Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder.

  • Samuel Burder
Date:
1802
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Oriental customs: or an illustration of the sacred Scriptures, by an explanatory application of the customs and manners of the Eastern nations, and especially the Jews. Therein alluded to, together with observations on many difficult and obscure texts, collected from the most celebrated travellers, and the most eminent critics / by Samuel Burder. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    399/448 (page 371)
    to those dissolute ceremonies called the Bacchanalia, that were celebrated by the heathens in honour of him whom they called the god of wine. While these rites continued, men and women made it a point of their religion to intoxicate themselves, and run about the streets, fields, and vineyards, singing and shouting in a wild and tumultuous manner; in opposition to which extravagant vociferations, the use of devout psal- mody is with great propriety recommended. Plato somewhere tells us, that there was hardly a sober per- son to be found in the whole Attican territories during the continuance of these detestable solemnities. Doddridge in loc. No. 544.—vi. 16. Fiery darts.] This is evidently an allusion to those javelins or arrows, -which were sometimes used by the ancients in sieges and battles. Arrian (de Exped. Alex. lib. 2.) mentions TjvpC$opct Avj, fire-bearing darts, and Thucydides (lib. ii. 75.) tsvpQopoi oiqoi, fire-bearing arrows. Livy (lib. xxi. cap. 8.) calls a weapon of this kind a falaric^which he describes as a javelin surrounded at the lower part with combusti- ble matter, which, when it was set on fire, the weapon was darted against the enemy. B B 2