

Itinerary from Bordeaux to Jerusalem (Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society), pp. 23-4.

About a stone's throw from thence [Golgotha] is a vault wherein his body was laid, and rose again on the third day. There, at present, by the command of the Emperor Constantine, has been built a basilica, that is to say a church, of wondrous beauty.

Thus far, there has been no mention of the discovery of the cross, but only of the tomb. The first author to speak of the former is Bishop Cyril of Jerusalem (d. 386) :

(347 A. D.) Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. 4. 10 (Migne, Pair. Gr. 33. 468-9).

*A. D. 326 (Ryssel, p. 3).

* The existence of this Dracilianus as deputy of the praetorian prefects is otherwise attested by instructions sent to him by Constantine in the years 325 and 326 (Lipsius, p. 72).

ELENE XVH

He was indeed crucified for our sins ; shouldst thou be disposed to deny it, the very place which all can see refutes thee, even this blessed Golgotha, in which, on account of him who was crucified on it, we are now assembled ; and further, the whole world is filled with the frag ments of the wood of the cross.

Ibid. 10. 19 (ibid. 685, 688).

The holy wood of the cross is his witness, which is seen among us to this day, and, through the agency of those who have in faith received it, has already from this place almost filled the whole world.

Ibid. 13. 4 (ibid. 776-7).

For though I should now deny it, this Golgotha confutes me, near which we are now assembled; the wood of the cross confutes me, which has from hence been distributed piecemeal to all the world.1

One of the most important testimonies is contained in an inscrip tion from the Roman province of Africa:

(359 A. D.) Inscription at Tixter

Three or four miles south of the railway station of Tixter, which is about sixteen miles from Setif, on the railway leading to Algiers, there was found in October or November, 1889. an inscribed stone some 51 inches square, which, according to the date near the end, was erected in the year 3-20 of the province of Mauretania, that is, 359 of our era.2 This stone originally marked the place of a basilica which, according to the inscription, possessed a portion of the wood

1 Still more specific is an Epistle to Constantius of May 7, 351, attributed to Cyril, but of somewhat doubtful authenticity (cf. Lipsius, pp. 73-4; Ryssel, p. 3, note i; Migne, Pair. Gr. 33. 1153 ff.). The passage runs (Pair. Gr. 33. 1168) : 'In the days of thy father Constantine, dear to God and of blessed memory, the saving wood of the cross was found in Jeru salem, divine grace granting the discovery of the hidden sacred places to him who sought piety aright.'

2 Melanges d'Archeologie et d'Histoire (Ecole Franchise de Rome) 10. 440-468; Comptes-Rendus de I'Acad. des Inscriptions (M. Duchesne) 17. 417; 18. 233; Analecta Bollandiana 10. 366-7. The report in the Melanges, by M. Audollent, contains an excellent study of the inscription, and on p. 441 a photographic reproduction. The text of the inscription follows (ligno is actually Ugnu) :

^j£ Memoria sa(n)cta. — Victorinus Miggin, septimu(m) idus sept- (e)m(b)r(es), bdv et dabulail, de lign(o) crucis, de ter(ra) promts-

INTRODUCTION

of the cross, as well as some of the soil of the Holy Land. This date is extremely important, since it is only 33 years, or less, after the reputed discovery by Helena, and only 25 years after the death of Constantine. The stone is now in the Christian Museum of the Louvre.

(BEFORE 363 A. D.)

Julian the Apostate, quoted by Cyril of Alexandria, Cont. Jul., Bk. 6 (Migne, Patr. Gr. 76. 796-7).

You worship the wood of the cross ; you outline figures on your foreheads, and paint them in front of your houses.

(ABOUT 385 A. D.)

Pilgrimage of St. Sylvia (Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society), pp. 63-4.

A chair is placed for the bishop in Golgotha, behind the cross which stands there now; the bishop sits down in the chair; there is placed before him a table covered with a linen cloth, the deacons standing round the table. Then is brought a silver-gilt casket, in which is the holy wood of the cross; it is opened, and, the contents being taken out, the wood of the cross and also its inscription are placed on the table. When they have been put there, the bishop, as he sits, takes hold of the extremities of the holy wood with his hands, and the deacons, standing round, guard it. It is thus guarded because the custom is that every one of the people, faithful and catechumens alike, leaning forward, bend over the table, kiss the holy wood, and pass on. And as it is said that one time a person fixed his teeth in it, and so stole a piece of the holy wood, it is now guarded by the deacons standing round, so that no one who comes may dare to do such a thing again. And so all the people pass on one by one, bowing their bodies down, first with their forehead, then with their eyes, touching the cross and the inscription, and so kissing the cross they pass by, but no one puts forth his hand to touch it.

Ibid., p. 76.

The dedication-festival of these holy churches [at Golgotha and the site of the Resurrection] is observed with the greatest honor, since the cross of the Lord was found on that day [Sept. 13].

(si)onis ub(i) natus est C(h)ristus, apostoli Petri et Pauli, nomina m(a)rt(y)rum Datiani Donatiani C(y)priani Nemes(i)ani (C)itini et Victo(ri)as. An(n}o prov(mciae) (tr)ecentivi(g)es(imo) — Posuit Ben- fnatus et Pequarla.

ELENE XIX

(386 A. D.)

Letter of Paula and Eustochium (Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society), p. 14.

When will the day come when we shall be able ... to weep with our sister and with our mother in the sepulchre of the Lord? After wards, to kiss the wood of the cross?

(BEFORE 387 A. D.) Chrysostom, That Christ is God (Migne, Pair. Gr. 48. 826).

How is this very wood, on which the holy body was stretched and impaled, struggled for by all? For many, both men and women, taking a small portion of it, and setting it in gold, suspend it from their necks as an ornament.

Helena is first introduced by Eusebius, in connection with the churches of the Nativity and the Ascension :

(ABOUT 335 A. D.)

Eusebius, Life of Constantine, Book 3, chaps. 41-43 (Migne, Patr. Gr. 20. noi, 1104).

In the same country he discovered two other places, venerable as being the localities of two sacred caves, and these also he adorned with lavish magnificence. . . . And while he thus nobly testified his reverence for those places, 'he at the same time eternized the memory of his mother, who had been the instrument of conferring so valuable a benefit on mankind. For this empress, having resolved to discharge the duties of pious devotion to the supreme God, . . . had hastened to survey this venerable land. ... As soon, then, as she had ren dered due reverence to the ground which the Saviour's feet had trodden, . . . she immediately bequeathed the fruit of her piety to future generations, for without delay she dedicated two churches1 to the God whom she adored. . . . Thus did Helena Augusta, the pious mother of a pious emperor, erect these two noble and beautiful monu ments of devotion, . . . and thus did she receive from her son the countenance and aid of his imperial power.

1 The church of the Nativity is thus referred to in the Pilgrimage of St. Sylvia, about 385 A. D. (Palestine Pilgrims' Text Society), p. 50: 'And what shall I say of the decoration of that structure which Con stantine, with the assistance of his mother, adorned, as far as the resources of his kingdom would go, with gold, mosaic, and precious marbles ?'

XX INTRODUCTION

(395 A. D.)

Ambrose, Oration on the Death of Theodosius, chaps. 43, 45-48 (Migne, Pair. Lat. 16. 1400-2).

Helena, wishing to revisit the holy places, went thither. Now the Spirit put it into her head to demand the wood of the cross. So, approaching Golgotha, . . . she opens the ground, and removes the dust; there she finds three indistinguishable crosses, which ruin had covered, and the enemy had concealed, though unable to obliterate the triumph of Christ. She remains undecided, . . . but the Holy Spirit suggests a clue in the fact that two thieves were crucified with the Lord. She therefore casts about to find the middle cross. Yet it might have happened that the crosses had become shifted in the ruins. Returning to the text of the Gospel, she finds that the inscrip tion on the middle cross ran : 'Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.' From this the truth was determined : the cross of salvation was made known by its title. . . . She therefore found the inscription, and adored the King, not the wood — for this is the error of the heathen, and the vanity of the wicked; him she adored who hung upon the wood. . . . Then she sought the nails with which the Lord was crucified, and found them. Of one she commanded a bridle to be made, of another a crown to be fashioned. . . . She sent to her son Constantine the crown adorned with gems, . . . and also the bridle. Constantine made use of both, and transmitted the faith to the kings who followed.

(ABOUT 400 A. D.)

Rufinus, Eccl. Hist. 10. 7, 8 (Migne, Pair. Lat. 21. 475 if.).

[This in the main is like the account by Ambrose, up to the identi fication of the Saviour's cross. The inscription was found, but could not be assigned to any one of the crosses in particular.] Now it happened that there lay grievously il1 ,n that city a woman of rank. At that time Macarius was bishop of that church. When he saw that the queen and those with her lingered, he said: 'Bring hither all the crosses which have been found, and God will show us which one bore the Lord.' Then, proceeding with the queen and the people to the house of her who was lying ill, he kneeled down and prayed thus : 'O Lord, thou who hast vouchsafed to bestow salvation on mankind by the passion of thy only begotten Son on the cross, and in these latter times hast inspired in the heart of thy handmaid to seek the blessed wood on which our salvation hung, show plainly which of these three was for the glory of the Lord, and which for slavish punishment, by causing this woman, who lies half dead, to return to life from the gates of death, so soon as she shall touch the saving

ELENE XXI

wood.' When he had said this, he brought one of the three, but it had no effect. He brought the second, but nothing occurred. But when he had brought the third, the woman suddenly opened her eyes and sat up ; having recovered her strength, she began to go about the house much more blithely than before she had been taken ill, and to magnify the power of the Lord. . . . Part of the saving wood Helena sent to her son, and part she deposited in a silver case and left on the spot, where it is still preserved as a memorial.

(ABOUT 403 A. D.)

Paulinus of Nola, Epistle to Severus 31 (n). 73 ff. (Migne, Patr. Lat. 61. 326 ff.).

[Paulinus relates that Hadrian, thinking to injure the Christian religion, had erected a temple of Jupiter on the site of the passion. At the request of Helena, Constantine gives her authority to destroy all temples and idols which had profaned the holy places, and to erect churches in their stead. Arrived at Jerusalem, she knows not how to find the cross. Eventually she seeks out and consults, not only Christian men full of learning and sanctity, but also the cleverest of the Jews. She commands to dig at the spot designated. Citizens and soldiers join in the work. The crosses are found. God inspires her to make trial with the corpse of one newly dead. This is done, but the two crosses produce no effect. The Lord's cross raises the dead. A church is erected, which preserves the cross in a secret shrine.]

(ABOUT 450 A. D.) Sozomen, Eccl. Hist. 2. i.

[Sozomen reproduces, in general, earlier accounts, but, after men tioning the temple of Venus, adds a significant statement :] At length, however, the secret was discovered, and the fraud detected. Some say that the facts were first disclosed by a Hebrew who dwelt in the East, and who derived his information from some documents which had come to him by paternal inheritance.

(ABOUT 496 A. D.1)

(Pseudo) Gelasius, Conciliar Decree on Canonical and Apoc ryphal Books (Mansi, Condi. 8. i632).

1 According to Duchesne, early 6th century.

1 Cf. Hefele, Conciliengesch. 22. 618 ff. ; Liber Pontificalis, ed. Duchesne, i. cvn; EpistolcB Romanorum Pontificum, ed. Thiel, I. 460.

INTRODUCTION

Likewise the writing concerning the invention of our Lord's cross, and the other writing concerning the invention of the head of the blessed John the Baptist, are new stories (novella quidem relationes sunt). Some Catholics read them; but when they come into the hands of Catholics, let it be with the prefatory text from St. Paul [i Thess. 5. 21] : Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.

According to another form of the legend, the cross was found in the reign of Tiberius (14-37 A. D.), while St. James the Greater was Bishop of Jerusalem, by Protonike, wife of the Emperor Claudius (41-54 A. D.). This form has by some scholars been regarded as earlier than the story of Helena, but is now con sidered by the most competent authorities to be merely an adap tation of the latter.1

CONSTANTINE AND THE VISION OF THE CROSS

Eusebius, Life of Constantine I. 28-31 (Migne, Pair. Gr. 20. 944-5, 948).

Accordingly, he called on him with earnest prayer and supplica tions that he would reveal to him who he was, and stretch forth his right hand to help him in his present difficulties. And while he was thus praying with fervent entreaty, a most marvelous sign appeared to him from heaven, the account of which it might have been difficult to receive with credit, had it been related by any other person. But since the victorious emperor himself long afterwards declared it to the writer of this history, when he was honored with his acquaintance and society, and confirmed his. statement by an oath, who could hesitate to accredit the relation, especially since the testi mony of after-times has established its truth? He said that about midday, when the sun was beginning to decline, he saw with his own eyes the trophy of a cross of light in the heavens, above the sun, and bearing the inscription, 'Conquer by this.' At this sight, he himself was struck with amazement, and his whole army also, which hap pened to be following him on some expedition, and witnessed the miracle.

He said, moreover, that he doubted within himself what the import of this apparition could be. And while he continued to ponder and reason on its meaning, night imperceptibly drew on ; and in his sleep

1 See Nestle, De Sancta Crucc, pp. i ff., 65 ff. ; Lipsius, pp. 88-92; Tix- eront, pp. 184-191; Ryssel, pp. 1-3. The nth edition of the Encyclo pedia Britannica (7. 506) is wrong, then, in calling the legend of Protonike the older.

ELENE XX111

the Christ of God appeared to him with the same sign which he had seen in the heavens, and commanded him to procure a standard made in the likeness of that sign, and to use it as a safeguard in all engagements with his enemies. At dawn of day he arose, and communicated the secret to his friends ; and then, calling together the workers in gold and precious stones, he sat in the midst of them, and described to them the figure of the sign he had seen, bidding them represent it in gold and precious stones. And this representa tion I myself have had an opportunity of seeing.

Now it was made in the following manner. A long spear, overlaid with gold, formed the figure of the cross by means of a piece trans versely laid over it. On the top of the whole was fixed a crown, formed by the intertexture of gold and precious stones ; and on this, two letters indicating the name of Christ symbolized the Saviour's title by means of its first characters — the letter P being intersected by X exactly in its centre ; and these letters the emperor was in the habit of wearing on his helmet at a later period. From the trans verse piece which crossed the spear was suspended a kind of streamer of purple cloth, covered with a profuse embroidery of most brilliant precious stones ; and which, being also richly interlaced with gold, presented an indescribable degree of beauty to the beholder. This banner was of a square form ; and the upright staff, which, in its full extent, was of great length, bore a golden half-length portrait of the pious emperor and his children on its upper part, beneath the trophy of the cross, and immediately above the embroidered streamer. The emperor constantly made use of this salutary sign as a safeguard against every adverse and hostile power, and commanded that others similar to it should be carried at the head of all his armies.

Lactantius, Of the Manner in which the Persecutors died, chap. 44 (Migne, Pair. Lot. 7. 260-2).

And now a civil war broke out between Constantine and Maxen- tius. . . . They fought, and the troops of Maxentius prevailed. At length Constantine, with steady courage and a mind prepared for every event, led his whole forces to the neighborhood of Rome, and encamped them opposite to the Milvian bridge. . . . Constantine was directed in a dream to cause the heavenly sign to be delineated on the shields of his soldiers, and so to proceed to battle. He did as he had been commanded, and he marked on their shields the letter X, with a perpendicular line drawn through it and turned round at

the top, thus, yj^, being the cipher of Christ. Having this sign,

his troops stood to arms. The enemy advanced, but without their emperor, and they crossed the bridge. The armies met, and fought

xxiv INTRODUCTION

with the utmost exertions of valor, and firmly maintained their ground. . . . [At length Maxentius went to the field.] The bridge in his rear was broken down. At sight of that the battle grew hotter. The hand of the Lord prevailed, and the forces of Maxentius were routed. He fled towards the broken bridge; but the multitude pressing on him, he was driven headlong into the Tiber. The destructive war being ended, Constantine was acknowledged as emperor, with great rejoicings, by the senate and people of Rome.

PHOENIX MANUSCRIPT

The Phoenix is contained on leaves 55b-65b of the Codex Exoniensis, or Exeter Book, which has been in possession of Exeter Cathedral since about the middle of the eleventh century, having been presented to it, among other valuable gifts, by Leofric, Bishop of Devon and Cornwall from about 1046, who was enthroned at Exeter in 1050, and died in 1072.

The manuscript is 14 centimetres in height by 18^2 in breadth — approximately $l/2 by 7^ inches. It is written on vellum, apparently by a single hand of the early eleventh cen tury. Thorpe calls the writing 'fair and rather fine,' and Conybeare speaks of 'the clearness and beauty of its characters.' At present the volume proper consists of 123 leaves, or 246 pages, from 8a to i3Ob. Only one leaf is wanting in the interior of the volume, that between fol. 37 and fol. 38. On the other hand, several leaves are missing at the beginning and end. Only the commonest abbreviations are found. The whole manuscript must have been corrected by another hand after writing, the corrections being in a paler ink.

Among the other poems of the Exeter Book are the Christ, Guthlac, Azarias, Juliana, Wanderer, Seafarer, Harrowing of Hell, and Ruin. With the exception of a few fragments at the end of the manuscript, then thought undecipherable, the poems were all published by Thorpe in 1842, under the title Codex Exoniensis. Opposite p. 293 of that volume is a facsimile of part of page 77a of the manuscript, the beginning of the Gifts of Men. The first volume of a republication of the Exeter Book, containing the Christ, Guthlac, Azarias, Phoenix, Juliana, Wan derer, Gifts of Men, and A Father's Instruction, was issued by Gollancz (E. E. T. S. 104) in 1895. A careful collation by Schipper was published in 1874 (Germania 19. 327-338), and another was made by Assmann for the Grein-Wiilker Bibliothek der Angelsachsischen Poesie.

XXVI INTRODUCTION

For further particulars concerning the manuscript and its donor, see my edition of The Christ of Cynewulf, pp. xiii-xvi.

AUTHOR AND DATE

Beginning with Kemble, in 1840, many scholars, including such as Klipstein (1849), Dietrich (1859), Sweet (1871), Ten Brink (1877), Gaebler (1880), Grein (1880), Sarrazin (1886), Brooke (1892), have believed that Cynewulf was, or may have been, the author of the Phoenix. Holtbuer (1884) was the first to reject this view, and such scholars as Sievers (1885), Ebert (1887), Biilbring (1891), Wiilker (1896), Trautmann (1907), Brandl (1908), and Strunk (1904) have come to a similar negative conclusion.

As the Phoenix contains no runic passage embodying the name of the author, the ascription of it to Cynewulf rests upon identities or similarities of diction, subject, or general treatment with the undoubted works of Cynewulf, or with such as are ascribed to him by practically universal consent.

Dietrich1 adduces, besides certain correspondences with the Elene (and with Guthlac and Andreas, which he ascribes to Cynewulf), such as these between the Phoenix and the Christ: Ph. 420: Chr. 142, 250-253, 367, 587; Ph. 50-70, 589, 611-617: Chr. 1634-1664; Ph. 56, 613: Chr. 1660-1661; Ph. 329, 493: Chr. 1228; PH. 516: Chr. 1079; Ph. 525: Chr. 811; Ph. 584: Chr. 820 ; Ph. 604 : Chr. 505 ; Ph. 628 : Chr. 726.

Dr. Arthur W. Colton, in an unpublished investigation, dis covered (about 1892) that the verbal and phrasal correspond ence between the Christ and the Phoenix was even greater than between the Christ and either the Elene or the Juliana, undoubted poems of Cynewulf. Words and phrases were listed separately, and these were divided into four main categories, according as the expression occurred in one, two, three, or four poems besides the Christ, the plan being that formulated in my first edition of the Judith. The ratio of correspondence between the Christ and the Elene was .085, this ratio being the result of dividing the

1 Commentatio, pp. 9, 10.

PHCENIX XXV11

total number of correspondences by the number of lines in the poem. In the case of the Juliana it was .084; in that of the Phoenix, .09. This result would accordingly create a presump tion that the Phoenix was the work of Cynewulf.

The chief arguments against such a presumption lie (as Strunk has said1) in 'the absence of the runic signature, and the metrical necessity of admitting quantities and inflectional forms (as gladum, gladum, Ph. 92, 303; fotas, Ph. 311) not found in the acknowledged poems. Further, it must be admitted that the resemblances of word, phrase, and idea extend in varying degree through practically the whole body of Old English religious poetry.'

Brandl2 (1908) would place the author of the Phoenix among the contemporaries or immediate successors of Cynewulf3 : in style and syntax they resemble each other ; both acknowledge indebtedness to books (Ph. 424; cf. my edition of The Christ of Cynewulf, p. Ixxxiii) ; and both make use of rhyme; on the other hand, the author of the Phoenix employs sharp antitheses, and ends his poem with macaronic verses.

I can not better express my own opinion than by quoting a paragraph already in print* : 'The theme of the Phoenix would have been congenial to Cynewulf, and his reading may well have included Lactantius.5 The verbal parallels and similarities of thought are striking, and the percentage of correspondences in Dr. Colton's table agrees remarkably with that of the Juliana and the Elene. In respect to the prominence of color, flowers, fragrance, and music, of brooks, trees, groves, and plains, the Phoenix excels the undoubted poems ; but against this must be set Cynewulf's impressibility — the fact that his vocabulary and imagery change to some extent with his mood and with the

1 Juliana, p. xxii.

'* Gcsch. der Alteng. Lit., p. 106.

3 Schlotterose, in his edition of the Phoenix (p. 92), holds a somewhat similar opinion: the Phoenix is later than Cynewulf, but was strongly influenced by him. Barnouw (1902) is in doubt, but is sure that, if Cyne wulf wrote it, the Phoenix was his latest work.

* The Christ of Cynewulf, pp. Ixiv-lxv.

