tion. The Israelites tempted God in the wilderness of sin, when they murmured for bread, and they proved him when he furnished them with manna. They tempted him at Rephidim, afterwards called Massah, where they murmured for water, and said, Is the Lord aniong us or not? And they proved him when he made water to issue from the rock in Horeb to remove their thirst. At Sinai they provoked God by making a golden calf, and worshipping the work of their own hands. At another place they tempted him by demanding flesh to eat, and they proved him when he sent quails to gratify their sensual appetites. In these and in a variety of other instances they tempted God, proved him, and saw his works forty years. The supply of manna and of water was indeed uninterruptedly continued, but in the other things there was a succession; and the sum of the series amounts to forty years. The words of the apostle may be arranged and translated in the same manner, as it has been proposed to render the verse which has been subjected to a critical examination: "Harden not your hearts as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness; where, through the space of forty years, your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works." Idle, near Bradford, Dec. 1828. W. V. CORRUPTION OF DEMIURGUS. In the ancient Scholia on the Thebaid of Statius, which by some are ascribed to Lutatius, or Luctatius Placidus, or, as he is called by others, Placidus Lactantius, there is a passage in which it is asserted that the highest god, of whom Statius speaks in the 4th book, is called Demogorgon. But the lines in Statius where this occurs are as follow: "Scimus enim et quidquid dici, noscique timetis, "Dicit [Statius] Deum Demogorgona summum," says the scholiast. On this, however, Gale in his notes on the fifth section of Iamblichus de Mysteriis, rightly observes, "Cæterum Lactantii illum locum, a multis tentatum, libet hic in melius, ut spero, restituere.— Quis sit iste Demogorgon, vel, ut alii scribunt ineptè, Dæmogorgon? Wierus de Præst. Dæmonum inter Magos infames commemorat Demogorgona (aliis Damigeronta. Scholiastes Ms.) Adno tat ad Lucani vi. nescio quis scholiastes, "ipse Dæmogorgon omni Gorgone quam exteri timent superior." Atqui nomen hoc nusquam alibi extat, præterquam in hoc Lactantii loco corrupto. Lego igitur Demiurgum. "Cujus nomen (inquit Lactantius) scire non potest." Enimvero si nomen sit Demogorgon, jam illud scimus. Porro paucis infra Lactantius docet, se tradere ea, quæ scribit de Deo isto, ex Pythagora, Platone, et Tagete. Jam Demiurgus apud Platonem in Timæo ακατονόμαστος. Prior, however, to Gale, Farnaby appears to have conjectured that Dæmogorgon is the Demiurgus. For in his note on the lines in the sixth book of Lucan's Pharsalia, "Paretis? an ille Compellandus erit, quo nunquam terra vocato he observes: "Demogorgon Deorum princeps, sive Demiurgus ille sit (Platonis) Deus summus, omnium rerum creator, cujus nomen arcanum et ineffabile inter cætera Deorum nomina citare nefas, nisi summa urgente necessitate." But that Farnaby's Lucan was prior to the Iamblichus of Gale is evident. For the first edition of the former, as we learn from Fabricius, was Lond. 1618, 8vo. and the second edition, Francof. 1624, 8vo. ; but of Gale's Iamblichus there is only one edition, and that was published at Oxford, 1678, fol. It is singular, therefore, that Gale should claim the merit of a discovery which Farnaby prior to him had made; and the singularity is greatly increased when we consider that Gale, being a scholar and a schoolmaster, ought not to have been ignorant of the contents of Farnaby's Lucan. Gale, too, in asserting that the Demiurgus according to Plato in the Timæus is akaтоvoμaσтos, i. e. nameless, is egregiously mistaken. For Plato says of this divinity in the Timæus: τον μεν ουν ποιητην και πατέρα τουδε του παντος ευρειν τε εργον, και ευροντα, εις απαντας αδυνατον λεγειν : i. e. It is therefore difficult to discover the maker and father of this universe, and, when found, it is impossible to speak of him to all men." But the Demiurgus or Jupiter, both according to the Chaldean and Grecian theology, is not the highest god; since he subsists at the extremity of the intellectual triad of gods, which consists of Saturn, Rhea, and Jupiter.' Hence he is not perfectly