A disquisition upon Etruscan vases; displaying their probable connection with the shows at Eleusis, and the Chinese Feast of Lanterns, with explanations of a few of the principal allegories depicted upon them ... / [Anon].

  • Christie, James, 1773-1831.
Date:
1806
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A disquisition upon Etruscan vases; displaying their probable connection with the shows at Eleusis, and the Chinese Feast of Lanterns, with explanations of a few of the principal allegories depicted upon them ... / [Anon]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    28/186 (page 6)
    not probable that they first applied it to the purposes of astro¬ nomy ?—for that the dances of the Idaei Dactyli were allegorical, and had reference to astronomy, we may be certain ;* and if this be admitted, it is probable that the application of the Plinthion to astronomical purposes by the Egyptians, was no original invention of that learned people. I am well aware of the objection that will be raised against my conjecture from the authorities of numerous writers, who refer the Idaei Dactyli to Ida in Crete, instead of the mountain of the same name in Phrygia ; but it will scarcely be denied me, that the Idaei Dactyli were priests of Cybele, who was properly styled the Phrygian Goddess ; so that I have every reason to think that a similar order of priests was established in Phrygia and Crete, who celebrated the same orgies to the same goddess, on two mountains known by the same name. This difficulty removed, the reader will expect my reasons for believing that the Idaei Dactyli, who invented the Iltrlm, ap¬ plied it to the purposes of astronomy. This I conclude from the nature of the game, wherein a circumvention effected by the pebbles, would, if properly accepted, have illustrated the phaenomenon of an eclipse. * The dances of the Salian priests, who, in the opinion of Dionysius of Halicar* * nassus, corresponded with the Grecian Curetes, were certainly astronomical. Calli¬ machus says, that upon the birth of Jupiter—“ OuAa dt Ks^tej <ri zrgikiv up%r\<nxvTo Hymn, in jfov. v. 52. “ The Curetes danced the Tide dance.” Or,—“ They danced the Fire dance to appease the All-healing deity.” This was celebrated, no doubt, at the opening of the new year, upon the conversion of the sun from the lower hemisphere. The reader will observe, that I consider the Idaei Dactyli and the Curetes to be the same ; in this I am justified by Onomacritus, by whom the latter are styled—“ At¬ tendants upon the Mother of the Gods, in her frantic orgies on the mountains:”— Mjjtjoj o/)E(0]t*a<rvvoTrxovii. Hymn. XXX. v. 5.