8 Lactantius was among the authors included in the York Library, according to Alcuin.

XXvill INTRODUCTION

original upon which he is working. From no three of his undoubted poems could one, on stylistic grounds, and in the absence of the runic testimony, have ascertained his fourth. When he is paraphrasing long, didactic speeches he is another man than when he is telling a stirring tale, or reproducing the spirit of a poem full of sublime sentiment and magnificent appeals to the imagination. There is therefore no a priori ground for assuming that the Phcenix cannot be by Cynewulf. Much of the sentiment is demonstrably his ; the correspondences in phraseology indicate the hand of a master, so inwoven are they into the tissue of the style; and a doxology like that of lines 615-629 would of itself almost persuade the critic to believe in Cynewulf's author ship, so similar is it in tone and setting to those of the Elene* and the. Christ.2 It cannot be said that the question is decided ; but I believe that scholars will end by assigning the Phcenix, like the Andreas, to Cynewulf.'3

On the supposition that the Phcenix is by Cynewulf, reference may be made to the Introduction to the Elene (pp. xiii-xiv), where his date and personality are discussed. If it is not by Cynewulf, we can hardly say more than that the writer must have been a monk or ecclesiastic, apparently under the influence of the Cynewulfian poetry, and likely to have lived either within the period of Cynewulf's poetic activity (about 750-800 ),4 or soon after.

LACTANTIUS

It has long been recognized that the Phcenix was largely derived from the De Ave Phcenice5 attributed to Lactantius. We shall therefore first give a brief account of Lactantius, and then review the evidence in favor of his authorship of the De Ave Phcenice.

1 744-754-

2 385-415-

"For the history of opinion on this subject, see Jansen, Die Cynewulf - Forschung von ihren Anfdngen bis zur Gegenwart, Bonn, 1908, pp. 105-8; Schlotterose, op. cit., pp. 88-92.

4 This is the period assigned by Carl Richter (Chronologische Studien zur Ags. Literatur, 1910) to both Cynewulf and the Phcenix.

"First by Conybeare, Arch. 17 (1814). 193.

PHCENIX XXIX

The name of Lactantius was Lucius Cselius (or perhaps Caeci- lius) Firmianus Lactantius.1 Born in Africa, not far from the year 260, he became a pupil of Arnobius, who taught rhetoric with brilliant success at Sicca Veneris2 in Proconsular Africa, near the borders of Numidia. At this time both Lactantius and his master were heathen. Here he must have applied himself with much diligence to the study of Latin literature. He modeled his style so closely on Cicero that he far su/passed Arnobius as a writer, and already Jerome characterized him as 'a river of Ciceronian eloquence.'3 In consequence of this devotion, his diction shows comparatively few traces of Africanisms, such as were not infrequent in the writings of others who lived in that province of the Roman Empire. His philosophical training must have been largely in the doctrines of the Stoics, and to the end he seems more deeply imbued with their philosophy than with the teachings of Scripture.

About four or five years after Diocletian's accession to the throne, or in the neighborhood of A. D. 288, he was called by that

1 This sketch reposes chiefly upon Brandt, Ueber das Leben des Lactan tius (Sitzungsber. der Wiener Akad., Vol. 120), who has criticized in several points the statements of Jerome, our chief ancient authority for the biography of Lactantius, and is in turn criticized by Seeck, Gesch. des Untergangs der Antiken Welt i. 456-460. The longest statement of Jerome's is the following {On 'Illustrious Men, chap. 80) : 'Firmianus, also known as Lactantius, a pupil of Arnobius, received a call in the reign of the emperor Diocletian, along with the grammarian Flavius, whose book in verse, On Things Medical, is still extant. He taught rhetoric at Nicomedia, but on account of the lack of pupils — for the city was a Greek one — betook himself to authorship. We have from him the Ban quet, which he wrote as a young man in Africa ; an Itinerary (Hodtzpori- con) from Africa to Nicomedia, written in hexameters ; another book entitled The Philologist (Grammaticus) ; the fine treatise, On the Anger of God; seven books of Divine Institutions, directed against the heathen ; an Epitome of the last-named work; one book d/ce^aXoi' ; two books To Asclepiades; one book On Persecution; four books of letters To Probus; two books of letters To Se-verus; two books of letters To Demetrianus, an attendant on his lectures ; one book to the same On the Work of God in the Formation of Man. In extreme old age he was the tutor in Gaul of Crispus Caesar, the son of Constantine, who was afterward put to death by his father.'

" Now Kef, east of Constantine.

*Epist. 58. 10.

XXX INTRODUCTION

emperor to the chair of rhetoric, or oratory, in his new capital of Nicomedia, which he was then adorning with public buildings, little imagining that it was so soon to be superseded by Constan tinople as the seat of the Eastern Empire. This call indicates what celebrity Lactantius had already achieved.

Arrived in Nicomedia, he must have devoted himself to his professional work for fifteen or eighteen years, without endeavor ing to engage in the. practice of forensic oratory. In his Chris tian zeal, he afterwards came to disprize the teaching of oratory, almost in the spirit of Plato.1

It was probably while in Nicomedia that Lactantius became a Christian, though he would undoubtedly have had opportunities of coming in contact with Christians while still in Africa. There were several communities of Jews in North Africa,2 and in these the first conversions to Christianity would be almost certain to occur.

His profession of Christianity may well have been the cause of his degradation from the professorial rank, since Diocletian's edict of Feb. 24, 303 expressly commanded that Christians should be deprived of their honors and dignities.3 That he had reason to shrink from too great publicity with regard to his Christian belief is shown by his tractate, On the Work of God, written about this time. In the first place, the doctrines which he here professes are virtually Stoic — those of monotheism and Provi dence. In the second place, he is extremely guarded in his allusions to the faith professed in common by himself and his correspondent, while at the same time he shows that he had given up other pursuits, and was devoting himself to authorship.4

Lactantius must have remained in Bithynia for two years after the persecuting decree of Diocletian.5 The fifth book of his Divine Institutes shows, by its allusions, that he was not at that time in Nicomedia. Now scholars are practically agreed that the Institutes were completed not later than 310, or 311 at latest.

*Inst. i. i. 8.

See Hastings, Diet. Bible, Extra Vol., p. 97 ; Monceaux, in Revue des Etudes Juives 44. 1-28.

3 Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 8. 2 ; Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 13. 4Cf. De Opif. i. i. 1-4, 9; 20. i. ' Inst. 5. ii. 15.

PHCENIX XXXI

Hence it becomes natural to think of 308, or thereabouts, as the year when he accepted Constantine's invitation to Gaul as the tutor of his son Crispus.1

If we may attach full weight to Jerome's words, extreme*, senectute, he may have died about 340, and possibly in Trier, but this date, like that of his birth, is merely inferential, and at best approximate.

We have no certain knowledge that Lactantius ever visited Egypt, but since he presents in his poem on the Phoenix an epitome of extant knowledge on the subject, in this respect, and in his reflections on the theme, much surpassing his predecessors, it would not be surprising if his deep interest in it had been either occasioned or strengthened by a sojourn in that country. Certain of the ancient authorities on the Phoenix were themselves Egyptians (such as Nonnus and Horapollo), or had resided in Egypt (Hecatseus, Herodotus' informant, and Claudian,2 for example). The worship of Isis flourished at Rome during this period, and for that reason, and because the Egyptians had tenaciously maintained their ancient religion in the face of innova tion, their institutions may well have attracted the curiosity of a young and highly educated traveler, already a celebrity. Then, too, Lactantius manifests some knowledge of Egyptian history in his undoubted works — especially the Divine Institutes* — though this, it is true, might have been derived from books.

If he did visit Egypt, it might have been in the train of Diocle tian, on the occasion of the latter's military expedition thither in 295 or 296. Since we must infer that Constantine the Great spent some time in Egypt,4 either with Diocletian,5 or later in

1 Authorities are not at one concerning this date, however. Cf. Brandt, op. cit., p. 33; Seeck, Gesch. des Untergangs der Antiken Welt, 26. ed., I. 458, 475.

2 Jeep (Claudii Claudiani Carmina i. xxx) assumes that his poems on the Nile and the Phoenix were written while he was living in Egypt.

* Cf. Inst. i. 20. 36; 2. 13. 10, ii ; 2. 5. 35, 36 (here he calls this worship endurable); 5. 20. 12; Epit. 50 (55). 3. For other references see the index to Brandt's Lactantius (Corp. Script. Eccl. Lot. 27. 280) under Aegyptii, Aegyptus.

4 Cf. his Oration to the Saints 16. 2.

5 Schiller, Gesch. der Rom. Kaiserzeit 2. 138-140.

XXX11 INTRODUCTION

3O2,1 it might have been in his company. This supposition is strengthened by the consideration that Constantine stood in pecu liar relations to two scholars — Eusebius, who wrote his biography, and Lactantius. Eusebius was in Egypt, according to his own testimony (Eccl. Hist. 8. 9), and Lactantius, whose doctrines furnished the basis for Constantine's oration mentioned above, may likewise have been there.2

A man of warm friendships,3 the best Latin prose writer of his time, and with the instinct of a born teacher, Lactantius was a mediator between ancient culture and the new faith, recommend ing the latter by his suavity and moderation, and the charms of his style, to educated and courtly circles who otherwise would have remained contentedly ignorant of it, or have cherished toward it an invincible aversion. He dwelt upon what was com mon to Christianity with the austerest moral creed of antiquity, and thus conciliated the most virtuous element in the society of his time. Born in Africa, passing his middle life in Asia, and dying (as is probable) in Europe, he served in this sense, too, as a medi ator between the Orient and the Occident, between the old and the new. Called to teach ancient literature by a heathen emperor and persecutor, he so far gained the favor of the first Christian emperor as to be entrusted by him with the education of the heir to his throne. Graced with a learning which enabled him to associate on terms of intimacy with the great, he seems to have known the pangs of poverty and disgrace, yet to have preserved his equanimity, and illustrated his enforced leisure. If we do not feel justified in calling him a time-server, we can but admire the dexterity with which, without sacrificing any conviction which

1 Seeck, op. cit. i. 479-480.

2 It is worthy of note that Eusebius (Vita Const. 4. 72) is the only ancient author who calls the Phoenix Egyptian. Constantine paid pecu liar attention to the symbol of the Phoenix, no doubt because he was espe cially addicted to the worship of the sun. The Phoenix is found on his coins and those of his sons, with such legends as Felix Reparatio Tem- porum, and Perpeiuitas (see Scholl, Vom Vogel Phonix, p. 12) ; and John of Salisbury (Policr. I. 13 ; see Scholl, p. 46) reports that Con stantinople was founded on the occasion of the appearance of a Phoenix, which is interesting as showing how later ages associated the two.

8 Brandt, in Sitzungsberichte, p. 41.

PHCENIX XXX111

seemed to him vital, he yet contrived to escape martyrdom while urging the claims of truth and virtue, and to win the favor of a Christian emperor while not falling under the worst displeasure of his heathen predecessor.

Such a character as we have seen Lactantius to be would be sure to attract the men of the Renaissance, and accordingly we find that he appealed strongly to its protagonists., men like Petrarch and Pico della Mirandola. Petrarch1 speaks of him as 'rolling forth in a milky torrent,' with an obvious allusion to the name Lactantius. Perhaps with Jerome's estimate2 in mind, Pico della Mirandola calls him the Christian Cicero, and even suggests that he may be Cicero's superior in eloquence.3 The estimation in which he has since been held is attested by the fact that, up to 1905, there are said to have been 112 editions of his works, a num ber greater than that of any other church-writer, the earliest being dated in 1465, at Subiaco, and being the first book printed in Italy.4

LACTANTIUS AND THE DE AVE PHCENICE.

The question of Lactantius' authorship of the De Ave Phcenice has been much debated.5 Those who answer it in the affirmative rely upon four arguments, urged by various scholars with various force. These are: (i) the testimony of the manuscripts; (2) the attribution of the poem to Lactantius by mediaeval writers; (3) the similarity of its sentiments and diction to those of Lactan tius' undoubted prose works; (4) the Christian character of the poem. Of these it is the last which has been most vigorously contested by the opponents.

1 De Otio Religiosorum, Bk. 2 (Opera, Basel, 1554, p. 363; 1581, p. 322).

* See above, p. xxix.

* DC Studio Divince atque Humana Philosophic?, Bk. i, chap. 7 (Opera, Basel, 1573, p. 21).

* Schanz, in Miiller, Handbuch, 2d ed., S3. 474.

8 Bibliographies may be found in Brandt, Corpus Script. Eccl. Lot. 27. xxi ; Manitius, Gesch. der Christl.-Lat. Poesie, p. 44 ; Teuffel, Gesch. der Lot. Litt., § 397, note 8; Schanz, op. cit., pp. 468-70; cf. also Lobe, Jahrbb. fur Prot. Theol. 18. 37.

XXXIV INTRODUCTION

As to the first argument, the best manuscript, the Parisinus of the eighth century, assigns no title to the poem ; the next, the Veronensis of the ninth century, after giving Gaudian's Phoenix, subjoins : Item Lactatii de eadem Ave; the third, the Vossianus (Leiden University), of the nineteenth century, has: Versus Lactantii de Ave Fcenice.1

Secondly, Gregory of Tours2 (before 582), treating of the won ders of the world, and coming to the third one, begins : Tertium [miraculum] est quod de Phoenice Lactantius refert. He then passes on to an abstract of the poem, partly in the original words, but with some difference of detail, as if Gregory might have been quoting from memory.3 Again, a grammarian of the seventh century4 ascribes the poem to Lactantius, and quotes it eight times. Finally, Alcuin,5 in a list of books in the York Library, names, among Christian poets,

Quid Fortunatus vel quid Lactantius edunt,8

which would seem to refer to the Phoenix.

Thirdly, various correspondences have been traced between the Phoenix and Lactantius' undoubted works.7 A few of these may be here noted:

i. The description of Paradise accords in general with that of Inst. 2. 12. 15; Epit. 27. 2.8

8

1L6be, p. 40; Baehrens, Poet. Lat. Min. 3 (1881). 247-8; Manitius,

P- 45-

1 De Cursu Stellarum, chap. 12.

8 The passage of Gregory is quoted, and the differences emphasized, by Baehrens, pp. 250-252; cf. below, p. xxxviii.

*De Dubiis Nominibus, in Keil, Gram. Lat. 5. 577. 14-593. 26.

sDe Sanctis Eccl. Ebor. 1552.

8 Manitius, p. 45 ; Brandt, Corpus 27. 135.

7 Thus by Dechent (Rhein. Mus. 35 (1880). 50 ff.), but especially by Lobe.

8 If, as Pichon asserts (see p. xxxv), Constantine's Oration to the ' Saints reposes on Lactantian doctrine, it is significant that the oration contains this passage (2. 5) : 'And immediately he transferred our newly created parents (ignorant at first, according to his will, of good and evil) to a happy region, abounding in flowers and fruits of every kind. At length, however, he appointed them a seat on earth, befitting creatures endued with reason.'

PHCENIX XXXV

2. Lines 64 and 109 indicate a dualistic doctrine, which is also reflected in Epit. 27. 4; Inst. 2. 12. 19; 2. 9. 5 ff. ; cf. 2. 9. 19, 21 with Ph. 22, 24.

3. Lines 57, 58, which make the Phoenix a priest in the sun's temple, find a parallel in De Ira 14. I.

4. Line 164, in praise of chastity, may be illustrated by Epit. 66; De Ira 23. 22, 27; De Opif. 19. 10, but especially 6. 23 ff. ; 7. 27.

5. Line 58, with its mention of 1000 years, may correspond to Inst. 7. 22. 7 ff. ; Epit. 27. 5 ; 72. 3 ff.

6. In various respects the use of words, the constructions, and the figures of speech employed by Lactantius are like those of the Ph&nix.1

7. The extent and minuteness of knowledge displayed by the author of the Phoenix is such as one would expect in the work of a student, one may say a philologist,2 like Lactantius.3

8. Jerome tells us that Lactantius wrote poetry; there is therefore no intrinsic improbability of his writing such a poem as the Phcenix.

To these we may add three others :

9. Lines 11-14, referring to the destruction of the earth by fire and water, refer to Phaethon and Deucalion; but so also does Inst. 2. 10. 23, and in the same order : 'All may perish, . . . either ... by the conflagration of the world, as is said to have happened in the case of Phaethon, or by a deluge, as is reported in the time of Deucalion.'

10. Pichon,4 in a literary appreciation of Lactantius as a prose writer, says: 'He possesses all the serious classical qualities — regularity, equilibrium, moderation, clearness, precision, noble gravity, simple and sober eloquence, ingenious and patient indus try; in one word, intellectual probity. On the other hand, we find in him the defects, or rather the gaps and limits of classicism : he is neither very deep, very impassioned, very clever, nor very

1 Lobe, pp. 53 ff.

" We must remember that Lactantius wrote a Grammaticus.

' Lobe, pp. 38-9, 43, 64-5.

* Lactance, p. 455.

XXXVI INTRODUCTION

original.' Would not much of this serve to characterize the Phoenix f

ii. Lactantius himself says (Inst. 5. I. 9-11) : 'Many waver, and especially those who have any acquaintance with literature. For in this respect philosophers, orators, and poets are pernicious, because they are easily able to ensnare unwary souls by the sweetness of their discourse, and of their poems flowing with delightful modulation. These are sweets which conceal poison. And on this account I wished to connect wisdom with religion, that that vain system may not at all injure the studious ; so that now the knowledge of literature may not only be of no injury to religion and righteousness, but may even be of the greatest profit.' Is there anything in the Phoenix .which militates against this con ception ?

Fourthly, as to the Scriptural character of the poem :

i. Lines 25-30 describe a spring — living, transparent, in the midst of the grove, which it waters every month, and which bears fruit. This corresponds to Rev. 22. 1-2; Ezek. 47. 7, 12; Gen. 2. 9, 10 (cf. Ps. i.. 3; 46. 4; Jer. 2. 13; 17. 8, 13; Ezek. 19. 10; John 4. 10, 14). * It is evident that 'tree of life,' Rev. 22. 2, is a collective, and stands for a number (cf. Ezek. 47. 7, 12).

A slight difficulty is occasioned by the word fons, which, how ever, reposes on Gen. 2. 6, a verse followed by other Christian writers of the first centuries. Thus the poem Ad Flavium Felicem (Vienna Corpus Script. Eccl. Lat. 33. 318) has (238-9) :

Fons illic placido perfundit agmine campos ; Quattuor inde rigant partitam flumina terram.2

The other difficulty is with respect to the monthly irrigation, but this is merely an inference, it would seem, from the fact 'of the monthly bearing of fruit (see esp. Ezek. 47. I2).3

1 Cf. below, pp. lii-liii.

~ So also Pseudo-Cyprian, De Laude Mart. 21 (ibid., p. 44) ; Alcimus Avitus, Poem. i. 252, 259, 260 (Migne, Pair. Lat. 59. 329) ; Isidore of Seville, Etymol. 14. 3. 3 (Pair. Lat. 82. 496) ; cf. Milton, P. L. 4. 229.

3 The use of the number 12 in line 8 may also be due to a Biblical reminiscence, e. g. Ezek. 43. 16.

PHOENIX XXXV11

2. Line 64 speaks of the reign of death. This must refer to such conceptions as those conveyed by Rom. 5. 12, 14, 17 (cf. Gen. 2. 17; 3. 19, 23).

3. Line 93, 'commends his spirit,' is apparently due to Lk.

23. 46 (cf. Inst. 4. 26. 32).

4. More remote and doubtful are such, parallels as 78: Lk.

24. 26; 116: Jn. 14. 2; 155: Mk. i. 45-1

Ebert (Gesch. der Christl.-Lat. Lit., 2d ed., I. 100) points to the praise of chastity (lines 164-5), the reference to the earth as the abode of death (line 64), and the emphasis on voluntary death (line 93-4), as evidences of Christian influence.

The apparent introduction of chiliastic doctrine (cf. above, p. xxxv ) is perhaps sufficiently accounted for by the belief in a phoenix-cycle of a thousand years entertained by Martial, Pliny (29. i. 29), Claudian, and certain Jewish Rabbis (see Bochart, Hierozoicon, ed. 1796, 3. 810). Most of the earlier Christian authorities prefer the term of 500 years, while that of 1000 years is preferred by Ambrose, Gregory Nazianzen, Ausonius, and Nonnus.2

Those who do not distinctly favor the attribution of the Phoenix to Lactantius fall into two classes: (i) those who have no decided opinion, who, in discussing Lactantius, fail to mention this poem, or who assign no reasons for their rejection of it (Heumann, Fritzsche, Bernhardy, Kotze, Nirschl, Alzog, Ritschl) ; and (2) those who adduce reasons, of whom Baehrens may be regarded as the type. These reasons, so far as they deserve our attention, reduce themselves to six3 :

1. No ancient author assigns the poem to Lactantius.

2. It exhibits no traces of Christian influence.

3. The argument from chiliastic doctrine is weak.

4. A Christian author would have 'improved' much further the opportunities which the poem afforded him.

5. Lines 33 ff., 58 seem to point to sun-worship.

1 Adduced by Lobe, pp. 50, 51.

1 See note on Ph. 151.

3 See especially Lobe, p. 37 ; Poet. Lat. Min., ed. Baehrens, 3. 248 ff .

XXXV111 INTRODUCTION

6. The passage from Gregory of Tours,1 attributing the poem to Lactantius, exhibits some divergences from the De Ave Phcenice, so that Gregory's rendering may repose upon a portion of Lactantius' Hodceporicon in which he might have incorporated the Phoenix of an earlier heathen author, that is, our very poem.

(i), (2), and (3) demand no further comment than is given above; (4) is sufficiently met by the consideration that Lactan tius may have become a Christian by slow degrees, and certainly, as we have seen (p. xxx), hesitated at times to avow the Christian faith in an explicit manner; under (5), as Lobe points out,2 the reference may as easily be to Christ; and (6) is too involved a hypothesis, when the difficulties may be met as well by supposing Gregory to have quoted from memory.3

The arguments in favor of Lactantius' authorship are. then, convincing, if not overwhelming; and in the light of all the con-- siderations, I am inclined to think he published it after his con-i version to Christianity, after he arrived in Nicomedia, and perhaps during the Diocletian persecution, or at least before Constantine had manifested his intention of favoring the Chris tians. The ambiguity which has so perplexed scholars is nd doubt incident to the syncretism which the poem manifests, and which at precisely this time was so much in vogue.

THE PHCENIX AS A SYMBOL.

The Phoenix, as represented upon Egyptian monuments, is a bird of the heron family, with the two characteristic long feathers streaming from the back of the head, and a tuft on the breast.4

1 Cf . p. xxxiv, above.

- Pp. 49, 51.