ineffable. Of the great first principle, however, of all things, or the one, Plato says in the Parmenides: Oud' αρα ονομα εστιν αυτή, ουδε λόγος, ουδε τις επιστήμη, ουδε αισθησις, ουδε δοξα. Ου φαινεται. Ουδ' ονομαζεται αρα, ουδε λέγεται, ουδε δοξα. ξεται, ουδε γιγνωσκεται, ουδε τι των οντων αυτου αισθανεται. Ουκ εοικεν : i. e. 66 Neither therefore does any name pertain to it, nor See this copiously and beautifully unfolded by Proclus in Plat. Theol. lib. v. And in the same book, p. 308. see also the above passage from the Timæus most satisfactorily explained. discourse, nor any science, nor sense, nor opinion. It does not appear that there can. Hence, it can neither be named nor spoken of, nor conceived by opinion, nor be known, nor perceived by any being. So it seems." To these two causes, viz. the Demiurgus and the ineffable principle of all things, Plato likewise alludes as follows, in his sixth Epistle : Και τον των παντων Θεον ηγέμονα των τε οντων και των μελλοντων, του τε ηγεμονος και αιτιου πατέρα κυριον επομνύντας ἐν αν οντως φιλοσοφωμεν εισομεθα παντες σαφως εις δυναμιν ανθρωπων evdayorov: i. e. "And swearing by that God who is the leader ευδαιμονων of all things present and future, and by the father and lord of this leader and cause, whom we shall all of us, if we truly philosophise, clearly know, as far as this is possible to be effected by felicitous men." This likewise is corroborated by the following very remarkable passage from the works of Ficinus: "In Epistola ad Syracusanos inquit Plato, Mundi quinetiam architectum verbis exprimi vulgo non posse, testis est is meus, multo minus architecti patrem." Ficin. Op. tom. ii. p. 1189. I only add, that Milton, notwithstanding his great learning, appears to have had no conception that the word Demogorgon is a corruption of Demiurgus: for in the second book of his Paradise Lost, v. 965, he says, "and by them stood Orcus and Ades, and the dreaded name Manor Place, Walworth. THOMAS TAYLOR. ON THE WRITINGS OF AUSONIUS. FROM ROM the era of the civil wars to the reign of Trajan, the series of extant Latin poets, though unequally divided among the different periods, continues tolerably uninterrupted. Lucretius, Catullus, the Augustan constellation, Phædrus, Lucan, Persius, and Seneca, and last, and not least in number or excellence, the third great cluster of wits who illustrated the reigns of Domitian and Trajan-carry on, though not all in metal of the same purity or brightness, the chain of which Father Ennius was the commencing link. At this latter point, however, a great and remarkable chasm ensues. From the times of Trajan to those of Theodosius, a space of two hundred years, with the exception of the eclogues of Calpurnius, one or two indifferent ecclesiastical poets, and perhaps Where Ficinus found this passage I know not; for it is not in any of the Epistles of Plato that are now extant. a few fragments, no relics of Roman poetry exist; and had the writings of Ausonius and Claudian likewise perished; (for Sidonius and his compeers are scarcely worth mentioning in this view, and the religious poets cannot well be considered as belonging to the old stock,) the line of classical Latin poets would have terminated with Juvenal, Martial, and Statius. Of this literary phenomenon we shall not attempt the solution. How much is to be attributed to the usual ravages of time, how much to the wilful destruction of manuscripts, and how much to the inferior merit of the poets themselves, their transient popularity, or the diminished cultivation of the art, we leave it to others to inquire. It is more to our present purpose to observe, that, although the stamina of Roman poetry remained the same, the lapse of so many ages must have effected an important change in its accidents, in its forms, in its language, in the feelings which were its animating spirit, and in the subjects on which it was employed. True it is, that the effect was not more than proportionate to the cause; on the contrary, when all circumstances are considered, it is rather remarkable that so much of the original features of the muse of Latium remains discernible. This is more the case with Claudian than with Ausonius; for Claudian, whether owing to his own better judgment, or to the happy accident of his being born in a Grecian city, which