8 Cf. Manitius, p. 45, note 3.

4 According to Lepsius, followed by Wiedemann, it is the Ardea cinerea or purpurca (Aclteste Texte des Todtenbuches, p. 51 ; Zs. fur Agypt. Spr 16. 104) ; according to Brugsch (Geog.Inschr. 1.258), the Ardea garzetta; according to Renouf (Book of the Dead, p. 45), the common heron 01 heronshaw; according to Rawlinson (Hist. Anc. Egypt, 1881, i. 82), the Ardea bubulcus. Singularly enough, the peasants of French Guiana cal the Ardea helias the 'bird of the sun' (Littre, Diet. s. v. Oiseau, 7) Gruppe (Griech. Myth. 22. 795) thinks that Ovid, in describing the heror

PHCENIX XXXIX

The Egyptian name of the Phoenix is bennu,1 from a root mean ing 'to turn/ so that the bennu signifies, as it were, the return ing traveler.2 This is an appropriate name for the heron, since he is a bird of passage, spending the summer in the north, and the winter in the south.3

The bennu, or heron, was evidently a symbol among the Egyptians — but of what ? Some have said, of the planet Mercury (thus Seyffarth), others of Venus (Brugsch, Lauth),4 but the generally accepted theory is that the Phoenix is a symbol of the rising sun. ' In a secondary sense, no doubt, it stands for other things, but the legend is constructed around this conception as its core. To become convinced of this, it will be necessary to examine the evidence of the texts.

CLASSICAL TEXTS

i. The goal of the Phoenix's solemn flight to Egypt is gener ally Heliopolis,5 or the city of the sun (Tacitus, Ovid, Pliny (who adds, 'near Panchaia'), Clement of Rome, Aelian, Epi-

i phanius, Pseudo-Epiphanius, Horapollo, the Greek Physiologus, Lactantius (if we emend ortus to urbem, as was first done by

i Gryphiander, 1618), Claudian, Achilles Tatius). Others add or substitute 'temple of the sun' (Herodotus, Ovid, Pseudo-Epi-

which flew away from the burning city of Ardea (Met. 14. 573 ff.), has ; in mind this identification. Other writers have thought of the hawk (Maspero), of the golden pheasant (Cuvier, Lenz, Benecke), of the lap wing (Keller), or of the flamingo (Fundgruben des Orients i. 202). Ebers (Egypt. Princess, chap. 20) suggests a resemblance to the bird of i paradise.

xThe identification first made by Seyffarth (ZDMG. 3 (1849). "63), and

'Confirmed from monumental evidence by Brugsch (Nouvelles Recherches,

3 etc., Berlin, 1856; Geog. Inschr. i. 258; ZDMG. 10. 649 ff.; cf. Wiede-

mann, Aegypt. Gesch., p. 45, note; Scholl, Vom Vogel Phonix, p. 42,

note 4).

2Cf. Horapollo i. 35; 2. 57.

sWiedemann, 'Die Phonix-Sage im Alten Aegypten' (Zs. fiir Agypt. : Sprache 16. 104.

4 For a discussion of some of the various theories see Lauth, 'Die Phoenixperiode,' in Abh. d. Phil.-Phil. Classe der Bayer. Akad. 52

, (1881). 348 ff.

5 See below, pp. xlv-li.

xl INTRODUCTION

phanius) ; 'altar of the sun' (Tacitus, Pliny, Clement of Rome, Apostolical Constitutions, Pseudo-Epiphanius, the Greek Physio- logus, Nonnus).

2. Its pyre is lighted from the sun's rays (Dionysius, Pseudo- Eustathius, De Aucupio, Lactantius, Claudian, Pseudo- Jerome).

3. It dies at sunrise (Horapollo), or faces the sunrise (Horapollo, Pseudo- Jerome), or turns to the sun's ray (Isidore of Seville >Rabanus Maurus), or prays to the sun (Claudian), or stands toward the East and prays to the sun (Apost. Const.}.

4. It is sacred to the sun (Tacitus, Pliny).

5. It is a symbol of the sun (Horapollo, Johannes Gazaeus).

6. It rejoices more than other birds in the sun (Horapollo).

7. It is the sun's bird (Claudian).

8. It is the friend of the sun (Dracontius).

9. It is descended from the sun (Achilles Tatius).

10. It resembles the sun (Pseudo-Eustathius).

11. It is the priest of the sun (Lactantius).

12. Its head is crowned by a splendid circle, the very image of the sun (Achilles Tatius; cf. Claudian, Ph. 17-20).

EGYPTIAN TEXTSI

1. 'The temple of obelisks' of the Pankhy-inscription (below, p. xlviii), in which, as we shall see, Ra, the Sun-god, was adored, is in Egyptian ha-[t]-benben-[t]. Now on a hypocephalus in Paris a deceased person is represented as saying: 'I am in the form of the Phoenix, which issues from ha^t-benben in Heliop- olis.'

2. The obelisk of the Porta del Popolo at Rome, which repre sents near the top an adoration of Ra by one of the kings who erected it, bears in the left line of the northern face the words, 'Rameses II, son of Ra, who filled the temple of the Phoenix [ha-t-benmi] with his splendors.'2

3. In the Book of the Dead, chap. 17, we read3: 'I am that

1 What here follows reposes chiefly upon Wiedemann, op. cit.

" Marucchi, Gli Obelischi Egiziani di Roma, pp. 58, 146 ; cf. Ammianus Marcellinus 17. 4; Wiedemann, op. cit., p. 92.

8 Wiedemann's translation; somewhat different in Budge, Book of the Dead.

PHCENIX Xli

great Phoenix which is in Heliopolis; I unite everything which is there.' What is the meaning of this? The Phcenix signifies the Osiris which is in Heliopolis ; the union of everything which is there signifies his body, or, in other words, eternity and ever- lastingness, eternity signifying the day, and everlastingness the night.'

The Phcenix, then, signifies the union of day and night, or, one might say, of life and death ; now as, according to Egyptian religious conceptions, Osiris represents the deceased, or, we might here say, death, and as the union of day and night, the point where the two come together, is represented by the Phcenix, the Phoenix must be the rising sun, with the emphasis not on the night from which he emerges, but on the attributes of the sun as it issues from darkness or death.1

4. The Book of the Dead, chap. 13, has, in Budge's transla tion: 'I go in like the Hawk, and I come forth like the Bennu bird [the Phcenix], the morning star (?) of Ra'2 — where, for 'morning star,' Wiedemann prefers to read 'morning divinity/ i. e., morning sun.3

5. On the wooden coffin of Hetepher-t-s in the Vatican we have, on each side of a central picture, a hawk and a Phcenix respectively. On the right, seated on a standard planted on the mountain of the sun, which is painted in red, is the hawk, with the legend, 'Glory be to Ra in the underworld!' On a similar standard on the left is the Phcenix, with the legend, 'Glory be to tRa when he rises !'

So, too, on the door of a tomb figured by Lepsius,4 the middle is occupied by a picture of the bark of the sun ; on the right is a Phoenix, with the legend, 'He rises each day in the morning; he 'traverses the heaven as . . .' ; while on the left is a hawk, with the words, 'He enters into the underworld ; he shines.'

1 So I understand Wiedemann, pp. 93-4.

2 Similarly in chap. 122 (Budge, p. 185).

* Those who identify the Phcenix with Venus rely on the words 'morn ing star,' but Wiedemann shows (p. 100) that elsewhere Venus is called 'the star of the bark of Bennu-Osiris.' Now Bennu-Osiris, as we have seen under 3, means the rising sun, and hence Venus is here called, with all propriety, the star of the rising sun's bark.

4 Denkmaler aus Aegypten 3. 272*.

xlii INTRODUCTION

6. In the Book of the Dead, chap. 24, we have1: 'I am Chepera [the rising sun], who brings himself into being ... in order to traverse the heaven like the Phoenix among the great gods.'

7. In the Book of the Dead, chap. 64, we read (Wiedemann) : 'He [Osiris] comes from Sekhem to Heliopolis to make known to the Phoenix the things of the underworld. "Hail, . . . thou creator of forms, like the god Chepera [the rising sun], issuing as sun-disk above the awto-incense." '

8. In a Louvre papyrus, No. I. 2, the Phoenix appears with the red sun-disk on his head.

9. On the coffin of Suti-mes in the Louvre, and similarly on the coffin of Tent-Amon in Berlin, 'the great god Phoenix' says : 'I am the Phoenix who begets himself, who gives incense to the Osiris.'

10. In a Louvre papyrus, No I. I, we read: 'Glory to thee, O Ra, . . . thou who comest into being above Heliopolis, O Phoenix, great god!' Beside this are two pictures, one of Ra, and one of the Phoenix.

11. On a monument at Leiden he is called 'the Phoenix, the soul of Ra,' a scarab calls him 'the heart of the renewed Ra,J and a papyrus 'the Phoenix of Ra.'2

To the foregoing may be added a few passages from the Book of the Dead (tr. Budge). Chap. 29 B (p. 77): 'I am the Bennu [Phoenix], the soul of Ra.' Chap. 77 (p. 132) : 'Those who were dwelling in their companies have been brought unto me, and they bowed low in paying homage unto me, and in saluting me with cries of joy. I have risen, and I have gathered myseli together like the beautiful hawk of gold, which hath the head of a Bennu bird, and Ra entereth in day by day to hearken untc my words.' Chap. 125 (p. 189) : 'He hath caused me to corn* forth like a Bennu bird, and to utter words.'

The ancient Egyptians conceived of the sun as describing i circle round the earth, and hence they gave it the name of bennu the returning traveler. Now it happened that bennu was als(

1 So Wiedemann ; Budge differs.

2 Some other texts, cited by Wiedemann, are here omitted, as thei bearing is less readily understood.

PHCENIX xliii

the name of a bird of passage which regularly disappeared and returned, and so this was declared holy to the sun, and one of its manifestations. The return of the sun took place in the morning, and so the bennu became the symbol of the rising sun. From this idea was evolved the further one that the sun engen dered itself anew, and so likewise the bennu. He combined night and day into one whole, fashioned and guided time in a mystical and holy manner, and each morning rose to a spheral music, while the songs of gods and men resounded in joyful chorus to his praise. At his birth the heaven flamed in splendor, the new sun was born in fire, and from the dying flames of dawn he flew new-born up the sky. To him may be applied the words of the Boulak hymn to Ra1 : 'Glory is his in the temple when he arises from the house of flames; all the gods love his perfume when he approaches from Arabia; he is the lord of dew when he comes from Matau ; he draws nigh in beauty from Phoenicia, encompassed by the gods.'2

Since the Phoenix in this, his central mythological aspect, may thus be identified with the deified sun at his rising, the hymns to Ra (or Khepera) will yield other passages applicable to the Phoenix of our poem. Thus the birds which follow and salute him are paralleled by the gods who follow Ra : 'Ra riseth in his [horizon, and his company of -the gods follow after him.'3 'All the gods rejoice when they behold thee, the King of heaven.'4

Ra is self-begotten :

Thou self-begotten one, O thou who didst give thyself birth.5 O thou beautiful being, thou dost renew thyself in thy season in the form of the disk. . . . O Ra, . . . the divine man-child, the heir of eternity, self-begotten and self-born, king of earth.6

Thou art crowned with the majesty of thy beauties; thou mouldest thy limbs as thou dost advance, and thou bringest them forth without birth-pangs in the form of Ra, as thou dost rise up unto the upper air.7

1 Also translated in Records of the Past 2. 127-136.

2 This paragraph closely follows Wiedemann.

* Book of the Dead, tr. Budge, chap. 133, p. 214.

* Ibid., p. 37; similarly pp. 4, 7, 9. 'Ibid., p. 9.

* Ibid., p. 10. 'Ibid., p. 38.

Xliv INTRODUCTION

As rising with f ragance :

The land of Punt1 is stablished [to give] the perfumes which thou smallest with thy nostrils.2

Let me snuff the air which cometh forth from thy nostrils.3

With reference to the egg associated with the Phoenix :

O thou who art in thine egg (i. e., Ra), who shinest from thy disk and risest in thy horizon.4

With reference to one of the colors attributed to the Phoenix:

Thou illuminest the two lands with rays of turquoise light.5 Thou hast made heaven and earth bright with thy rays of pure emerald light.8

The Phoenix, as the symbol of the rising sun, is at the same time, among a people so keen for immortality as were the Egyptians, a natural symbol of the resurrection.7 In this sense it is taken by the Christians of the first centuries, who drew for illustration of the renewed life, now upon the cycles of vegeta tion (cf. Ph. 243, note), and now upon the phases of the heavenly bodies (sun, moon, stars; day and night; winter and spring).8 Among the patristic writers who employ the Phoenix in this sense may be named Clemens Romanus, the author or authors of the Apostolical Constitutions, Tertullian, Eusebius, Zeno, Cyril of Jerusalem, Ambrose, and Epiphanius.9 Other writers who employ the same figure are Commodian, Nonnus, Sidonius, Ennodius, Dracontius, and the Englishman, yElfric.

As both the Old and the New Testament associate God and Christ with light10; as Jehovah is explicitly called a sun in Ps.

1 S. W. Arabia. '

2 Ibid., p. 8.

8 Ibid., p. 34. 'Ibid., p. 54. 6 Ibid., p. 10.

6 Ibid., p. 8.

7 Cf. Froude, Short Studies in Great Subjects, pp. 24-5.

8 See the citations in Thalhofer, Bibliothek der Kirchenvater 405. 77. 8 Thalhofer, op. cit. 415. 286.

10 So Ps. 42. 3; Isa. 9. 2; Wisd. 5. 6; 7. 29, 30; Ecclus. 42. 2-5, 16; Matt. 4. 5-6; Lk. i. 78-9; Jn. i. 4-5, 9; 9. 5; 12. 46; i Tim. 6. 16;

PHCENIX xlv

84. 1 1 ; and as the early Fathers identify the sun of righteousness1 (Mai. 4. 2; cf. Lk. i. 78) with Christ,2 it is not surprising that the Phoenix should come to be employed as a figure of the Saviour.

HELIOPOLIS

The name of the Phoenix is indissolubly associated with that of Heliopolis, to which reference is made by Lactantius, Ph. 121, Solis ad urbem (rendered in our poem by sunbeorht gesetu, 278). About 586 B. c., in the reign of Apries, or Uahabra, Jeremiah, being then in Tahpanhes, the modern Defneh, wrote thus of Nebuchadrezzar, King of Babylon: 'He shall also break the pillars [obelisks?] of Bethshemesh, that is in the land of Egypt; and the houses of the gods of Egypt shall he burn with fire' ; and in 568 B. c. Nebuchadrezzar actually invaded Egypt. Beth shemesh, a translation into Hebrew of the Egyptian Per-Ra, 'house or city of the sun,' was the city known to the Greeks as Heliopolis, of which nothing now remains but the ruins shown at Matarieh, some five miles northwest of Cairo. In Jeremiah's time it must have already been about 3400 years old, if we may

I Jn. i. 5; especially Mai. 4. 2; Jn. 8. 12. Cf. Usener, Gotternamen, pp. 183-5, Diet. Christ. Antiqq. i. 357-8, and my note on Chr. 104-129. A whole series of modern poets continue the tradition. Thus Dante (Purg. 7. 26; Par. 9. 8; 10. 53; 18. 105; 25. 54; 30. 126; Conv. 3. 12. 51-6); and, to instance a poet five hundred years later, and of quite different character, Byron (Sardanapalus 2. i. 14-7) :

Oh ! thou true sun ! The burning oracle of all that live, As fountain of all life, and symbol of Him who bestows it.

1 The motto of Rutgers College is : Sol justitue, et Occidentem illustra.

2 As early as 242-3 A. D. (Cumont, Textes et Monuments Figures Relatifs aux Mysteres de Mithra i. 355). This led some of the Chris tians of the first centuries to identify the physical sun with Christ, an error which was combated by Augustine, among others. The 'Deo soli' of Exod. 22. 20 was even sometimes interpreted as 'to God, the sun' (Civ. Dei 19. 23) ; and there were pagans who appear honestly to have believed that the sun was the god of the Christians (Tertullian, Apol. 16, etc.). As late as the fifth century, Pope Leo the Great complained that the faith ful still persisted in adoring the sun at the instant of his rising. On the whole subject, see Cumont, op. cit., pp. 355-6.

xlvi INTRODUCTION

trust the assignment of it to the time of King Menes,1 or Mena, the founder of the First Dynasty. In the Second Dynasty (ca. 3100 B. c.), the worship of Mnevis, the sacred bull, was estab lished there, according to Manetho.2 Inscriptions of the Fourth Dynasty (ca. 2900-2750) mention it.3 The Fifth Dynasty (ca. 2750-2625), according to one tradition, starts from a high priest of Heliopolis, and claims divine descent from Ra, the sun-god.4 In the Twelfth Dynasty, Sesostris I (1980-1935 B. c.) is said to have built in Heliopolis a temple to the sun; and a leathern roll, dating from the time of Amenhotep IV6 (1375-1358 B. c.), professes to contain a record of this founding.6 The hymn sung or recited on this occasion included the sentence, 'the works will last' (or, as the German translation has it, 'Das Gemachte sei bleibend') ; but all that has lasted is one obelisk,7 the most beauti ful now in Egypt.

Somewhere about 1640 B. c.,8 in the Seventeenth Dynasty, may perhaps be placed the period of Joseph's residence in Egypt. Joseph's wife was of Heliopolis, for we are told in Gen. 41. 45" that 'Pharaoh gave him to wife Asenath the daughter of Poti- phera10 priest of On,11 that is, high priest (probably) of Heliop olis.12

iLepsius, Chron. i. 326; cf. Petrie, Hist. Egypt i. 20; Breasted, Hist. Egypt, p. 44. Ebers, Durch Gosen zum Sinai, p. 493, says it is as old as the oldest inscribed monuments.

2 Petrie i. 22.

8 Hastings, Diet. Bible 3. 622.

4 Breasted, op. cit., pp. 122-3.

BHe also erected a temple to Ra in Heliopolis (Petrie 2. 221).

6 Petrie i. 157; Zs. fur Agypt. Spr. 12 (1874). 85-96; Records of the Past 12. 51-5; Breasted, op. cit., pp. 196-7, and Fig. 87.

7 Ephraem the Syrian has an account of the obelisks in his Commentary on Jeremiah, chap. 33 (Oper. Syr. 2. 144-5; Pinkerton's Voyages 15. 827). Various Arabic writers of the Middle Ages mention them (cf. Pinkerton 15. 807, 827 ff.).

8 See Hastings, Diet. Bible 2. 771 ; cf. Petrie 3. 115. 9Cf. 41. 50; 46. 20.

10 'He whom Ra (the Sun-god) gave'; see Hastings, Diet. Bible 4. 23. 11 In hieroglyphics Anu, Annu, On, Un.

"The Septuagint version of Jer. 43 (Sept. 50). 13 identifies On with Heliopolis, and so in Exod. i. n, in an addition to the text of the passage,

PHOENIX xlvii

According to an account preserved by Eusebius,1 the Jews whom Joseph brought into Egypt were assigned to Heliopolis and Sais, and afterwards built a temple in Heliopolis (cf. 9. 27). 2

It was at Heliopolis that human sacrifices were abolished, if we may believe Manetho,3 by King Aahmose, or Amasis (1580-1557 B. c.).

Heliopolis4 was, in the Eighteenth Dynasty, the centre of one of the greatest religious reforms known to history, a reform associated with, the name of Amenhotep IV (see p. xlvi), later known as Akhenaten or Ikhnaton ('the splendor of the sun's disk'). The nature of this reform, which, as an exotic, was destined to expire with its promoter, may be described in the words of Petrie5 :

Other ages had worshiped the human-figured sun-god Ra, or a hawk as his emblem; and when the sun itself was represented, it was as a concrete solid ball. But a more refined and really philo sophical worship was substituted for this by Akhenaten, that of the radiant energy of the sun, of the sun as sustaining all life by his beams. No one — sun-worshiper or philosopher — seems to have realized until within this [iQth] century the truth which was the basis of Akhenaten's worship, that the rays of the sun are the means of the sun's action, the source of all life, power, and force in the universe. ... If this were a new religion, invented to satisfy our modern scientific conceptions, we could not find a flaw in the cor rectness of this view of the energy of the solar system. . . . Not a rag of superstition or of falsity can be found clinging to this new

Epiphanius (Ancor. 84) says of the name Heliopolis that it is 'a transla tion from the Egyptian and Hebrew On' (cf. Sayce, Rel. of Anc. Egypt and Bab., pp. 86-7). See also Ephraem the Syrian, Comm. on Jeremiah, chap. 33. The Aven of Ezek. 30. 17 is the same word (Hastings 3. 621).

1 Prap. Evang. 9. 23.

2 Eusebius also preserves a statement (9. 18 ; cf. Josephus, Ant. I. 7. 2) according to which 'Abraham dwelt with the Egyptian priests in Heliop olis, and taught them many things ; and it was he who introduced astronomy and the other sciences to them, saying that the Babylonians and himself had found these things out.' We of course know that Abra ham, according to the Biblical account, was in Egypt (Gen. 12. 10 ff.).

'Quoted from Porphyry, On Abstinence 2. 55, by Eusebius, Prcep. Evang. 4. 16; Praise of Constantine 13. See also Ebers, Durch Gosen zum Sinai, pp. 495-6.

4Wiedemann, Agypt. Gesch. I. 46-47, 397.

'Hist. Egypt 2. 213 ft.

xlviii INTRODUCTION

worship evolved out of the old Aten of Heliopolis, the sole lord or Adon of the universe.

Petrie then quotes the great hymn to the Aten, which he thinks may have been composed by the King. One stanza runs :

How many are the things which thou hast made !

Thou Greatest the land by thy will, thou alone,

With peoples, herds, and flocks,

Everything on the face of the earth that walketh on its feet,

Everything in the air that flieth with its wings.

He then adds :

In this hymn all trace of polytheism, and of anthropomorphism, or theriomorphism, has entirely disappeared. ... It would tax any one in our days to recount better than this the power and action of the rays of the sun. ... In ethics a great change also marks this age. The customary glorying in war has almost disappeared ; only once, and that in a private tomb, is there any indication of war during the reign. The motto 'Living in Truth' is constantly put forward as the keynote to the king's character, and to his changes in various lines. And domestic affection is held up as his ideal of life, the queen and children being shown with him on every occasion. In art the aim was the direct study of nature, with as little influence as possible from convention ; animals in rapid motion, and natural grouping of plants, were specially studied, and treated in a manner more natural than in any other Oriental art.1

Rameses III (1198-67 B. c.) gave to Heliopolis, among other things, 12,963 serfs, 45,544 cattle, and 103 Egyptian towns2; and in the great Harris papyrus he tells of the gardens, lakes, sculp tures, jewels, and scrolls which he there made for Ra.3 The temple he built is at Tell el Yehudeh, north of Heliopolis.4

One of the most interesting mentions of Heliopolis belongs to the period of the Twenty-third Dynasty, under what is called the Ethiopian Dominion. A stele recording the events of an expedition undertaken by Pankhy, or Piankhi I, describes the

1 Cf . Erman, Aegypten, pp. 73 ff. ; Brugsch, Hist. Egypt i. 441 ff. ; Sayce, Rel. of Anc. Egypt, pp. n, 35, 92 ff., 195; Steindorff, in Hil- precht's Explorations in Bible Lands, p. 674; Breasted, op. cit., pp. 361 ff.

2 Petrie, Hist. Egypt 3. 154; Records of the Past 6. 59 ff.

3 Records of the Past 6. 52-70.

* Erman, Life in Ancient Egypt, p. 285.

PHCENIX xlix

elaborate ceremonies and solemn devotion attending this mon arch's visit to Heliopolis. Here we have several things of inter est in relation to our poem — the lake or fountain in which the sun-god bathes his face, adoration to the rising sun,1 the offering of incense, and the temple of the sun entered by the king with solemn priestly ceremonial.2

Strabo (ca. 60 B. c.-ca. 25 A. D.) says3 :

There, too, is Heliopolis, situated upon a large mound. It con tains a temple of the sun. ... In front of the mound are lakes, into which the neighboring canal discharges itself. At present the city is entirely deserted. ... At Heliopolis we saw large buildings, in which the priests lived. For it is said that anciently this was the principal residence of the priests, who studied philosophy and astronomy; but there are no longer either such a body of persons or such pursuits. . . . The residences of Plato and of Eudoxus were shown to us. Eudoxus came here with Plato,4 and, according to some writers, lived thirteen years in the society of the priests. For the latter were distinguished for their knowledge of the heavenly bodies, but were mysterious and uncommunicative, yet after a time were prevailed upon by courtesy to acquaint them with some of the principles of their science, but the barbarians concealed the greater part of them.

In the period of Plato and Eudoxus, Egypt had been groaning for more than a century under Persian rule ; Nebuchadrezzar and Cambyses5 had laid waste the noble edifices of Heliopolis, and burned them with fire; Egypt, as Petrie says, 'was a car case'6 ; yet Heliopolis still remained the university of Egypt, the home of philosophy, and astronomy, and medicine.

1 Apion reported that Moses offered all his prayers toward the sun- rising, and in the open air, while at Heliopolis (Josephus, Contra Apion

2. 2).

* For a full account of this, see note on Ph. 107 ff. 8 17- 27-9.

* To these Plutarch (Is. and Osir. 10) adds Pythagoras, his teacher being Oinuphis; and Solon (Solon 26), his teacher being Psenophis. The teacher of Plato was Sechnuphis (Clement of Alexandria, Strom. i. 15. 69) ; that of Eudoxus, Chonuphis (D-iog. Laert. 8. 8. 6). For full references on the visits of famous Greeks to Egypt, see Parthey's edition of Plutarch's Isis and Osiris, pp. 162, 183 ff.

5 Strabo, as above.

6 Hist. Egypt 3. 387.

1 INTRODUCTION

It had brooded over the whole course of Egyptian history ; but its end was not yet. Influential from at least the period of the Fifth Dynasty (2750-2625 B. c.) in laying down religious law for Egypt,1 its spirit, when now its vigor was almost spent, may have imbued the philosophy and science of Greece, and so event ually have tinged the barbarism of Western Europe.

Nearly all the longer accounts of the Phoenix either mention the city by name or refer to it in an unmistakable manner ; and to this circumstance, more than any other, was Heliopolis indebted for its European reputation in ancient times.

It is singular that Heliopolis often emerges into prominence when a foreign influence, especially a Mesopotamian or Syrian, manifests itself. It would seem that the purest and most vital conceptions associated with it might have been of foreign birth, or have been most keenly appreciated by foreigners.

The obelisks of London and New York were originally from Heliopolis (Petrie 2. 127), and of the seven genuine obelisks of the older period now in Rome, five are from Heliopolis — those of the Porta del Popolo, Pantheon, Villa Mattei, Monte Citorio, and Dogali.2 The obelisk now standing at Matarieh (68 feet high) is the oldest Europe temple-obelisk still in position. This was erected in the reign of Sesostris (Senwosri I), of the Twelfth Dynasty (ca. 1980-1935 B. c.).3

There are two objects associated with Heliopolis which are of peculiar interest in relation to our poem. These are a tree and a fountain. On the Metternich stele we read : 'Thou art the great Phcenix, which comes into being on the tip of the trees in the

1 Maspero, Etudes de Mythologie 2. 372 ff. The first historical recen sion of the Book of the Dead (see Budge's trans., p. LXXIV) was made by the priests of Heliopolis, and, with reference to these texts, 'the gen eral testimony of their contents indicates an Asiatic home for their birth place' (ibid., p. XLVI). The oldest copies belong to the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties (ibid., p. LXXIV).

2 Marucchi, Gli Obelise hi Egiziani di Roma, p. 155.

8 Encyc. Brit., nth ed., 9. 79, 82; 19. 945. This authority says (19. 945) : 'The pyramidions were sheathed in bright metal, catching and reflecting the sun's rays as if they were thrones of the sunlight. They were dedi cated to solar deities, and were especially numerous at Heliopolis.'

PHCENIX H

great hall in Heliopolis.' Cleopatra's needle, now in London, speaks of the venerable tree in the interior of the temple of the Phoenix. This was properly the Persea tree, which afterwards becomes a palm, an acacia, or a sycamore. In the Louvre papyrus No. 3092, there is an adoration of a yellow tree with green leaves, above which the red disk of the sun is rising. In Wilkinson's Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians1 we find a picture of a tomb, near which is a tree surmounted by a Phcenix, with the legend, 'The soul of Osiris.'2

The Phcenix poised on one of the upper branches of a palm is represented at Rome in the mosaics of Saints Cosmas and Damian, St. Praxed, the Lateran, Santa Maria Maggiore, and St. Cecilia in Trastevere. In that of the apse of SS. Cosmas and Damian, which is the oldest, the bird is evidently a heron, with head, breast, and wings of red, feet and legs of gold, and the rest of the body light blue.

For the fountain of the sun at Heliopolis, see note on Ph. 107 ff. ; cf . Hastings, Diet. Bible 5. 189 ; Wiedemann, Religion of the Ancient Egyptians, pp. 20-1, 92; Ephraem Syrus, Opera Syr. (Rome, 1740) 2. 50, 51.

For the palm-tree in the desert which, during the Flight into Egypt, bent over at the command of the infant Jesus, and refreshed the Holy Family with its fruit, and which afterwards opened a spring of water from its roots, see the Apocryphal Gospel of Matthew, chap. 20. According to the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, this was a sycamore at Matarieh, while Sozomen3 attaches a similar story to a Persea tree at Hermopolis. Travelers are still shown a sycamore and a spring at Matarieh.4

1 Ed. Birch, 3. 349.

2 This is regarded by Erman, Aegypten, p. 368, as the tree described by Plutarch, I sis and Osiris 20. On the general subject, cf. Brugsch, Geog. Inschr. i. 258-9; Hastings, Diet. Bible 3. 622; 5. 190; Erman, Life, pp. 272, 348.

*Eccl. Hist. 5. 21.

'See Wilkinson, Handbook for Travellers in Egypt (London, 1847), p. 168; Sandys, Travailes, 6th ed. (London, 1658), p. 99; E. D. Clarke, Travels (London, 1814) 3. 99; John Evesham, in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations (Glasgow, 1904) 6. 38, and cf. Hakluyt 5. 338.

Hi INTRODUCTION

THE EARTHLY PARADISE

What may be called the central tradition concerning the Earthly Paradise, the tradition which is reflected in the Phoenix, is Oriental and very ancient. Whether originally Semitic or not, it is not without representative in Aryan texts as well. According to this central tradition, the elements of the Earthly Paradise are :

1. An extremely high mountain.

2. Noble trees, often forming a grove.

3. A fountain of living water, or one or more rivers.

4. Absence of the ugly, irksome, and noxious, and abundance of what is delightful and invigorating.

To these are sometimes added:

5. A tree distinguished above the rest.

6. A bird which sits upon the tree, or stands in a peculiar relation to it.

The Semitic tradition, with which we are more immediately concerned, is perhaps most familiar to us from the account in Genesis (2. 8-10) :

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden ; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

Here we are explicitly told of the trees, the river, and the pleasure afforded by the trees. The height of the garden is only to be inferred from the fact that the river, parting into four — the Pison, Gihon, Hiddekel, and Euphrates — through these four irrigates vast tracts, including no doubt the whole inhabited earth, as the writer conceived it.

Parts of the conception are developed in Ezek. 47. 7-9, 12:

Behold, at the bank of the river were very many trees on the one side and on the other. Then said he unto me, These waters issue out toward the east country, and go down into the desert, and go into the sea : which being brought forth into the sea, the waters shall be healed. And it shall come to pass, that everything that

PHOENIX Hii

liveth, which tnoveth, whithersoever the rivers shall come, shall live : and there shall be a very great multitude of fish, because these waters shall come thither : for they shall be healed ; and everything shall live whither the river cometh. . . . And by the river upon the bank thereof, on this side and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose leaf shall not fade, neither shall the fruit thereof be con sumed : it shall bring forth new fruit according to his months, because their waters they issued out of the sanctuary: and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine.

Here the water has an active principle of life and healing, as have the fruit and foliage of the trees. This thought is resumed in Rev. 22. 1-2:

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month : and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Akin to the river of the water of life is the fountain, though the Bible does not expressly place it in Paradise. Thus Ps. 36. 9 : Tor with thee is the fountain of life'; Jer. 2. 13 (cf. 17. 13): 'They have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters'; Jn. 4. 14: 'The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life'; Rev. 21. 6 (cf. 22. 17) : 'I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.'1 In all these instances, the terms are used figura tively ; but so also they are in the passages from Ezekiel and the Apocalypse referring to the river.

As to the absence of what is hurtful and unpleasing, and the positive delights, in that New Jerusalem which is the Apocalyp- tist's substitute for Paradise,2 reference may be made to Rev. 21. 1-4, 10, n,23ff.; 22. 3-5.

1 Cf. Professor E. W. Hopkins' learned article, 'The Fountain of Youth,' in JAOS. 26 (1905). 1-67, 411-5. There is a spring at the foot of the tree Yggdrasill of Scandinavian mythology, which is a tree of life (cf. Havamal). For such trees and waters in Egyptian mythology, see above, pp. 1-li.

* Yet there is mention of Paradise in Rev. 2. 7 : 'To him that over- cometh will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God.'

liv INTRODUCTION

Hindu mythology tells of the mountain Meru, somewhat over 500,000 miles high, upon whose summit the Ganges first flows from heaven, and then divides into four rivers, which water the world. The trees are always covered with fruits and flowers. Among them are the Kalamra(-ba) tree and the Jamvu(-bu) tree, some 6600 miles in height, whose fruit makes one ever youthful.1 This has been identified in a general way with the Pamirs in Central Asia, the so-called Roof of the World, which Parsis consider as the original seat of the Aryan race, and the Mohammedans of the region regard as having been the terrestrial paradise.

In the Avesta and the Bundahish, the mountain is Alburz, or the Hara Berezaiti, the rivers are twenty in number, there are the 'free opposed to harm' and the Gokard tree, and the bird is the griffon, the Kamros, or the Sin or Simurgh.2

Akin to these Aryan legends, if not derived from them, is the view3 advanced by Ephraem the Syrian in the 4th century. He says of Paradise4 :

It is situated on a very high spot, and looks down on all the highest mountains. For this reason the waters of the deluge, that were spread over all the world, did not touch even its root with the tops of their billows, and, as it were, kissing its feet, worshiped the approach to it.

He then goes on to speak of Paradise as being very far from our world, and as surrounding the sea and the earth.

Among those who held similar opinions5 were (Pseudo-)- Basil, Theophilus of Antioch, Gregory of Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Tertullian, and Cosmas Jndicopleustes. To take a single example, (Pseudo-) Basil thus describes Paradise6:

lCf. Mahabharata 6. 7; 3. 163; Vishnu Purana, tr. Wilson, 2. 2.

2 Sacred Books of the East 5. 22-23, 29, 31, 35, 42-3, 47, 65-7, 89-91, 99-100, 176-7; 23. 131-2, 173.

8Cf. Uhlemann, 'Ephram des Syrers Ansichten von Paradies' (Zs. fiir Hist. Theol. I (1832). 155 ff.).

* Horn, i on Paradise (Opera, 1743, 3. 563).

"The works of Ephraem were early translated into both Greek and Latin (they were known to both Chrysostom and Jerome). In the East ern Church, and perhaps in the Western, lessons from them were read after those from the Bible (cf. Migne, Pair. Lot. 23. 708).

'Horn, de Paradiso (Migne, Pair. Gr. 30. 64).

PHOENIX lv

A place superior by nature to all created spots, over which, by reason of its height, there was no shadow, of wonderful beauty. . . . Here, then God planted Paradise, where there was neither violence of winds, nor inclemency of the seasons, nor hail, etc.

One of the most important utterances in its bearing upon the Phoenix is that by Bede, Hexameron (Migne, Pair. Lat. 91. 43) :

Xonnulli volunt quod in oriental! parte orbis terrarum sit locus paradisi, quamvis longissimo inter jacente spatio vel oceani vel ter rarum a cunctis regionibus quas nunc humanum genus incolit sec- return. Unde nee aquae diluvii, quas totam nostri orbis superficiem altissime cooperuerunt, ad eum pervenire potuerunt. Verum seu ibi seu alibi Deus noverit; nos tantum locum hunc fuisse et esse terrenum dubitare non licet : . . . locum scilicet amcenissimum, fructuosis nemoribus opacatum, eundemque magnum et magna fonte fecundum.1

Bede says that it is far removed from the knowledge of men.2 This phrase is literally derived from Augustine.3

Dante's conception of the Earthly Paradise has much in com mon with those of the Fathers mentioned, situated, as it was, far from the world of men, upon a lofty mountain, and embracing a forest, a fountain from which issued limpid waters, and one tree which 'would be marveled at for its height by Indians in their woods.'4

ld. 91. 206.

2 Thus Pair. Lat. 91. 43-44- 207.

* In Gen. 8. 7. For the patristic and mediaeval views of Paradise, see the Bible dictionaries under Paradise and Eden ; McClintock and Strong, Encyclopaedia of Bibl., Theol., and Eccl. Lit. 7. 652-9; Schenkel, Bibel- Lexikon 2. 49-50; Schaff-Herzog, Encyc. of Religious Knowledge, ed. Jackson, 8. 348-9; Zockler, Gesch. der Beziehungen zwischen Theologie und Nattirzvissenschaft I. 127-9, 173, 287, 349; Renan, Hist. Gen. des Langucs Sem., 26. ed., pp. 466-479. A brief popular account is given by Baring-Gould, Curious Myths of the Middle Ages, pp. 250-265. Cf. also Patch, 'Some Elements in Mediaeval Descriptions of the Otherworld' (Pub. Mod. Lang. Assoc. 33 (1918). 601-643).

'Purg. 28; 32. 38 ff. For analogies with Dante's Terrestrial Paradise, see the notes of Scartazzini, Plumptre, and Longfellow, on Purg. 28. I ff. ; Kraus, Dante, p. 417; Coli, // Paradiso Terrestre Dantesco. With his. doctrine of the dissemination of seeds or germs might be compared several of the passages cited above from the Avesta and the Bundahish.

Ivi INTRODUCTION

A synopsis of the views of Ephraem, Bede, and others who hold kindred opinions, may be found in Raleigh's History of the World (1.3).

From the Middle Ages on, and particularly during the Renais sance, poets like Chaucer (ParL Fowls 172-210), Boccaccio (Teseide, Bk. 7), Tasso (Gerusalemme Liberata, Bk. 15), and Milton (Par. Lost, Bk. 4), have been in part indebted for their Paradises and enchanted gardens to classical writers, in such passages as the following from the Odyssey (tr. Cotterill) :

Here comes never the snow, nor a violent tempest and rain-storm ; Here incessantly breatheth the breeze of the soft-voiced Zephyr.1

Which winds ne'er shake nor ever a rain-storm Wetteth, and never a snowflake falleth, but cloudless the aether Spreadeth above, and over it floateth a radiant whiteness."

The descriptions of the Golden Age are likewise drawn upon for this purpose.3

1 4- 566-7.

2 6. 43-5.

3 For references to such classical writers, see Rohde, Der Griechische Roman, pp. 172 ff., 512 ff. ; 2d ed., pp. 183 ff., 545 ff.

PHYSIOLOGUS THE PHYSIOLOGUS IN GENERAL

The Physiologus — also known as the Bestiary — is a book of popular theology and morality, illustrating some of the chief doctrines of the Christian religion by means of the real or sup posed characteristics of actual or fabulous animals, or employing these same characteristics as alluring or warning examples.1 It is not unlikely that this Christian Physiologus reposes upon earlier pagan books of natural history, setting forth the qualities of animals, and incidentally of plants and stones. Heliodorus, writing his Greek romance of Theagenes and Chariclea in the second half of the third century,2 has one of his characters, an Egyptian, exclaim (3. 8) : 'If you wish an example from natural history, here is one taken out of our sacred books. The bird Charadrius cures those who are afflicted with the jaundice. If it perceives at a distance any one coming towards it who labors under this distemper, it immediately runs away and shuts its eyes — not out of an envious refusal of its assistance, as some suppose, but because it knows by instinct that, on the view of the afflicted person, the disorder will pass from him to itself, and therefore it is solicitous to avoid encountering his eyes.'3 Now as a similar trait is ascribed to the Charadrius in the Physiologus, it has been thought that these Egyptian sacred books contained much of the matter appropriated by the Physiologus, and that probably the original collection which was to constitute the basis of the later Physiologus may have been formed under such a ruler as Ptolemy Euergetes II (176-117 B. c.).4

Whenever such earlier compilations may have been made, the book that we understand by the term Physiologus (the word

1 Lauchert, Geschichte des Physiologus, p. 46.

2 Croiset, Hist. Litt. Gr. 5. 796.

"Similarly Aelian (ca. A. D. 225) Nat. An. 17. 13; Plutarch (ca. 100), Sympos. 5. 7. 2. 8; cf. Pliny 30. n. 94. *Cf. Hommel, Die Aethiopische Uebersetzung des Physiologus, p. xii.

Iviii INTRODUCTION

means Naturalist) seems clearly to have been put together in Alexandria,1 before 140 B. c.2

The earliest texts of it must have been in Greek, though the Greek manuscripts of it at present known are late. About the beginning or middle of the fifth century it was translated into Ethiopic3 and Syriac,4 and .somewhat later into Armenian5 and Arabic.6 The Latin translation must have been made before 43 1.7 There are also complete or partial translations into Old High German, Flemish, Dutch, Provenqal, Old French (4), Middle English, Italian, Waldensian, Roumanian, Icelandic, Mediaeval Greek, Servian, and Russian, besides Old English.8 One writer has said: 'With the exception of the Bible, there is perhaps no other book in all literature that has been more widely current in every cultivated tongue and among every class of

1 That it is of Egyptian, and specifically of Alexandrian origin is shown by various considerations: (i) the mention of the ibis, ichneumon, crocodile, and Phoenix; (2) the occurrence of fifteen of the stories in the work of the Egyptian priest, Horapollo; (3) the mention of the Nitrian desert, northwest of Cairo; (4) the mention of Indian products, and references to Indian fables, which would naturally find their way to Alexandria ; (5) the Alexandrian origin of the symbolism by which the animal stories were adapted to Christian uses; etc.

2 It seems to be referred to by Justin Martyr (d. 168 A. D.), by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and other early Fathers (Lauchert, pp. 65, 68 ff. ; Hommel, p. xxxi; Land, Anec. Syr. 4. 126-7).

3 Translation into German by Hommel, pp. 45 ff. ; also Rom. Forsch- ungen 5. 13-36.

* Translation into Latin by Tychsen in Physiologus Syrus, Rostock, 1795. A later Syriac version in Land, Anec. Syr., Vol. 4.

5 Translated into French by Cahier, Nouveaux Melanges d'Archeologie I. 117-138.

'Translated into Latin by Land, op. cit. 4. 137 ff. For all four trans lations, see Lauchert, pp. 79 ff., and cf. Mann, Anglia Beiblatt 10. 278-9.

7 Lauchert, p. 89. Texts in Mai, Class. Auct. 7 (1835). 589-596; Cahier and Martin, Melanges d'Archeologie, Vols. 2, 3, and 4. Cf. Mann, as above, pp. 279-280.

8 Lauchert, pp. 110-155, 300-2; Mann, as above, pp. 280-5; Reinsch, Das Thierbuch des Normannischen Dichters Guillaume Le Clerc, pp. 46-56. Concerning the sea-monster, Holbrook (Dante and the Animal Kingdom, p. 204) says: 'From my friend Sandor L. Landeau I learn that he heard the tale in his childhood from the lips of peasants in Hungary.'

PHYSIOLOGUS Hx

people.'1 Certain it is that current notions of the pelican, the Phoenix, the unicorn, and the salamander are due to the former popularity of the Physiologus.

The mention of the Bible suggests how often, in parable, alle gory, or metaphor, natural objects are employed to enforce spiritual lessons, or human beings are characterized by compari son with animals or plants :

Go to the ant, thou sluggard (Prov. 6. 6).