emancipated him in a great measure from the influence of vernacular corruptions, as well as from other causes of deterioration, appears to have modelled himself, as far as was practicable, on the writers of a more fortunate era. He has certainly imbibed no small portion of their style and spirit; so much so, that though it would be going too far to class him unreservedly with the poets of the silver age, the affinity between them is very considerable; as they who are familiar at the same time with his writings, and with the Sylvæ and Thebaid of Statius, will at once acknowlege. Still, however, the transforming effects of time itself, the changes in manners and institutions, the gradual amalgamation of the conquered races with the conquerors, the introduction of a new religion, rooting up so many old national affections and substituting others in their stead; these and other co-operating causes cannot but have left a deep and visible impress on the Roman mind, and consequently on the Roman literature; and in passing, as in the present instance we are compelled to do, immediately from the authors of the one age to those of the other, we naturally expect to find alterations somewhat similar to those which take place in the features and disposition of an old acquaintance revisited by us after an absence of many years. Of this new character, as exhibited in the poetry of the nation, (for with the still greater revolutions in prose we have nothing to do,) Ausonius may be taken as the representative; both because in him it is more fully marked than in his contem porary, and because, from the greater variety of his works, and the lighter subjects on which his talent is, in a great measure, employed, it has in him developed itself more minutely. To those, therefore, whose intimacy with the youth and manhood of Latin poetry is such as to make them feel an interest in the productions of its declining years, the works of Ausonius will be no unpleasing study. Of his personal merits and defects we shall shortly have to speak. Of the life and fortunes of Ausonius (more fortunate in this respect than many greater men) copious information remains; owing partly, indeed, to his own communicativeness, and the personal nature of many of his writings. Decimus Magnus Ausonius was the son of Julius Ausonius, a physician of Bourdeaux, eminent alike for his professional skill and his private worth, concerning whom his son, in the first of the Parentalia, thus delivers the opinion of his surviving contemporaries : Ut nullum Ausonius, quem sectaretur, habebat; His mother, Æmilia Æonia, was descended from the ancient nobility of the Sequani. It was at the same city of Bourdeaux, then florishing in arts and civilisation, and of which he may be considered as the oldest recorded worthy, that our poet was born. Having received an excellent education under the care of a learned relative, he began life as a schoolmaster; in which capacity he shortly rose to such eminence, that he attained to the rhetorical chair of Bourdeaux, one of those public professorships which, in imitation of Alexandria, had long been established in the principal cities of the empire. His fame still spreading, he was invited to Rome by the then emperor, Valentinian the First, who appointed him tutor to his son Gratian. By both these princes he was held in high regard. He accompanied Valentinian on several of his military expeditions; and on the accession of Gratian to the throne, was elevated successively to the prefectures of Illyricum and of Gaul, and finally (A. D. 374) to the consulship; which even in those days (see Claudian de Consulatu Stilichonis) was looked up to as one of the highest of human distinctions. Of his wife, Ottusia Lucana, from whom he was separated by deathi after a brief union, and for whose sake he continued a widower during the remainder of a long life, he has himself spoken in some touching verses. On the death of Gratian, though favored by We use this term with some latitude, inasmuch as, strictly speaking, the termination of Ausonius's literary career nearly coincided with the beginning of Claudian's. Considered, however, with regard to the place they occupy in the history of ancient poetry, and the state of literature which they indicate, they may be considered as contemporaries. |