But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee ; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee ; or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee ; and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee (Job. 12. 7, 8.).'

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed (Matt. 13- 3i).

The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the king dom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one (Matt. 13. 38).

I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman (John 15. i).

Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves (Matt. 10. 16).

Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps (Deut. 32. 33).

Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils (Lk. 13. 32).

Ye are the salt of the earth (Matt. 5. 13).

Inwardly they are ravening wolves (Matt. 7. 15).

They are greedy dogs that can never have enough (Isa. 56. n).

The sense of the spiritual meaning within the material fact is what makes poets, and all supreme artists. It is what led Mrs. Browning3 to say:

Earth's crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God. . . .

1 Sokoll, Zum Angelsdchsischen Physiologus, p. 3.

1 The Ethiopic text of the Physiologus ends : 'The Holy Scriptures have said nothing at random concerning animals and birds' ; the Armenian says they 'do not mention animals without some mystery.' Cf. Cahier, Melanges 3. 239 (MS. C) : 'Nihil Scripturse sine similitudine nobis dix- erunt' (with manifest allusion to Matt. 13. 34).

8 Aurora Leigh, Bk. 7.

Ix INTRODUCTION

If a man could feel, Not one day, in the artist's ecstasy, But every day, feast, fast, or working-day, The spiritual significance burn through The hieroglyphic of material shows, Henceforward he would paint the globe with wings, And reverence fish and fowl, the bull, the tree, And even his very body as a man.

Hence, however severely we may condemn the abuses of the allegoric method in its application to Scripture, there is at the root of symbolism something natural and necessary. We all take the sign for the thing signified. We all understand what is meant when a person is called a bear, a serpent, a cur, or a cat.1 We all, to refer specifically to the Physiologus, attribute human virtues and vices to animals, and find pleasure and instruction in Aesop's fables, Reynard the Fox, and the Uncle Remus stories.

THE OLD ENGLISH PHYSIOLOGUS

MANUSCRIPT

These three poems, like the Phoenix, are contained in the Exeter Book (95b — 98*), for which see p. xxv.

COHERENCE OF THE POEMS

The standard form of the Physiologus has 49 chapters, corre sponding to as many topics, though the various translations differ with respect to the number. • Of the whole, Old English poetry has made use of only three — the Panther, the Whale (Asp- Turtle}, and the Partridge — or, if we add the Phoenix, four.

Do these three short poems which follow the Phoenix in the Exeter Book form a brief Physiologusf Do they constitute a portion of a longer Old English poetical Physiologus, the rest of which has been lost? Or are they unrelated — merely versions of three unconnected chapters which happened to strike the translator's eye, or his fancy ?

The third hypothesis is easily disproved, at least on the assump-

1 For echoes of the Physiologus in certain Elizabethan writers see Lauchert, Englische Studien 14. 188-210.

PHYSIOLOGUS Ixi

tion (see p. Ixxxviii) that the third poem is the Partridge: for (i) the order found here is that of Pitra's Greek MS. A, of MS. Royal 2. C. XII, of Cahier's B, of the fragment found in Jerome's writings, of the Arabic, the Ethiopia, the archetype of the Syriac version at Leiden, and of Cahier's MS. C, so far as the first two animals are concerned (the third is missing) ; (2) the second and third have a backward reference in the word gen ('further') ; (3) the first poem, the Panther, has a general introduction, refer ring to the variety of birds and animals upon the earth, under the second of which classes the author proceeds to speak of the Panther; (4) the first poem has 'We heard tell' (8-9), while the third poem begins, 'I heard tell'; (5) the third poem ends in the same hortatory manner as the second, with a sentence beginning with Uton (see p. Ixxxviii) ; (6) the third poem ends with Finit, which, under the circumstances, is more likely to mark the end of a series than of a single short poem. Hence the three poems are not versions of unconnected chapters, nor did the Old English poet treat them as unconnected.

Do they, then, constitute a portion of a larger poetic cycle ? The answer to this depends upon the reply to the question raised by the gap in the third poem. If this gap represents only a part of this single poem, the cycle, upon the basis of the facts adduced above, must have consisted, so far as we can see, of only these three members1 ; and the evidence adduced under the head of the Partridge (pp. Ixxxviff.) points to this conclusion.2

AUTHOR AND DATE

Dietrich3 believed the Physiologus to have the same author as the Phoenix, Guthlac, and Juliana, that is, Cynewulf. This he argues from similarity of diction, and from general likenesses in conception and treatment. However, the scant page which he devotes to the subject does not afford him scope for detailed

^Dietrich (Commentatio, p. n) suggested that three orders of ani mals were represented by the three poems — quadrupeds, fishes, and birds ; Ebert (Anglia 6. 241) modified this to animals of the land, of the sea, and of the air.

2 Ci. Tupper, Jour. Eng. and Germ. Phil. n. 10.

3 Commentatio, pp. 10-11.

Ixii INTRODUCTION

proof. Sokoll goes into the subject much more fully. He says1 that almost the whole vocabulary of the Physiologus belongs also! to the Phoenix, and likewise affirms a close relationship between, the diction of the Physiologus and that of the Christ. Several pages2 of his monograph are devoted to an examination of the vocabulary, metre, style, etc., of the Physiologus, in order to; prove that it must be ascribed to Cynewulf .

On the other hand, Lefevre, Wiilker, Korting, Brandl, Mann, and Schwarz oppose this view.3 Trautmann thinks that the Physiologus may be ascribed to Cynewulf with some probability.* Barnouw5 will go no further than to assert that, if the Physio logus is by Cynewulf, it is later than the Elene.

If I did not hesitate before assigning to Cynewulf so many Old English poems,6 I should associate myself on this point with Dietrich and Sokoll. If the Physiologus is not by Cynewulf, it must be by some disciple or close imitator ; if by him, it is prob ably one of his later productions. As for the date, it is in gen eral that of Cynewulf's period, the second half of the eighth century.7

THE PANTHER

The account of the panther in the Physiologus may be typically represented by the Greek text published by Lauchert.8 In the Biblical passage which serves as a foundation, 'panther' is due to the Septuagint, the 'young lion' of the Authorized Version representing the Hebrew. The sentence from Hosea, however, serves as a mere pretext for this chapter.

The prophet prophesied and said : 'I am become as a panther to Ephraim' [Hos. 5. 14]. The Naturalist said concerning the panther

1 Op. cit., p. 21.

2 Pp. 11-21.

"Jansen, Die Cynewulf -Forschung, pp. 115-6.

* Kynewulf, pp. 42, 122.

8 Textkritische Untersuchungen, p. 206.

8 Cf. my edition of the Christ, p. Ixv.

T Brandl, Gesch. der Altengl. Lit. (Paul, Grundriss, 2d ed., 2. 1034, 1044, 1047) ; Trautmann, Kynewulf, p. 122 (A. D. 740-780) ; Richte Chronologische Studien, p. 101.

8 Pp. 248-9.

PHYSIOLOGUS Ixiii

that he has this natural property: He is beloved by all the animals, but a foe of the dragon. He is as variegated as Joseph's coat. He is exceeding quiet and meek. When he has eaten and is filled, he sleeps in his den. And the third day he arises from sleep, crying out with a loud voice. And the animals that are nigh and that are afar off hear his voice. From his voice there streams all the fragrance of spices. And the animals follow the fragrance of the panther's smell, running up to it.

Thus when Christ was roused on the third day and rose from the dead, all fragrance came to us, both the peaceable ones that are nigh and those that are afar off [Eph. 2. 17; cf. Ps. 57. 19]. Mani fold is the intellectual wisdom of God, as the Psalmist said [Ps. 45. 9, 13] : 'Upon thy right hand did stand the queen, clothed in vesture wrought with gold, and arrayed in divers colors.' She is the Church. Manifold is Christ, since he is virginity, temperance, compassionate- ness, faith, virtue, patience, concord, peace. Well, therefore, did the Naturalist speak concerning the panther.

THE WHALE (ASP-TURTLE) THE GROWTH OF THE LEGEND

There can be no doubt that the germ of that chapter of the °hysiologus which is concerned with the sea-monster (or so-called whale) is to be found in a story related by Nearchus, who was admiral of Alexander's fleet during the voyage from the mouth of the Indus to the coast of Persia. In late October or Novem ber of 325 B. c., he sailed past the island of Ashtola (Astola) or Sungadeep (Sangadip),1 off the coast of Baluchistan, in Lat. 25° 7', Long. 63° 40', and between Ras Ormarah (Hormarah, LTrmarah, Aruba, Arabah) and Ras Jaddi (Cape Passeenoe, Passenoe, Pessani, Pasni).2 From the Ichthyophagi of the opposite coast of Mekran (Makran) he heard the tale preserved by Arrian (tea. 180 A. D.) and Strabo (f ca. 25 A. D.). The fuller form of the legend is thus reported by Arrian3 :

*The island was and is known by a great variety of names (Pauly- Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie der Classischen Wissenschaften, s. v. Ash- tola ; Cyclopedia of India, s. v. Ashtola ; Geographi Greed Minores, ed. Miiller, i. 344). Among these are Karnina, Selera, Sataluh, Island of the Sun.

2 Among the writers who mention it are Ptolemy (6. 8, 20, 21), Pliny (6. 26), Solinus (54), Mela (3. 7), Curtius (10. i).

8 Indica, chap. 31 (cf. chap. 26).

Ixiv INTRODUCTION

(BEFORE 300 B. c.)

While Nearchus was passing the coast of the Ichthyophagi, he heard tell of an island about a hundred stadia distant from the mainland, where no one dwelt. The natives said that it was con secrated to the Sun, and bore the name of Nosala, arid that no one was willing to land there, but that if any one did so through ignorance, he was never seen again. Nearchus goes on to relate that one of his cutters, manned by Egyptians, disappeared not far from this island, whereupon the leaders of the expedition affirmed that they had landed on the island without being aware of the danger, and so had vanished. Nearchus then sent a thirty-oared ves sel to circumnavigate the island, warning the crew not to land, but rather to sail close to the shore, and call out to the steersman by name, or to any others whose names they knew. Since no one answered, Nearchus himself rowed to the island, and forced his sailors, against their will, to land. He then went ashore, and thus proved that the talk about the island was an idle tale.

Another story that he heard about it was to the effect that one of the Nereids dwelt there, though her name is not mentioned; she, it was said, would take her fill of love with any man who came, but afterward would turn him into a fish, and cast him into the sea.1 On this account, the Sun grew angry with the Nereid, and at length commanded her to depart. This she promised to do, but at the same time solicited his love, which the Sun granted; but, having com passion upon the men whom she had turned into fishes, he restored them to their former state. From these had descended the race of| the Ichthyophagi, which had come down to Alexander's time.

1 According to Philostratus (Life of Apollonius of Tyana 3. 56), this Nereid was 'a dreadful female demon, which would snatch away many mariners, and would not even allow them to fasten a cable to the rock.' He calls the 'sacred island' Selera. Cf. below, p. Ixviii, note 3.

The Nereid may be related to the Siren which Boiardo, Berni, and Ariosto represent as lying further out to sea than the whale which is two miles long, and rises eleven paces above the water, and which Alcina accordingly persuades Astolfo is an island (Or/. Innam. 2. 13. 58, 62, 64; 2. 14. 6; (Berni) 42. 60, 64-68; Orl. Fur. 6. 37, 40-42. Shake speare's (M. N. D. 2. i. 150-2)

mermaid on a dolphin's back Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath That the rude sea grew civil at her song is the siren of Ariosto (6. 40),

Che col suo dolce canto accheta il mare, but the position upon the dolphin's back carries us directly back to classical mythology and art (see, for example, Pliny 36. 5. 4).

ice-

PHYSIOLOGUS Ixv

A shorter form is found in Strabo1 :

Nearchos says that he proved the falsehood of a story which was firmly believed in by the sailors in his fleet — that there was an island situated in the passage which proved fatal to those who anchored on its shores, since a bark disappeared when it came to this island and was never seen again, and some men who were sent in search did not dare to land upon the island, but before sailing away from it shouted and called to the crew, when, as no one returned an answer, they took their departure. But as all blamed the island for the loss of the men, Nearchos tells us that he himself sailed to it, and having anchored, disembarked with a part of his crew, and made a circuit of the island. But as he could find no trace of the men of whom he was in search, he gave up the task and returned.

Various theories have been proposed to account for the legend :

1. Mela seems to imply that the heat in the island was unen durable. He is somewhat confused regarding the geography, though he appears to be speaking of our island (3. 7) : 'Opposite the mouths of the Indus lie the regions of the sun, so called. These are so uninhabitable that the power of the, surrounding

• air causes instant death ; and between those mouths is the dis- [trict of Patalene, which in some parts is without any one to till i the soil, on account of the intolerable heat.'

2. Miiller suggests2 that -the island was a rendezvous for pirates, who might be interested to keep their haunts to them selves. Pliny tells us (6. 26) that companies of archers were carried on board the vessels plying between Arabia and the west coast of India, because the Indian seas were infested by pirates.

ICurzon (Persia 2. 448) remarks of certain Arab tribes skirting jthe southern littoral of the Persian Gulf that 'they have been j addicted from time immemorial to piratical escapades.'3 Near this same coast, Lingah, on the Persian side, is the chief town

1 15. 2. 13, p. 726, translated by McCrindle, Ancient India, pp. 91-2.

2 Geogr. Gr. Min. i. 352.

3 Marco Polo (3. 24, 25) tells of the pirate vessels, more than a hun dred in number, that went on summer cruises from the coast below Goa, twenty or thirty vessels together. For those at Socotra, cf. Marco Polo 3- 32.

INTRODUCTION

of the piratical Joasmees1 (Jowasmis, Jewasimis, Jowasimees), who, at least previous to 1820, frequented Ashtola: 'This island was once famous as the rendezvous of the Jowasimee pirates; and here they committed many horrid and savage murders on the crews of the vessels which they captured.'2 The vessels they burnt, after massacring the crew.

3. The air of the island may have been unhealthful in anti quity, if no longer so. Thus Lord Curzon says of Gwadur, onlyi about a hundred miles away (Persia 2. 431) : 'Gwadur was ones one of the most popular stations of the Telegraph Line, and was: regarded as the sanitarium of the Gulf ports, the temperature being very equable, and existence quite endurable even in the summer months. From some unknown cause, however, attrib uted by some to the sea-water, which is here so strongly impreg nated with sulphuretted hydrogen that the fish are often killed in great numbers, a malarial fever has developed itself, which attacks every new-comer ; and the place is now as much shunned as it was once sought.'

4. As large numbers of turtles are caught upon the island for the sake of their shells, it may be that the legend was invented by those who were engaged in this pursuit, in order to keep possi ble intruders at a distance ; or the air may have been so infected* by the abandoned carcases of the turtles which were caught only for the sake of their shells as to be, or seem, poisonous to those who attempted to land, especially as there appears to be but one good landing-place. To do justice to this theory, and to gain a tolerable idea of the character of the island, it is desirable to con-i sider two comparatively modern accounts. Lieutenant G. B. Kempthorne,4 describing in 1835 a survey made in 1828, thus writes :

1 Cycl. of India.

2 Lieut. G. B. Kempthorne, Jour. Royal Geog. Soc. 5 (1835). 268.

8 Pliny says that in the island 'every animal instantly dies' ; Mela that it is 'so uninhabitable that the power of the ambient air instantly j kills those who land.' Kempthorne found no living animal there excepl I rats (see opposite page). Holdich (Gates of India, p. 160) says thai' 'sea-urchins and sea-snakes abounded in such numbers as to make the process of exploration quite sufficiently exciting.'

4 Jour. Royal Geog. Soc. 5. 266-8.

PHYSIOLOGUS Ixvii

Ashtola is a small desolate island, about four or five miles in circumference, situated twelve miles from the coast of Mekran. Its cliffs rise rather abruptly from the sea to the height of about three hundred feet ; and it is inaccessible except in one place, which is a sandy beach, about one mile in extent, on the northern side. Great quantities of turtle frequent this island for the purpose of depositing their eggs. . . . Not a vestige of any habitation now remains. . . . A party went on shore one night for the purpose of catching turtle, a description of which may not be uninteresting. We left the ship at sunset, and reached the shore about dark, then hauled the boat up on the beach; and when this was done formed ourselves into two distinct parties, and dispersed to different parts along the beach. Having reached the place where we thought it likely that the turtle would land, we lay down, keeping a sharp look out and making as little noise as possible. . . . We were thus all in anxious expectation of the appearance of the turtle; and six bells had just gone on board — that is, it was eleven o'clock, p. M. — when we saw the first, to our great delight, coming on shore just oppo site us. It looked like a black rock moving slowly and steadily out of the water. We did not interrupt its progress until it had got some distance upon the beach, when a rush was made towards it, and it was immediately turned over on its back, without giving it time either to defend itself or blind its assailants by throwing the sand with its flippers or fins, which they do with such force that it is almost dangerous to come near them. It took six stout men thus to turn the largest that was caught. . . . We caught seven turtle that night, and six more the night after. . . .

The Arabs come to this island and kill immense numbers of these turtle, not for the purpose of food, for they never partake of it, considering it as an unclean animal; but they traffic with the shell to China, where it is made into a kind of paste, and then into combs, ornaments, &c., in imitation of tortoiseshell. The carcases of the poor animals are thus strewed about the beach in all directions, causing a stench so great that it was scarcely bearable; in fact, we could smell it some distance off the shore. The only land-animals we could see on the island were rats, and they were swarming; they feed chiefly on the dead turtle.

And earlier, according to Vincent,1 Captain Blair -had written :

We were warned by the natives of Passenoe that it would be

dangerous to approach the island of Ashtola, as it zvas enchanted*;

1 The Commerce and Navigation of the Ancients in the Indian Ocean :i. 299.

"McCrindle (Ancient India, p. 92, note i) says: 'It is still regarded with superstitious fear by the natives of the neighbouring coast.'

Ixviii INTRODUCTION

and that a ship had been turned into a rock. This superstitious story did not deter us; we visited the island, found plenty of excellent turtle, and saw the rock alluded to, which at a distance had the appearance of a ship under sail.1 The story was probably told to i prevent our disturbing the turtle; it has, however, some affinity to the tale of Nearchus's transport.

According to Charles Masson,2 Ashtola is now a goal of Bud dhist pilgrimage:

Many votaries and pilgrims proceed no farther than Hinglatz,* but it is deemed to be especially praiseworthy and beneficial to extend the pious tour to Satadip, an island off the coast of Mekran, and between Hormara and Pessani. I was surprised at discovering that this celebrated island was no other than the Ashtola of our maps, the Asthilal of Arabs and Baloches, the Carnina and Enchanted Isle of Nearchus, and the Asthse[a] of Ptolemy.

Holdich (Gates of India, p. 160) remarks: 'I have been to that island, the island of Astola, and the tales that were told to Nearkhos are told of it still. There, off the southern face of it, is the "sail rock," the legendary relic of a lost ship.' "Cf. Odyssey 13. 154 ff-

2 Narrative of Various Journeys in Belochistan, etc., 4. 391-3 ; cf. 4.3 295, and, for Masson himself, Holdich's Gates of India, p. 345.

3 'Sacred to the goddess Nana (now identified with Siva by Hindus). . . . The Assyrian or Persian goddess Nana . . . was a well-established deity in Mesopotamia 2280 years B. c.' According to Holdich, this shrine, 'next possibly to Juggernath, draws the largest crowds of pilgrims (Hindu and Mussulman alike) of any in India.' The character of Nana is outlined by Jastrow (Hastings, Diet. Bible, Extra Vol., p. 541) : 'At Erech, in the extreme south, there flourished the cult of a goddess known as Nona, who appears to have been conceived as a deity of a violent character, punishing severely those who disobey her — a war- goddess rather than a mother of life — but who in later texts is identified with Ishtar.' Elsewhere Jastrow says (Encyc. Brit., nth ed. 14. 870-1) : 'She [Ishtar] appears under various names, among which are Nana, etc. . . . Ishtar is celebrated and invoked as the great mother, as the mistress of lands, as clothed in splendor and power — one might almost I say as the personification of life itself. But there are two aspects to this goddess of life. She brings forth, she fertilizes the fields, she ! clothes nature in joy and gladness, but she also withdraws her favors, and when she does so the fields wither, and men and animals cease to j reproduce. In place of life, barrenness and death ensue. She is thus I also a grim goddess, at once cruel and destructive. We can, therefore,

PHYSIOLOGUS

The germ of the later legend is thus seen to be as follows :

An enchanted island, or the being that inhabits it, causes the disappearance or transformation of men who touch upon its shores. As a historical fact, the island in question was and is the resort of large turtles in great numbers ; and it is possible that there may be some connection between the capture of these turtles and the reputation of the island.

The story enters upon a new phase with the romance of Pseudo- Callisthenes, or rather with the apocryphal letter of Alexander to Aristotle, which must have been already extant when the romance was compiled.1 As the romance was composed at Alexandria about 200 A. D.,2 and as the outlines of the work are to be ascribed to the age of the Ptolemies (323-247 B. c.), it is apparent that no great interval is likely to have elapsed between the story related by Nearchus and that of the Pseudo-Callisthenes.

The kernel of the new story is to this effect : A reputed island, being approached by a boat, proves to be an animal, suddenly sinks, and causes the occupants of the boat to be engulfed. The tale runs, translated from the Greek3 :

understand that she was also invoked as a goddess of war and battles and of the chase.'

May not the Nereid (p. Ixiv, above), then, so seductive and so ruth less, represent this Nana-Ishtar- worshiped at Hinglatz, and might not the antiquity of the legend thus bear some relation to Babylonian mythology? Erech is hardly more than 200 miles in a straight line from the Persian Gulf, and Susa, where, according to Holdich (p. 163), Nana dwelt for 1635 years (to 645 B. c., when she was reinstated at Erech), not so far. As to the sea-route in ancient times through the Persian Gulf, along the coast of Baluchistan, to India, see Holdich, PP- 54-57-

1 Rohde, Der Griechische Roman, 2d ed., p. 200.

2 So Zacher, Pseudocallisthenes, p. 102. Rohde is disposed to think that the earliest form of the romance was actually written down in the Ptolemaic era (op. cit., p. 197, note i). See also C. Miiller, Pseudo- Callisthenes, p. xx (in Arriani Anabasis et Indica, Paris, 1846).

6 Ed. Miiller, 3. 17. The Latin version by Julius Valerius, composed between 270 and 330 A. D. (so Kuebler in the Teubner edition of Valerius, p. vn), will be found at the foot of the page in Miiller's edi tion, as well as in the Teubner volume. The Latin, while making certain points of the Greek clearer, misses the essential thing for us by failing to identify the island with an animal.

1XX INTRODUCTION

When we had come to the city of Prasiaka, which seemed to be the metropolis of India, we discovered a fertile promontory. When I had set out with a few of my men for this promontory, we ascer tained that the inhabitants subsisted on fish, and had the form of women. On questioning some of them, I found that they were of barbarous speech. When I made .inquiry about the region, they pointed away to an island, which was visible off at sea. This, they said, was the sepulchre of a very ancient king, and contained much consecrated gold. Hereupon the barbarians disappeared, leaving their boats, to the number of twelve, behind.

My kinsman and friend, Philo, together with Hephaestion and Craterus, were unwilling that I should cross over. Philo's words were : 'Let me go in your stead, so that, should it turn out badly, I may run the risk, and not you; while if all goes well, I will send a boat back for you. Even should Philo perish, you would never want for other friends1 ; but if anything should happen to you, Alexander, all the world would suffer.' Thereupon I allowed myself to be dissuaded. He then set off for the island, but, when an hour had elapsed, all at once the animal sank to the bottom of the sea. Thus, while we were looking on,2 the animal disappeared, and the whole boat's crew perished miserably, to our great sorrow. But when I searched for the barbarians, they were nowhere to be founc

We remained on that promontory for eight days, and there we sax the Hebdomadarion, an animal with elephants on its back.*

This story is pieced together from several earlier ones. Th« promontory is probably Ras Ormarah,4 since, after passing it Nearchus came to the fishermen who fled at the sight of his ves sels. The island containing the sepulchre of the ancient king, however, was not Ashtola, but was situated at the entrance tc the Persian Gulf, the ancient name being Ogyris5 (Organa), or Oarakta,6 the former probably representing Ormuz, and the latter, Kishm. Curtius relates (10. i) that those who were attracted by the rumors of gold to seek the island that contained the monu ment of this king, Erythras, were never seen again. The rest of the tale in Pseudo-Callisthenes seems to be an echo of the ston related by Nearchus of Ashtola.

*A play on the word Philo. 2 dpa&i>T<av. The translation is guesswork. *Cf. the later Hindu stories of the earth supported by an elephant on the back of a tortoise.

* Cf. Arrian, Indica, chap. 26, with Holdich, Gates of India, p. 158. 5 Strabo 16. 766-7; Mela 3. 8; Pliny 6. 28. 'Arrian, Indica, chap. 37.

PHYSIOLOGUS

There is an important parallel in Pseudo-Callisthenes 2. 38,1 where we are told that Alexander, having encamped on the sea shore, embarked his soldiers, and sailed to an island not far away, where they heard, but did not see, men speaking Greek. Some of the soldiers, persuaded by a diver, leaped overboard and swam ashore, in order to explore the island; but no sooner had they landed than crabs issued from it, and dragged them back into the water. This frightened Alexander, so that he ordered the sailors to return to land.

The legends of Pseudo-Callisthenes are thus reducible to this : An island, or a sea-beast {crab) representing in some sort an island or its destructive power, plunges the seafarer who would land upon it into the deep.

The tale is next related in Hebrew by Rabbah bar bar Hana, a Babylonian rabbi who lived between A. D. 257 and 320. One of the journeys he undertook was through the desert in which the children of Israel wandered for forty years, and where his Arab guide pointed out to him Mount Sinai, and the place where Korah had been swallowed up by the earth. From this guide or other Arabs he may have heard the fantastic tales which he afterwards recounted, and which caused his colleagues to remark, 'All Rabbahs are asses, and all bar bar Hanas fools.'2 Since the Arabs were the active carriers or intermediaries in the com mercial intercourse between Egypt and India in those times,3 nothing is more natural that that they should pick up such a legend in passing and repassing Ashtola.4 Rabbah's version is in the Babylonian Talmud (Baba Bathra 73b) :

1 Miiller's ed., p. 89; cf. Zacher, p. 139.

* Jewish Encyclopedia 10. 291.

8 Schoff, Periplus of the Erythraan Sea, pp. 3 ff. ; Vincent, Periplus, PP. 37, 59, 60.

4 It was while sailing to the East Indies by way of the Persian Gulf that Sindbad, on his first voyage, came to the 'island like one of the gardens of Paradise.' While the passengers were disporting themselves on the shore, and some had lighted the fires in their fire-pots, the master of the ship called upon them to embark speedily, 'for this apparent island upon which ye are is not really an island, but it is a great fish that hath become stationary in the midst of the sea, and the sand hath accumu lated upon it, so that it hath become like an island, and trees have

1XX11 INTRODUCTION

Once, while on a ship, we came to a gigantic fish at rest, which we supposed to be an island, since there was sand1 on its back, in which grass2 was growing. We therefore landed, made a fire, and cooked our meal. But when the fish felt the heat, he rolled over, and we should have drowned had not the ship been near.

grown upon it since times of old.' He spoke, but too late for some, although they abandoned their goods, including the fire-pots. 'The island had moved, and descended to the bottom of the sea, with all that were upon it, and the roaring sea, agitated with waves, closed over it' (Lane's translation of the Arabian Nights'). Cf. Rohde, Der Griechische Roman, 2d ed., pp. 191-6; 'De Reizen von Sindebad,' De Gids (1889) 3. 278-312.

1 So in the Latin texts of Mai (Class. Auct. 7. 590) and Cahier (Melanges d'Archeologie 3. 253, MS. B) : 'habens super corium suum tamquam sabulones qui sunt (B, sicut) iuxta litora (B, littore) maris.' So likewise in the Sindbad story, in Kazwini, Philipp de Thaon ('Le sablon de mer prent, sur sun dos 1'estent. . . . Les graveles sunt les richeises del mund'), Guillaume le Clerc (ed. Reinsch, 11. 2259-60; also 2272-3, 'Font granz pels el sablon ficher, Qui semble terre a lor avis' ; ed. Cahier, Melanges 3. 255, 'Altretel est come sablon L'eskerdes de son ' dos en som'), Olaus Magnus, Brunetto Latini (Tresor, ed. Chabaille, p. 186, 'Li vent aporte sablon et ajostent sor lui, et i naist herbes et petiz arbrissiaus'), etc. There is no mention of sand in the Ethiopic or the two Syriac versions; the Armenian has (Cahier, Nouv. Mel. I. 129), 'He keeps to sandy places,' with which compare R. F. Burton's statement (Zanzibar I. 200) : 'When fewer ships visited the port, the sandspit projecting from "Frenchman's Island" was covered with bay-turtle [green turtle].'

2 Perhaps this trait may owe something to the islands of shrubbery which float away from estuaries into tropical seas (Dana, Manual of Geology, 4th ed., p. 156). Floating islets of matted trees are sometimes seen fifty or a hundred miles off the mouth of the Ganges (and perhaps the Indus as well; cf. Curtius 9. 8), and among the Moluccas or the Philippines (Lyell, Principles of Geology, nth ed., 2. 364-6). According to Lyell, ships have sometimes been in imminent peril, as these islands have often been mistaken for terra, firma, when in fact they were in rapid motion. Less pertinent are the ancient stories concerning the islands of Rhodes, Anaphe, Thera, and Delos (for volcanic islands like Thera (Santorin), see Lyell 2. 58 ff., 67 ff.). On the disappearance of islands along the Baluchistan coast, see Jour. Royal Soc. Arts 49. 419, 424. Under date of Sept. 12, 1913, a report came from San Francisco: 'Falcon and Hope Islands, of the Friendly or Tonga group, in the South Pacific, have disappeared from view. With them several hundred natives and a few white men also have disappeared.'

PHYSIOLOGUS Ixxiii

Here, at length, are the particulars which belong to the mediaeval form of the story.

In the Arabic Book of Indian Marvels, edited and translated by Van der Lith and Devic (Leyden, 1883-6), consisting of stories collected by the captains of trading vessels between 900 and 950 (Preface, p. vi), we have the following version:

I have also heard very curious stories about turtles, which the mind has difficulty in crediting. Here is one that I have from Abu Mohammed-al-Hagan, son of Amr. He had heard a respectable sailor relate that a ship, sailing from India for some country or other, was driven from its course by the violence of the wind, not withstanding the efforts of the captain, and sustained some damage. They finally reached a little island, entirely destitute of wood and water, where they were forced to stop. The cargo was unloaded, and they remained there long enough to repair the damage, after which the bales were put back on board, in order that they might continue their journey. While this was in progress, the New Year festival arrived, and, in order to celebrate it, the passengers carried ashore to the island such pieces of wood, palm-leaves, and rags as they could find aboard ship, and set them on fire. Suddenly the island shook beneath their feet. Being near the water, they threw themselves in, and made for the small boats. At that instant the island sank into the waves, producing such a swirl that they all narrowly escaped drowning, and only saved themselves with the greatest difficulty, being terrified beyond measure. Now the island was nothing but a turtle asleep on the water, which, awakened by the heat of the fire, sought to escape. I asked my informant how that happened. 'Every year,' he replied, 'there is a number of days when the turtle rises to the surface of the water to rest from his long sojourn in the caverns of the submarine mountains; for at these depths there grow frightful trees and prodigious plants, much more wonderful than our terrestrial trees and plants. It comes, then, to the surface of the water, and passes whole days there deprived of sensation, like a drunken man. When it has regained its senses, and becomes tired of its position, it dives.'

THE NAME OF THE MONSTER

The Physiologus differs from a mere account of animal-traits in that it tags the characterization of each animal with a moral called an interpretation, which is sometimes formally labeled as such, and sometimes not. This will be apparent from the Greek • chapter which deals with our incident, which will also show that

Ixxiv INTRODUCTION

another peculiarity of our sea-monster, or some other fabulous sea-monster, is combined with it. The Greek chapter is found in two forms, a shorter and longer. The first is printed by Pitra1 :

There is a sea-beast in the ocean, called asp-turtle, which has two natural properties.

(1) Its first nature is this. When it is hungry, it opens its mouth, and .from its mouth there streams all fragrance. The little fishes, attracted by the odor, swarm into its mouth, and the monster drinks them down. But you will not find the big and perfect fishes coming near the beast.

Such a perfect fish was Job, Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the whole company of the prophets. In this manner did Judith escape from Holofernes, and Esther from Artaxerxes.

(2) The second natural property of the sea-monster: it is very large, like an island. Not being aware of this, the seamen fasten their boats to it as to an island, and attach the anchors and the stakes. They build a fire on the back of the sea-monster, in order to boil somewhat for themselves. When he is scorched, he plunges to the bottom, and wrecks the boats.

Interpretation. Well then did Solomon say in the Proverbs: 'Give no heed to a worthless woman; for honey drops from the lips of a harlot; but afterwards thou wilt find her more bitter than gall.' So if thou shalt depend upon the hope of the devil, he will plunge thee with himself down to the hell of fire.

The other is edited by Lauchert2 :

Solomon teaches in the Proverbs, [in the Septuagint 5. 3-5], say ing : 'Give no heed to a worthless woman ; for honey drops from the lips of a harlot, who for a season pleases the palate : but afterwards thou wilt find her more bitter than gall, and sharper than a two- edged sword. For the feet of folly lead those who deal with her down to the grave with death.'

There is a monster in the sea, called asp-turtle, which has two natural properties. Its first is this. When it is hungry, it opens its mouth, and all fragrance issues from its mouth. And the little fishes crowd into its mouth, and he swallows them, but the large and perfect it does not find approaching it. Thus the devil and the heretics by their fair speeches and the guile of their supposed fragrance entice the simple and unschooled in understanding, but are unable to lay hold of those who are perfect in mind. Such a perfect fish was Job, Moses, Jeremiah, Isaiah, and the whole com-

1 Spicilegium Solesmense 3. 352. 3 Op. tit., pp. 249-251.

PHYSIOLOGUS 1XXV

pany of the prophets. In this manner did Judith escape from Holofernes, Esther from Artaxerxes, Susanna from the elders, and Thecla from Thamyris.

Its other natural property is as follows. The monster is very large, 'like an island. Not being aware of this, the seamen fasten their boats to it as to an island, and also their anchors and their stakes. So they disembark as on an island, and build a fire to boil them food. And the whale, being burned, plunges to the bottom, and wrecks the boat and all that belongs to it. And if thou, O man, dost hang upon the false hopes of the devil, he will plunge thee with himself down to the hell of fire. Well, therefore, did the Naturalist speak concerning the asp-turtle.

Ignoring, for the moment, the new 'nature,' or trait, intro duced, let us consider what manner of sea-beast is intended by this version of the legend. The word here translated 'sea-beast' is in the original KTJ/TOS (Lat. cetus), the same that in Gen. i. 21 is, in the plural, translated 'whales' in the Authorized Version, while the Revised Version more accurately renders 'sea-mon sters.' The word itself, then, does not demand to be translated 'whale' in this place, any more than in the great majority of other occurrences in Greek and Latin. The exacter term is do-TriSo^eAwvT/, and this must be translated either by 'shield-turtle' or 'asp-turtle,' since the Greek aairis has two principal meanings, 'round shield,' and 'asp.' In any case, the second element, XtXtoVY], must mean 'turtle.'1 This designation of the fabulous beast by 'turtle' is supported by various considerations :

1. Kazwini, an Arab writer of the latter half of the thirteenth century, begins his story thus,2 in his account of water-animals : 'The tortoise is a sea- and land-animal. As to the sea-turtle, it is very enormous, so that the people of the ship imagine that it is an island.'

2. When the x^^n? of this chapter is translated into Latin, it is always as testudo.

3. The folk-tales of widely separated peoples, who cannot have borrowed from one another, unite in giving a similar account of the tortoise. Thus Catlin heard among the Mandan Indians3

1 Cf. pp. Ixxxi ff.

2 Quoted by Lane in his translation of the Arabian Nights, on Sindbad's First Voyage.

8 North American Indians, 6th ed., i. 181.

INTRODUCTION

that 'the earth was a large tortoise, that it carried the dirt on its back — that a tribe of people, who are now dead, and whose faces were white, used to dig down very deep in this ground to catch badgers ; and that one day they stuck a knife through the tortoise-shell, and it sank down so that the water ran over its back, and drowned all but one man.' And Callaway1 has the following Zulu story:

It happened that some boys went to play on the banks of the river Umtshezi ; on their arrival they said, 'There is a beautiful rock. . . .' But it was a tortoise. ... A little boy said, 'This rock has eyes.' The others said, 'No; you are telling lies.' He said, 'It has eyes.' He was silent; and took his stick, and thrust it into the tortoise's eye, saying, 'What is this eye? See, the eye stares.' They said, 'There is no eye, child.' The little boy came home, and said, 'There is a rock which has eyes.' His father answered, 'What kind of eyes are in the rock?' He said, 'Indeed, there are eyes.' It happened on another day the tortoise turned over with them ; one little boy crossed the river at a great distance ; he went crying home ; they asked, 'What is the matter?' He said, 'The rock has turned over with the other boys; it went with them into the pool.' They were all lost; there escaped that one only, who went home crying.

4. The roughness and hardness of its body are sometimes mentioned. Thus in Pseudo-Eustathius of Antioch2 : 'Its body resembles rough stones,' reminding us that Pacuvius3 had already characterized the tortoise as 'aspera.' In the Voyage of St. Brandan* we are told : 'Erat autem ilia insula petrosa sine herba.' In the fragment of Pseudo- Jerome (Vallarsi's ed. of Jerome, Venice, 1771, n. 219) we have:1 'Ostendit se in ipso mari tam- quam petram.' Finally, the turtle in Kempthorne's description (p. Ixvii) looks like a 'black rock.'

5. The back of a whale is not well adapted for the comfort able sojourn of several people. Bullen says5: 'By dint of hard work I pulled myself right up the sloping, slippery bank of

1 Nursery Tales, Traditions, and Histories of the Zulus, pp. 341-2.

a Migne, Pair. Gr. 18. 724.

8 Cicero, De Div. 2. 64. 133. Similarly Oppian, Hal. 5. 396, 404.

4 Brendans Meerfahrt, ed. Wahlund, Upsala, 1900, p. 24 ; cf . pp. 239-243.

5 Cruise of the Cachalot, chap. 15.

PHYSIOLOGUS Ixxvii

blubber.'1 Nor would the Greenland whale, at least, remain passive under such a sojourn, the lighting of fires, etc. 'It is indeed an extremely timid beast. It has been remarked that a bird alighting upon its back sometimes sets it off in great agita tion and terror.'2

6. The size of the turtle at its largest affords some color of plausibility to the story. According to the ancients, their shells were used as barks by the Chelonophagi,3 or served as roofs over their heads.4 We are told of green turtles so large that they will crawl about on land with as many as fourteen men upon their back.5 In the Voyage of Francois Leguat* there is a picture, reproduced from De Bry's India Orientalis, of a tortoise-shell with ten men seated upon it. From the same work of De Bry is quoted a statement concerning the tortoises of Mauritius at the end of the sixteenth century that readily carried two men. El Bekri, an Arabian geographer (A. D. 1067-8), relates a story7 told him by a jurisconsult whom he names, to the effect that a com pany of travelers bound for Tirca, near Timbuctoo, stopped for the night at a place infested with white ants, which are very destructive. Nothing is safe from them which is not deposited on heaps of stones or on poles stuck in the ground. One of the travelers, espying what he took for a rock, deposited on it two camel-loads of luggage (perhaps 2000 or 3000 pounds; certainly

1 Cf. Cantb. Nat. Hist. 10. 341. Arngrim Jonas, The True State of Iceland, 1582 (Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, Glasgow, 1904, 4. 138), thus mocks : 'O silly Mariners, that in digging cannot discern Whales flesh from lumps of earth, nor know the slippery skin of a Whale from the upper part of the ground.' Even Milton's 'scaly rind' in the well-known passage (P. L. i. 200-208) would suit the turtle rather better than the whale ; the direct allusion is of course to the crocodile (Job 4L 15).

1 Camb. Nat. Hist. 10. 359.

8Diodorus Siculus 3. 20; Pliny 9. 10; Aelian, Nat. Animal. 16. 14; El Bekri, in Jour. Asiat. 5. 13. 500.

* Pliny 6. 28. 24; 9. 10; cf. Aelian 16. 17; Diodorus Siculus 3. 20; Tennant, Ceylon, 4th ed., i. 90; Camb. Nat. Hist. 10. 384; Bullen, Denizens of the Deep, pp. 122-3.

5 Brehms, Thierleben 7. 80.

6 Hakluyt Soc. 2. 375.

' Jour. Asiatique 5. 13. 517-9.

Ixxviii INTRODUCTION

not less than 1000). In the morning the goods and the rock were missing, but he found them several miles away by following the track of the tortoise.1 Whatever we may think of this, there is no difficulty in accepting the statements of Darwin2 and Bullen3 concerning their rides on the backs of tortoises.4 In the Fourth Voyage to Virginia, I5&>7,5 mention is made of tortoises 'of such bignes, that sixteene of our strongest men were tired with cary- ing one of them but from the sea side to our cabbins' ; and Dar win6 was told by the vice-governor of the Galapagos of several tortoises so large that it required six or eight men to lift them from the ground. Of existing species of (sea-) turtles, some are known that are seven feet or more in length,7 and that weigh at least 1800 pounds.8

Of fossil or extinct species, the shell of the Colossochelys Atlas of the Siwalik Hills, in India, was estimated by Hugh Falconer, its discoverer, to have been 12 feet 3 inches long (15 feet 9 inches, measured along the curve of the back), 8 feet in diameter, and 6 feet high.9

1 Later writers garble this story. Thus Leo Africanus, Bk. 9 (Hak- luyt Soc. 3. 950), turns 'Bekri' into 'Bikri,' has the traveler go to sleep on the rock for fear of serpents and venomous beasts, and wake up three miles from the point of departure. He is followed by Konrad Gessner, Icones Animalium Quadrupedium, p. 118.

2 Voyage of the Beagle, chap. 17.

8 Cruise of the Cachalot, chap. 10.

4 One with a shell-length of 40 inches can carry two full-grown men (Camb. Nat. Hist. 10. 377). B Hakluyt's Voyages, Glasgow ed., 8. 387. 8 Voyage of the Beagle, chap. 17.

7 Cycl. of India, 3d ed., 3. 960; cf. i. 672.

8 Bullen, Idylls of the Sea, p. 162. Agassiz is reported to have seen some weighing over a ton (Camb. Nat. Hist. 10. 333).

9 Palaontological Memoirs I. 363; cf. i. 374. This is accepted by Bronn, Klassen und Ordnungen des Thier-Reichs 63. 408, and Brehms 7- 41, but the Camb. Nat. Hist. (40. 372) thinks it can not have been more than 6 feet long.

The Peabody Museum of Yale University has the skeleton of the largest known marine turtle (Archelon Schyros), from South Dakota, which is 10 feet 10 inches long, must have measured nearly 12 feet across the front flippers, and have weighed not far from 3^ tons. Lieutenant Nelson, in Trans. Geol. Soc. of London, 2d Sen, 5. in, tells

PHYSIOLOGUS Ixxix

7. Pseudo-Eustathius1 speaks of the monster as sinking when it is heated by the sun. Various writers, following Agatharchi- des,2 refer to the pleasure of turtles in sleeping about midday in the sunshine on the surface of the Indian Ocean, with their backs entirely out of water, while at night they feed at the bot tom of the sea; but Aristotle3 and Pliny4 report in addition that, under these circumstances, their shells dry up, so that they are unable to dive easily, and thus become a prey to fishermen. Thus, though the effect of the sun is described as different in the two cases, the susceptibility of the turtle to its heat is empha sized.

8. The method of catching green turtles, in the Indian Ocean and elsewhere, has some features which remind us. of our tale. The pursuer approaches noiselessly from behind, jumps upon the animal's back, catches it with both hands by the shell of the neck, and attempts to turn it over, and secure it with a rope.5 In the process,6 as well as when he first catches sight of the pursuers,7 the turtle seeks to dive. The fact that they are sometimes shot by arrows8 might also suggest a relation to the insertion of anchor-flukes or stakes.

9. . The first 'nature' of the animal (see p. Ixxiv) may also possibly point to the turtle. On the one hand, it is true, the man-

of skeletons of turtles in the Bermuda Islands measuring 9 feet by 7. Aelian knows of Indian ocean-turtles 15 cubits long (16. 17), and of river-turtles whose shells would hold 205 gallons (16. 14) ; but this is surpassed by Sindbad's estimate (Third Voyage) of one 20 cubits in each direction !

1 As above.

' Gcogr. Gr. Min., ed. Miiller, i. 138-9; Diod. Sic. 3. 20; Pliny 9. 10; cf. Cycl. of India, 3d ed., 3. 060.

3 Hist. An. 8. 4.

*g. 10.

5 Cycl. of India, $d ed., 3. 960; Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, chap. 20. Francis Beaumont, Karamania, 2d ed., London, 1818, pp. 299-300, relates: 'Some of the large turtles were so powerful as to escape with two heavy fellows lying on their backs, who in vain strove to turn them before they got into deep water.'

' Bullen, Idylls of the Sea, pp. 169-170.

7 Darwin, chap. 20.

"Oppian, Hal. 5. 401; cf. Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazon, 3d ed., pp. 292-4.

Ixxx

INTRODUCTION

ner in which it swallows its prey belongs to the whale rather than the turtle, though the green turtle, and perhaps some other kinds, eat fish readily.1 But when we are told that all fragrance issues from the animal's mouth, we are at a loss for an explanation. Can this imputed trait be an adaptation of that attributed to the panther? If not, there may conceivably be a reference to the 'strong, odoriferous oil' secreted, according to Agassiz,2 from ' glands in the lower jaw of certain species of turtle, or to the musky odor emitted by other turtles and tortoises.3

The foregoing considerations render it practically certain that, in the Physiologus-account of the second 'nature,' the author is ! chiefly indebted to legends which involve the turtle, and that, even in the first 'nature,' where there seems to be a clear reference , to the whale, one trait may at least be derived from the chelonian race.

The confusion between the monster tortoise and the whale may have been facilitated by the exaggerated classical accounts4 of the latter's size, or by Basil's (and subsequently Ambrose's) com parison5 of them to mountains or islands. Tychsen6 thinks that

'Brehms 7. 81.

2 Cont. to the Nat. Hist, of the U. S. i. 289-290.

8Cf. Camb. Nat. Hist. 10. 339; Bullen, Denizens of the Deep, p. 123; Brehms 7. 29.

* Pliny (9. 2) knows of whales four jugera (about 2^2 acres) in extent, and others 100 yards long; cf. 32. 4. 10. Nearchus, followed by Strabo and Arrian, tells of whales 140 or 150 feet long. Hercules leaped into a whale, according to Homer (//. 20. 147). The whale that swallowed Lucian (True Hist. i. 30; cf. 2. 2) was 200 miles long. The longest whale known, Sibbald's Rorqual, actually measures 85 feet, or a little more (Camb. Nat. Hist. 10. 340).

6 'They equal the greatest mountains in size. . . . They often create the impression (<f>avrafflav, fantasy) of islands, when they rise to the surface of the water' (Hex. 7. 6: Migne, Pair. Gr. 29. 161 ; cf. 7. 4: 29. 156). Ambrose says (Hex. 5. n. 32: Pair. Lat. 14. 220-1; cf. 5. 10. i 28: 14. 218) that when they float on the waves you would think them islands, or lofty mountains lifting their peaks to the sky. Both writers say they are only to be found well off shore in the Atlantic Ocean.

8 Phys. Syr. p. 163 ; cf . Pontoppidan, Nat. Hist, of Norway 2. 121 (2. 5. 8) ; Lacepede, Hist. Nat. des Cetacees, p. 65.

Pontoppidan blends the physical traits of the giant squid, or octopus with those of our fabulous animal, and thus obtains his kraken. Ir

PHYSIOLOGUS

the shellfish, etc., which collect on the back of an old whale, is responsible for the description of the sea-beast as stony.

The word do-TrtSoxeAwn/, of the Greek text, often paraphrased by 'whale,'1 occasions some difficulty, because of the twofold meaning of the Greek do-TriV-'shield' and 'asp.'

Oppian (ca. 180 A. D.) is the first datable author to conjoin the two words which may be translated 'asp' and 'turtle' (Hal. I. 397), in the phrase do-TriSdeo-o-a x^Awi^, where the first word is an adjective. Shall we translate 'shielded turtle' ('shield-turtle') or 'aspine 'turtle' ('asp-turtle')? The scholiast on the passage gives us but little help: the adjective either refers to the circu larity of the turtle's shell, or to the turtle's having the head (lit. face) of an asp. The sixteenth-century Latin translation has scutata testudo (similarly Salvini's Italian translation of 1728). This must be wrong, if the first of the scholiast's alternatives is right, since scutata could not refer to a circular shield, which would rather require clipeata; but then, this emendation being granted, it remains that the shell of the turtle is not circular. Ger. Schildkrote might seem to afford some ground for a com pound like 'shield-turtle,' and indeed Ebert says,2 'Der riicken des tieres ragte wie ein gleich einem schild gewolbter felsblock aus dem meere hervor' ; but, while it is true that Ger. Schild represents 'shield,' Krote does not mean 'turtle,' but 'toad.' Schildkrote, 'shield-toad,' might thus signify 'turtle'; but since the Greek xeAwn; already has this meaning, no real parallel to the German compound would result from the addition of a word or element signifying 'shield.'

Lowell's allusion (Ode to France) we find ourselves on familiar ground: Ye are mad, ye have taken A slumbering kraken For firm land of the Past.

Cf. Tennyson's early poem, The Kraken.

1Cf. p. Ixxv, above. Basil (Hex. 7. 3: Pair. Gr. 29. 150) apparently regards turtles and whales as of the same general class, and, so late as the sixteenth century, Rondelet (De Piscibus Marinis, Universal Aqua- tiHum Historic) classed turtles as medium-sized whales, while Gessner (Nomenclator Aquatilium Animalium, p. 183) would go no further than to call them cetacean.

2 Anglia 6. 244; cf. Mod. Lang. Notes 9. 65.

Ixxxii INTRODUCTION

In favor of the rendering 'aspine,' there are these considera tions :

1. The scholiast, as we have seen, admits it as a possibility.

2. In the line of Oppian cited above, the turtle is reported to couple with the eel, the two being thus treated as akin, just as both are classed among 'cruel sea-beasts' (i. 394). 1 This kin ship seems to be confirmed by the common belief in antiquity that the moray (murcena), a species of eel, couples with serpents.2

3. Pacuvius, as quoted by Cicero,3 attributes to the turtle a serpent's neck and a ferocious aspect (cervice anguina, aspectu truci) .

Turning from Oppian's do-TnSoeomt xeAoivr; to the form in the Physiologus, acrmBoxfXwvrj, we may note that the Armenian ver sion renders it by 'shield-turtle/4 though it immediately adds, 'similar to the dragon or the whale,' on which Cahier remarks : 'Cette fois, le mot ao-ms aura conduit en outre a 1'idee d'un serpent aquatique, ou dragon de mer.'

Against this may be set the following considerations:

1. The compound is rendered by 'asp- turtle' in Sophocles' Lexicon of Byzantine Greek,

2. Bearing in mind that Lat. aspis never means 'shield,' but always 'asp,' it is significant that the first element is left untrans lated in Latin. Thus5 : 'Aspis Chelone belua est immanis, quse a Latinis aspis testudo nominari potest.' Cahier's text B begins,6 'De Aspedocalone/ and proceeds, 'Est belua in mari quse dicitur

1 Antiquity believed in many hybrid animals, such as the leopard (Pliny 8. 17; Rabanus Maurus 8. i), the camelopard (Horace, Ep. 2. i. 195; Diodorus Siculus 2. 51), the progeny of the partridge and the domestic cock (Aristotle, De Gen. 2. 738 b). Add the griffin (Pausanias i. 24. 6), the chimsera (Homer, //. 6. 181), the Triton (Pausanias 9. 21. i), the centaur, the harpy, the mediaeval basilisk, the popular notions of the mermaid (cf. Horace, Art of Poetry 4), etc.

2 Oppian, Hal. i. 554 ff. ; Aelian, Hist. An. i. 50; 9. 66; Athenaeus, 7. 90; Pliny 9. 39; 32. 2; Nicander, Ther. 826-7; Basil, Hex. 7. 5 (cf. 7. 2) ; Ambrose, Hex. 5. 7.

8 De Div. 2. 64. 133.

* Cahier, Nouv. Melanges i. 129.

5 Mai, Class. Auct. 7. 590.

a Melanges 3. 253.

PHYSIOLOGUS Ixxxiii

aspido testudo'; his text C begins, 'De Ceto Magno Aspido- helunes,' and proceeds, 'Est csetus in mare, aspido helune.' The first element is found in a corrupt form in a Latin manuscript at Leipzig as fastilon1 (cf. the OE. fastito colon). In like manner the Icelandic has aspedo2; the Syrian version published by Land,3 aschelone; the Syrian version published by Tychsen, espes4; the Ethiopic version, Aspadakloni5.

3. In a tract entitled, On Female Companions,6 by Basil the Great (f 379), there is an important occurrence of the word

-TTtSoxeAwiT/.7 Basil is discoursing on the danger which lies in the association of unmarried religious, vowed to virginity, with unrelated women. He describes in eloquent terms the tempta tions incident to such association, and the blandishments to which the unfortunate monk would be exposed. While he does not quote Prov. 5. 3-5, as the Physiologus does,8 he more than once alludes to verses 3 and 4: 'Whose words are eloquent, and her voice sweet'9 ; 'Her sweet words shall at last be more bitter to thee than gall.'10 Accordingly, we may suppose that he had the Physiologus in mind, and that the occurrence of do-TriSoxeAwvi; is to be accounted for by this fact. On that supposition, it is signifi cant that the women in question are frequently referred to as being venomous, or resembling serpents. Thus :

All the prophets compare women to venomous beasts (815 D).

Her mind that of dragons, and her purposes those of serpents (817 A).

If the dragon is not harmed by living with the asp, neither will you be harmed (820 C).

Tell me, O wily beast, who . . . dost cherish in thy bosom the mind of the asp (820 D-82I A).

1 Carus, Gesch. der Zoologie, p. 127, note.

2 Hommel, p. 100. *Anec. Syr. 4. 86.

* Physiologus Syrus, p. 161.

B Hommel, p. 63.

"Migne, Patr. Gr. 30. 812-828; cf. Mod. Lang. Notes 9 (1894). 67.

7824C.

8 See above, p. Ixxiv.

6 817 A.

10 824 B.

Ixxxiv ' INTRODUCTION

To whom do I speak this? To a rational being who pursues the policy of a crawling dragon (821 C).

Finally, we come to the passage particularly in question :

Her sweet words shall at last be more bitter to thee than gall; her delicate aspect shall drag thee down to the gates of hell, whereas the love of a brother would purchase for thee the kingdom of heaven. Why dost thou prefer the feigned love of this asp-turtle to the genuine love of thy brother (824 B, C) ?

In the light of the earlier references to the serpent, and to the asp in particular, would it be natural to translate here by 'shield- turtle' P1

4. In this same tract, Basil, addressing the monks, exclaims with reference to Ps. 58. 4, 'You have shut your ears like the deaf asp.'2 This is developed in the Latin Physiologus published by Mai3 : 'Illae ne audiant vocem incantantis, ponunt capita sua ad terram, et unam quidem aurem suam premunt in terram, aliam vero aurem de cauda sua obturant.'4 The French of Guillaume le Clerc is (ed. Reinsch, 11. 2555-6) :

Qui ses oreilles clot e serre Od sa cue encontre la terre.

Now in the passage of the Voyage of Brandan which deals with our subject, Brandan. explains to his followers5: 'Insula non est ubi fuimus, sed piscis, prior omnium natantium in oceano, et

querit semper ut suam caudam jungat capiti suo, et non potest \

1 There is an explicit reference to the Physiologus-story by Peter of Sicily (Pair. Gr. 104. 1281 A, B), writing between 868 and 871, in which our word occurs.

2 817 A. The word in the Septuagint is 'asp' (AV. 'adder'). 8 Class. Auct. 7. 591.

4 For a sculptured representation of the adder pressing one ear against the ground, and stopping her other with her tail, see the picture of 'le beau Dieu' of Amiens Cathedral treading upon the lion and the adder (Ps. 91. 13) in Male, L'Art Religieux du XIII* Siecle en France, p. 61 For a miniature of the same subject, see Cahier, Melanges 2. 147 (also Nouv. Melanges i. 134), with accompanying Latin text (2. 149-150). For the asp as the type of the devil, see Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense 3. 92.

5 Ed. Wahlund, p. 24.

PHYSIOLOGUS 1XXXV

I pre longitudine.'1 It seems evident, then, that at this stage there is a relation between the sea-beast and the asp.

5. A miniature described by Strzygowski2 depicts the sea- \ monster, not as a whale, but with a serpent's body and a fish's [ tail — brown, with a golden head.

6. In the Avesta3 the sea-monster is a green horny dragon, i swallowing men and horses, poisonous. When Keresaspa once t undertook to cook his meat at noonday in an iron cauldron on [the monster's back, the latter started up, sprang away, and • dashed out the boiling water, while Keresaspa fled in fear.4

7. In the Ethiopic version the Aspadakloni is the 'chief of i snakes.'5

8. In Tychsen's Syriac version, the heading, translated into [Latin, is, 'De Aspide s[eu] Testudine,'6 and the story goes on (.concerning 'ilia testudo.'

From the evidence, then, there would seem to be no doubt I that the monster is conceived as possessing the qualities of a ser pent — which the turtle of course is — often designated as an 'asp' ; and that where it is denominated do-inSoxeAwvi; we should translate I 'asp-turtle,' and not 'shield-turtle/

THE PARTRIDGE

As in the case of the Panther, the Greek text of Lauchert (p. 251) may be taken as typical:

Jeremiah the prophet says [17. n] : 'The partridge gathers what she did not lay; so is a man gaining his wealth unjustly; in the midst of his days his riches shall leave him, and at his latter end he will be a fool.' The Naturalist said concerning the partridge that it broods and hatches the eggs of others. And when they are grown, each sort flies away and goes to its own, leaving the partridge alone.

1 See the French text on p. 27. The Middle English thinks of him as ?; trying to put his tail in his mouth (Percy Soc. Pub. 16. 8, 39).

2 Byz. Arch. 2. 25.

8 Sacred Books of the East 31. 234.

4 In op. cit. 23. 295, the snake, called Srvara, is yellow, and Keresaspa |,is cooking his food in a brazen vessel. At the time of noon the fiend felt

the heat, and stood upon his feet — at once a snake and, we may suppose, r a turtle.

5 Hommel, p. 63.

6 P. 161.

INTRODUCTION

In like manner does the devil1 get possession of the foolish in heart. But when they have come to full age, they begin to recognize their heavenly parents, our Lord Jesus Christ and the Church, the apostles and the prophets, and betake themselves to them. Well, therefore, did the Naturalist speak concerning the partridge.

Thorpe was the first to recognize that there was a gap after 3*. He said2 : 'Here the want of connexion, both in sense and gram matical construction, clearly shows that a leaf or more is wanting ; the latter part being merely the religious application of what has been related of the bird, if not the end of some other poem.' Grein3 thought that one leaf of the manuscript was wanting. If one leaf were missing, it would follow that about 65 lines of the poetry had been lost. But it is not necessary to accept this hy-: pothesis, for (i) there is no sign of such a missing leaf, and (2^ the loss may have been in an earlier manuscript, and the pages of that manuscript may easily have been smaller. To the latter alternative Sokoll4 objects that it would be odd if the gap id| another manuscript should exactly coincide with the end of a page in this one. Suppose, then, for the sake of argument, we assume the loss of one leaf of the Exeter Book,5 this would mean, supposing that both of the existing fragments belong to the Partridge, that the latter poem was about 80 lines long (Panther, 74; Whale, 89). Sokoll6 argues that the second fragment can hardly belong, then, to the Partridge, since the corresponding chapter of the Physiologus is shorter than those devoted to th^ Panther and the Whale; but his argument is vitiated by the fact that, according to him, these two poems occupy only about a page each in the MS., and that therefore the Partridge would be over twice as long as either, the truth being that the Panther and tho| Whale each occupy more than a leaf — not page. The Partridge, then, on the above supposition, would be longer than the Pant her y. and shorter than the Whale; but, as we have seen, the gap may

'So Rabanus Maurus (Migne, Pair. Lot. in. 249, 949), and similarly Eustathius (ibid. 53. 049) and Isidore (ibid. 82. 467). 2 Codex Exoniensis, p. 365. 8 Bibliothek i. 237.

4 Zum Angelsachsischen PhysiologuS, p. 8. BCf. Tupper, Jour. Eng. and Germ. Phil. n. 9, note 39. 8 Op. cit., p. 7.

PHYSIOLOGUS IXXXVU

have been due to a defect in an earlier manuscript, and therefore not be so great as Sokoll supposes.1

Sokoll's argument from this point on is of a piece with his mistaking a leaf for a page. Since there is no sign of a missing leaf, he assumes a missing quire — eight leaves — sufficient to con tain about seven versified chapters2 of the Physiologus. He next assumes that the fragmentary end of the Partridge is the close of the Charadrius. Now the Charadrius is a bird — No. 3 of the Greek Physiologus, No. 5 of Cahier's Latin MS. B. (supposed to stand nearest to the Old English) — which, brought to the bed side of a sick man, shows whether he is to recover or not. If the bird turns from him, he dies; if to him, the bird takes over his sickness. So Christ turned from the Jews, and to the Gentiles.3 To substantiate his view, Sokoll quotes Jn. I. n, to which there is no reference in the Greek Charadrius, as illustrating lines 5-11. Then, because in certain Latin manuscripts — not, be it observed, in Cahier's B and C — the Charadrius is followed by only one chapter, the Phoenix, Sokoll will have it that the author of the Old English Physiologus closed his version with the Charadrius, perhaps because he had already covered the Phoenix in our longer poem. Hence he would have dealt in succession with the par tridge, weasel, ostrich, turtle-dove, hart, salamander, and ape4 — following the order of MS. B — and would have ended with the charadrius, which in MS. B stands fifth in the total Physiologus. Moreover, since the author is not likely to have been ignorant of important parts of the Physiologus, and as there is no reason why he should have suppressed them, he must, according to Sokoll, have translated all the chapters which preceded the Panther; in other words, only three chapters out of a complete Old English Physiologus have come down to us.5

All these 'men in buckram' grow out of Sokoll's assumption that the Biblical passage versified toward the end of the Partridge

1 Cf. the gap in the Whale, lines 82b ff. 1 Cf. Angl. 6. 247. * Lauchert, p. 7.

4Lauchert, p. 109; Peebles, Mod. Phil. 8. 577; but cf. Ebert, Angl. 6. 247. 5 Sokoll, pp. 6-7.

Ixxxviii INTRODUCTION

belongs more naturally to the Charadrius. Let us see. Sokoll assumes that the passage in question is Jn. I. n : 'But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God' — a historical statement, while the poem requires direct address. Such direct address we find in 2 Cor. 6. 17, 18: 'Come out from among them (cf. n. 5-6a), . . . and touch not the unclean thing (6b-7a) ; and I will receive you (7b-Qa), and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters' (9b-n). This, too, is by St. Paul, as is Panther 70-74. Christ here represents 'the Lord Almighty,' in the character of father. In the Greek (p. Ixxxvi), Christ and the Church are the parents; the Ethiopic version says that they 'hear the name of their Father Christ'1; and the Latin B has the following important pas sage2 : 'Ubi vox Christi a parvulis f uerit audita, . . . evolant et se Christo commendant; qui statim eos potissimum paterno quodam munere et amore sub umbra alarum suarum ipse suscipit, et matri dat Ecclesiae nutriendos.'3 In the poem, it is true, the author, remembering that Christ frequently calls his disciples brethren (see note on na), reconciles this fact with the general tenor of the passage.

Since this quotation, then, is in perfect keeping with the 'improvement' of the Partridge, and since the poem concludes with a t/tow-passage, similar to that which forms the close of the Whale, there seems no reason to doubt that the fragments we have are. the beginning and end of the Partridge, immediately following the Whale. Hence it follows that the figment of a lost quire, and consequently of a series of lost chapters, is base less.

The traits here ascribed to the partridge do not seem to have been known to Aristotle, though he calls it4 a bird of an evil and cunning disposition. Aelian goes only so far as to say5 that they

xCf. Tennyson's 'And so thou lean on our fair father Christ' (Guine vere).

2 Cahier, Melanges 3. 248.

8 Apparently from Ambrose, Hex. 6. 3 (Pair. Lot. 14. 246-7); cf. Epist. 32 (16. 1071).

4 Hist. An. 9. 8.

B3- 16.

PHYSIOLOGUS

do not lay their eggs in the place where they brood them, fear ing other birds and flowers. Origen, however, cites1 as an authority a certain History of Animals (ev ry irtpl £oW lo-To/na). Rabanus Maurus makes this statement,2 apropos of the partridge :

Aiunt scriptores naturalis historise, tarn bestiarum et volucrum quam arborum herbarumque, quorum principes sunt apud Graecos Aristoteles et Theophrastus ; apud nos, Plinius Secundus : hanc perdicis esse naturam, ut ova alterius perdicis, id est, aliena, furetur, et eis incubet foveatque; cumque fetus adoleverint avolare ab eo, et alienum parentem relinquere.8

It is natural to suppose that the traits of the partridge may have been confused with those of the cuckoo, about which anti quity was tolerably well informed.4 According to a recent authority,5 the cuckoo waits till the bird she has chosen as foster- mother begins sitting, and then carries one of her own eggs in her claws, and deposits it in the selected nest, pushing out for the purpose one or two of the eggs already there. The fledgling stranger, as soon as it is strong enough, ousts the other eggs or nestlings. Meanwhile, its own parents watch near by — but not to feed it — until it is ready to fly away.

''Pair. Gr. 13. 565.

2 Migne, Pair. Lot. in. 948.

3 For references to patristic authorities in general, see note in Pair. Gr. - 455- Add Ephraem Syrus, Opp. Syr. 2. 130; Bochart, Hierosoicon

2. i. 12; Horapollo, ed. Leemans, p. 380.

4 Aristotle, H. A. 6. 7; 9. 20, 29; Pliny 10. 9; Aelian 3. 30; Oppian(P), Ixeut. i. ii ; etc.

5 Oliver G. Pike, Farther Afield in Bird Life.

THE TEXT OF THE POEMS

For the readings of the Elene, I have relied upon the collation of

Wiilker (properly Assmann), checked by the facsimiles of the Vercelli

Book; for those of the Phoenix, upon Gollancz, Wiilker, and Schlotterose ;

jfor the Physiologus, upon Wiilker. Emendations are enclosed in square

brackets, those by the present editor being. also italicized; common con-

i tractions are expanded without notice. Punctuation and the use of

(capitals are my own, as are the divisions of poems into sections, with their

i headings. The manuscript-divisions of the Elene are indicated in the

(variants; those of the Phoenix would seem to be (I) 1-84, (II) 85-181,

!(III) 182-264, (IV) 265-349, (V) 350-423,' (VI) 424-517, (VII) 518-588,

!(VIII) 589-677; and so Gollancz divides. The text of Lactantius is

:from Brandt (Corpus Script. Eccl. Lat., Vol. 27), with consonantal i

and u printed as / and v respectively.

The authors quoted in the variants are as follows (see the Bibliography) : Barn. = Barnouw. BB. =2 Bonner Beitrage. Bl. = Blackburn. Br. = Bright.

Con. = agreement of two following. Con.1 = Conybeare, 1814. Con.2 — Conybeare, 1826. Cos.1 = Cosijn, 1896. Cos.2 = Cosijn, 1898. Ett. r= Ettmuller. Forst. = Forster. Gm. = Grimm. Go. = Gollancz. Gr.1 = Grein, 1857-8. Gr.2 = Grein, 1865. Grdt. = Grundtvig. Hart = Hart. H.1 = Holthausen, 1905. H.2 = Holthausen, 1910. Holt.1 = Holthausen, 1899. Holt.2 = Holthausen, 1904. K. = Kemble. Kal. = Kaluza.

TEXT OF THE POEMS

Klaeb.1 = Klaeber, 1904 (Archiv).

Klaeb.2 = Klaeber, 1906.

Klip. = Klipstein.

K6. = Korner.

PBB. = Paul and Braune's Beitrage.

Schl. = Schlotterose.

Siev. = Sievers.

Sw. = Sweet.

Th. = Thorpe.

Tr.1 — Trautmann, 1898.

Tr.2 = Trautmann in Schlotterose's ed., 1908.

Tr.s = Trautmann, 1907. •

Wa. — Warth.

Wan. =i Wanley.

Wii. — Wiilker.

Z.1 = Zupitza, 1877.

Z.2 = Zupitza, 1899.

ELENE

i. CONSTANTINE AND HIS FOE PREPARE FOR WAR

5>a wges agangen geara hwyrftum tu hund ond J>reo geteled rimes, swylce Sritig eac, J)inggemearces, wintra for worulde, J)aes J)e Wealdend God 5 acenned wearS, cyninga Wuldor, in middangeard Jmrh mennisc heo, soSfsestra Leoht ; J>a wses syxte gear Constantmes caserdomes, J)set he Romwara in rice wearS

10 ahsefen, hildfruma, to hereteman.

Wses se l[of]hwata l[eo]dgeb[y]rga eorlum arf asst ; aet>el[i]nges weox rice under roderum; he wses riht cyning, guSwearfd] gumena. Hine God trymede

15 mserftum ond mihtum, J>aet he manegum wearS geond middangeard mannum to hroSer, werj)eodum to wrsece, sySSan wsepen ahof wiS het[t]endum.

Him waes hild boden, wiges woma. Werod samnodan

20 Huna leode ond HreSgotan;

foron fyrdhwate Francan ond Hu[g]as. Wseron hwate weras,

3 MS. xxx ; Gm. >rittig.— na MS. leod-; Gr.2 lind-; H? lof-.— nb MS. lind- ; Gr? leod- ; MS. -geborga ; Z.2 -gebyrga. — 12 MS. aeSelnges ; em. Th. — 14 MS. -wearS ; em. Th.-^i6 MS. -g; em. Th.; Gm. hroSre. — 18 MS. hetendum; em. Rieger (Zeitschrift f. D. Phil. 7. 52). — 21 MS. Hunas ; em. Z.1 — 22 No break in MS., but one assumed by Th., Gm., K., Z.1 — 22a MS. hwate; H." hearde; Wa. hwate weras waeron; 7Y.S waeron hwate haele?5as ; Klaeb. (Angl. 29. 271) swylce Hetware(-an). — 22b Ett. hildemecgas; Gr.1 on herebyrnan; Ko. here>reatas ; Siev. (Gott. Gel. Anz. 1882, p. 997) hilde gefysde; TV.3 heaSurofe weras; Klaeb. wseron hwate weras ; H.2 hearde for hwate.

4 ELENE

gearwe to guSe. Garas Hxtan,

wriSene waelhlencan; wordum ond bordum

25 hofon he[o]r[w]c[u]mbol. 3>a wseron heardingas sweotole gesamnod ond eal [sybj geador; for folca gedryht. FyrdleoS agol wulf on wealde, waelrune ne maS ; urigfeSera earn sang ahof

30 latmm on laste. Lungre scynde

ofer burgflocan] beadubreata msest hergum to hilde, swylce Huna cyning ymbsittendra awer meahte abannan to beadwe b[yrn]wlgendra.

35 For fyrda maest — feSan trymedon eoredcestum — paet on aelfylce deareSlacende on Danubie stsercedfyrhSe staeSe wicedon ymb J)ses wasteres wylm, werodes breahtme;

40 woldon Romwara rice gej)ringan, hergum ahySan.

Pasr wearS Huna cyme cuS ceasterwarum. Pa. se casere heht ongean gramum guSgelaecan under earhfaere ofstum myclum

45 bannan to beadwe, beran ut J)r3sce

rincas under roderum. Wseron Romware, secgas sigerofe, sona gegearwod wsepnum to wigge, J)eah hie werod Isesse haefdon to hilde Jjon[n]e Huna cining

50 ridon ymb rofne. Ponne rand dynede, campwudu clynede; cyning preate for, herge, to hilde. Hrefen uppe gol, wan ond waelfel. Werod waes on tyhte; hleopon hornboran, hreopan friccan;

25 MS. herecombol ; Z.1 -cumbol ; H? -woman. — 26 Gm. eal sweot geador; Cr.1 eal siSmaegen. geador; Siev. (Gott. Gel. Anz.} eal sib geador; Kb. siSwerod eal geador. — 31 MS. -enta; H.1 -locan. — 34 MS. burg-; Gr.1 byrn-?; H. byrn-. — 35 MS. for ::::: fyrda. — 49 MS. >one; Th. — 54a Th. hleowon; Ett. bleowon. — S4b Th. hreowan.

ELENE 5

55 mearh moldan traed. Msegen samnode, cafe, to cease.

Cyning waes afyrhted, egsan geaclad, siSSan elbeodige, Huna ond HreSa here, sceawedfe], Saet he on Romwara rices ende

60 ymb paes waeteres staeS werod samnode, maegen unrime. Modsorge waeg Romwara cyning ; rices ne wende for werodleste: haefde wigena to lyt, eaxlgestealna, wiS ofermaegene

65 hror[r]a to hilde.

2. THE VISION OF THE CROSS

Here wicode,

eorlas ymb aeSeling egstreame neah on neaweste nihtlangne fyrst, JDses J>e h[i]e feonda gefaer fyrmest gessegon. Pa wearS on slaepe sylfum aetywed

70 J>am casere, J)aer he on corSre swaef, sigerofum gesegen swefnes woma. Puhte him wlitescyne on weres hade hwit ond hiwbeorht haeleSa nathwylc geywed, aenlicra bonne he aar oS6e sI5

75 gesege under swegle. He of slaepe onbrsegd, eofurcumble bebeaht. Him se ar hraSe, wlitig wuldres boda, wiS bingode, ond be naman nemde — nihthelm toglad — : 'Constantmus, heht be Cyning engla,

80 wyrda Wealdend, waere beodan, duguSa Dryhten. Ne ondrasd bu Se, Seah be elbeodige egesan hwopan, heardre hilde. £»u to heofenum beseoh on wuldres Weard; pser t5u wraSe findest,

58 MS. sceawedon; em. Ten Brink (Zs. f. D. Alt., Anz. 5. 58). — 59 MS. he; Gr.1 >e; Ten Brink hie. — 60 Ett. samnodon?; Ten Brink samnodon. — 65 MS. hrora ; Gr.1 hrorra ? ; em. Z.1 — 68 MS. he ; em. Th.

6 ELENE

85 sigores tacen.'

He waes sona gearu

purh baes halgan hses, hreSerlocan onspeon, up locade, swa him se ar ahead, faele friSowebba. Geseah he fraetwum beorht wlitifg] wuldres treo ofer wolcna hrof

90 golde ge[g]lenged; gimmas Hxtan.

Waes se blaca beam bocstafum awriten beorhte ond leohte: 'Mid bys beacne Su on bam frecnan fsere feond oferswISesS, geletest Iat5 werod.'

Pa. bset leoht gewat,

95 up siSode, ond se ar somed,

on claenra gemang. Cyning waes py bliSra

ond pe sorgleasra, secga aldor,

on fyrhSsefan burh pa fsegeran gesyhS.

3. THE HOLY STANDARD IS VICTORIOUS

Heht pa onlice aeSelinga hleo,

100 beorna beaggifa, swa he paet beacen geseah, heria hildfruma, baet him on heofonum ser geiewed wearS, ofstum myclum, Constantmus, Cristes rode, tireadig cyning, tacen gewyrcan.

105 Heht pa on uhtan mid serdaege

wigend wreccan ond [to] wsepenpraece hebban heorucumbul, ond paet halige treo him beforan ferian, on feonda gemang, beran beacen Codes. Byman sungon

no hliide for hergum. Hrefn weorces gefeah; urigfeSra earn sI8 beheold, waelhreowra wig; wulf sang ahof, holtes gehleSa. Hildegesa stod. Pser waes borda gebrec ond beorna geprec,

115 heard handgeswing ond herga [cjring,

89 MS. wliti; em. Gm. — 90 MS. gelenged; em. Th. — 99 Before this line MS. has II. — 106 MS. ond ; Wa. ond to ? — 107 Th. om. hebban. — 115 MS. gring; em. Ett.

ELENE

sySSan heo earhfasre asrest metton. On paet faege folc flana scuras, garas ofer geolorand on gramra gemang, het[t]end heor[u]grimme, hildenaedran,

1 20 purh fingra geweald forS onsendan. Stopon stiShidige, stundum wraecon, brsecon bordhre[o]i5an, bil in dufan, brungon praechearde. Pa. wae^ puf hafen, segn for sweot[u]m, sigeleoS galen.

125 Gylden grima, garas Hxtan

on her[e]felda. HseSene [c]rungon, feollon friSelease. Flugon instaepes Huna leode, swa paet halige treo arseran heht Romwara cyning

130 heaSofremmende. Wurdon heardingas wide towrecene. Sume wig fornam; sume unsofte aldor generedon on pam heresISe; sume healfcwice flugon on faesten ond feore burgon

135 aefter stanclifum, stede weardedon ymb Danubie; sume drenc fornam on lagostreame llfes set ende. Da waas modigra maegen on luste, ehton elpeoda ot5 past aefen forS

140 fram daeges orde; daroSfas] flugon, hildenaedran. Heap wass gescyrded, Ia5ra lindwered; lythwon becwom Huna herges ham eft panon. E>a waes gesyne past sige forgeaf

145 Constantino Cyning aelmihtig

aet bam daegweorce, domweorSunga, rice under roderum, purh his rode treo.

119 MS. hetend; em. Kluge (Litbltt. 1884, p. Jjp) ; MS. heora-; Th. heoru-?; em. Gr.1 — 122 MS. -hreSan; em. Gm. — 124 MS. sweotolum; em. TH.— I26 MS. herafelda; em. Gm.; MS. grungon; em. Ett. — 140 MS. darotS aesc ; em. Z.1 — 141 MS. gescyrded ; Gm. gescyrted ; Z.1 gescynded.

8 ELENE

4. THE MIRACLE BEING EXPLAINED, CONSTANTINE IS CONVERTED

Gewat pa heriga helm ham eft panon huSe hremig — hild waes gesceaden —

150 wigge geweorSod. Com pa wigena hleo pegna Create prySbo[l]d se[c]an, beadurof cyning burga neosan.

Heht pa wigena weard pa wisestan snude to sionoSe, pa pe snyttro craeft

155 purh fyrngewrito gefrigen haefdon; heoldon higepancum haeleSa rsedas. Da paes fricggan ongan folces aldor, sigerof cyning, ofer sid weorod, wsere J)ser aenig yldra o$8e gingra

1 60 J>e him to sot5e secggan meahte,

galdrum cySan, hwaet se God wsere, b[lse]des Brytta, 'J>e J)is his beacen waes J>e me swa leoht o8ywde, ond mine leode generede, tacna torhtost, ond me tir forgeaf,

165 wigsped wi$ wraSum, J>urh J>aet wlitige treo.' Hio him andsware aenige ne meahton agifan togenes, ne ful geare cuSon sweotole gesecggan be J)am sigebeacne. Pa. J)a wisestan wordum cwaedon

170 for J)am heremaegene J)aet hit Heofoncyninges tacen waere, ond J>aes tweo nsere. Pa. J)aet gefrugnon J)a J>urh fulwihte laerde waeron, him waes leoht sefa, f erhft gef eonde — ]}eah hira f ea wseron —

175 Saet hie for J)am casere cy^an moston godspelles gife, hu se gasta Helm — in prynesse prymme geweor^ad — acenned wearS, cyninga Wuldor;

151 MS. -bord; em. Sarrazin (Zs. f. D. Phil. 32. 548); MS. stenan; Gm. scenan; K'6. stun (i) an? stendan?; Sarrazin secan. — 156 Gvn. haeleCas. — 159 MS. oSSe; Tr. (Kynewulf, p. 24) Se? — 162 MS. boldes; Ko. goldes ; Z.1 blaedes ; H? bledes.

ELENE 9

ond hu on galgan wearS Codes agen Beam

1 80 ahangen for hergum heardum witum, alysde leoda beam of locan deofla, geomre gastas, ond him gife sealde burh ba ilcan gesceaft be him geywed wearS sylfum on gesyhSe, sigores [to] tacne

185 wiS beoda brsece; ond hu Sy briddan daege of byrgenne beorna Wuldor, of deafte, aras, Dryhten ealra haeleSa cynnes, ond to heofonum astah. Bus gleawllce gastgerynum

190 saegdon sigerofum swa fram Silvestre laerde waeron. ^t bam se leodfruma fulwihte onfeng, ond bast f orS geheold on his dagana tid, D^htne to willan. Da wses on saelum sinces brytta,

195 nTSheard cyning: wass him mwe gefea

befolen in fyrhSe; wass him frofra maest ond hyht[a] [h]ihst heofonrices Weard. Ongan ba Dryhtnes K. daeges ond nihtes burh Castes gife georne cySan,

200 ond hine, soSHce, sylfne getengde

goldwine gumena in Codes beowdom, aescrof , unslaw. ,

5. CONSTANTINE ORDERS THE SEARCH FOR THE ROOD

Pa se aeSeling fand, leodgebyrga, burh Iarsmit5as, guSheard, garbrist, on Codes bocum 205 hwslr ahangen waes heriges beorhtme on rode treo rodora Waldend aefstum burh inwit, swa [hie] se ealda feond forlaerde ligesearwum, leode fortyhte, ludea cyn, baet hie God sylfne

184 MS. tacne ; Z.1 tacen ; Tr.s to tacne. — 194 Before this line MS. has III. — 197 MS. hyht nihst; Z.1 hyhta hihst; Ko. hyhta nihst; Wu. hyhta nihst. — 207 MS. swa; Siev. (Angl. i. 579) swa hie.

ELENE

21 o ahengon, herga Fruman; — baes hie in hynSum

sculon

to wldan feore wergSu dreogan. Pa waes Cristes lof bam casere on firhSsefan; [he waes] for8 gemyndig ymb bast maere treo ; ond ba. his modor het

215 feran f[lo]dwege folca breate to ludeum, georne secan wigena breate hwaer se wuldres beam halig under hrusan hyded waere, rod.

• 6. THE VOYAGE AND THE LANDING

Elene ne wolde

220 bass sI8 fates ssene weorSan,

ne 5aes wilgifan word gehyrwan, hiere sylfre suna, ac waes sona gearu wif on willsIS, swa hire weoruda helm, byrnwiggendra, beboden haefde.

225 Ongan ba ofstllce eorla mengu to flote fysan. Fearo6hengestas ymb geofenes stae8 gearwe stodon, sselde ssemearas, sunde getenge. Da waes orcnaswe idese si^faet,

230 siSt5an waeges [w]elm werode gesohte. I>ser wlanc manig set Wendelsae on staeSe stodon. Stundum wrsecon of er mearcpa^u, maegen aef ter 68rum ; ond pa gehlodon hildesercum,

235 bordum ond ordum, byrnwigendum, werum ond wifum wseghengestas.

Leton ba ofer fifelwaeg famige scrlban

213 Before for$ Z.2 assumes the loss of two hemistichs, such as faeste bewunden, folces aldor (hyrde, raeswa, etc., but not fruma) ; Pogatscher (Angl. 23. 289) he waes forS. — 215 MS. fold-; em. Gr: — 217 MS. Create; Ten Brink werode? — 229 Th. on cnawen; Gm. (p. 115) oncnawe?; K. oncnaewe. — 230 MS. helm; Gm. holm; Z.1 welm. — 23 MS. -pa&u; Th. -watSu. — 237 MS. fifel-; H.2 fifl-.

ELENE II

bronte brimbis[s]an; bord oft onfeng

of er earhgeblond ySa swengas ; 240 sae swinsade. Ne hyrde ic sift ne aer

on egstreame idese lasdan,

on merestrsete, maegen faeg[e]rre.

Paer [gesion meahte], se 8one sI6 beheold,

brecan ofer baeSweg brimwudu snyrgan 245 under s[w]ellingum, ssemearh plegean,

wadan waegflotan. Wigan wseron bliSe,

collenf erhSe ; cwen siSes gef eah. Sybban to hySe hringedstefnan

ofer lagofaesten geliden haefdon , 250 on Creca land, ceolas leton

aet sae[w]aroSe s[u]nde bewrecene,

aid yS[h]ofu, oncrum faeste

on brime bidan beorna gebinges,

hwon[n]e heo sio guScwen gumena breate 255 ofer eastwegas eft gesohte.

Daer waes on eorle eSgesyne

brogden byrne ond bill gecost,

geatolic guSscrud, grimhelm manig,

senlic eoforcumbul. Waeron aescwigan, 260 secggas ymb sigecwen, sISes gefysde:

fyrdrincas frome foron on luste

on Creca land, caseres bodan,

hilderincas hyrstum gewerede;

baer waes gesyne sincgim locen 265 on bam herebreate, hlafordes gifu.

Waes seo eadhreSige Elene gemyndig,

briste on gebance, beodnes willan,

georn on mode baet hlo Iude[a]

ofer herefeldas heape gecoste 270 lindwigendra land gesohte,

238 MS. ->isan ; em. Z? — 242 MS. f aegrre ; em. Th. — 243 MS. meahte ,?esion; em. Wa. — 245 MS. spell-; em. Th. — 251 MS. fearoSe; Krapp \(Mod. Phil. 2. 407) -wearotSe; MS. sande; Gr.1 sunde?; Z.1 sunde. — 252 MS. -liof u ; em. Th. — 254 MS. hwone ; em. Gr.1 — 268 MS. ludeas ; Z.1 ludea?; Z.' ludea.

12 ELENE

secga Create ; swa hit siSSan gelamp ymb lytel fsec baet Saet leodmaegen, guSrofe haeleb, to Hierusalem cwomon in ba ceastre corSra mseste, 275 eorlas sescrofe, mid ba aeSelan cwen.

7. HELENA'S FIRST EXHORTATION

Heht Sa gebeodan burgsittendum

bam snoterestum side ond wide

geond ludeas, gumena gehwylcum,

me6elh[e]gende, on gemot cuman, 280 ba Se deopllcost Dryhtnes geryno

burh rihte se reccan cuSon.

Da waes gesamnod of sldwegum

maegen unlytel ba Se Moyses a*

reccan cuSon ; bser on rime waes 285 breo [busendu] baera leoda

alesen to lare.

Ongan ba leoflic wif

weras Ebrea wordum negan:

'Ic baet gearolice ongiten haebbe,

burg witgena wordgeryno 290 on Codes bocum, bset ge geardagum

wyrSe waeron Wuldorcyninge,

Dryhtne dyre ond daedhwaete.

Hwaet, ge [ealle] snyttro unwislice,

wraSe, wiSw[u]rpon, ba ge wergdon bane 295 be eow of wergSe burh his wuldre[s] miht,

fram llgcwale, lysan bohte,

of haeftnede. Ge mid horu speowdon

276 Before this line MS. has IIII. — 279 MS. -hengende; Gm. -hegende — 285 MS. m ; . Gm. >usend ; Siev. (PBB. 10. 5/5) Jmsendu. — 293* M5 snyttro; K. swicon snyttro; Ten Brink (Zs. f. D. Alt., Anz. 5. 59) ealr snyttro ; H.1 ealle. — 2Q3b MS. unwislice ; Gm. unwislice swicon ? ; Gr. soS unwislice; Gr? swiSe unwislice; Siev. (Angl. I. 579) swicoi unwislice?; Cos. (Tijdschrift i. 144) samwislice; Z? . . . unwislice.-