wards buried: his other wives efteem this an affliction, and it is imputed to them as a great difgrace. 267 VI. The other Thracians have a custom of selling their children, to be carried out of their country. To their young women they pay no regard, fuffering them to connect themselves indifcriminately with men; but they keep a strict guard over their wives, and purchase them of their parents at an immense price. To have punctures on the fkin is with them a mark of nobility, to be without thefe is a teftimony of mean defcent: the most honourable life with them is a life of indolence; the moft contemptible that of an hufbandman. Their 8 way to this prejudice, is one of thofe numberlefs inconfiftencies which in all parts of the world degrade the human mind.”—Ser Raynal, vol. i. 91. The remark, in the main, is juft, but the author, I fear, meant to infinuate that practices contrary to reafon naturally proceed from the doctrines he mentions; a suggeítion which, though very worthy of the clafs of writers to which he belongs, has not reafon enough in it to deserve a serious reply.-T. • Punctures on their fkin.]-If Plutarch may be credited, the Thracians in his time made these punctures on their wives, to revenge the death of Orpheus, whom they had murdered Phanocles agrees with this opinion, in his poem upon Orpheus, of which a fragment has been preserved by Stobæus. If this be the true reason, it is remarkable that what in its origin was a punishment, became afterwards an ornament, and a mark of no*bility.-Larcher. Of fuch great antiquity does the cuftom of tattaowing appear to have been, with descriptions of which the modern voyages to the South Sea abound.-T. fupreme 1 844 77 t TERPSICHORE. 373 202. fupreme delight is in war and plunder.-Such are VII. The gods whom they worship are Mars, 232 Bacchus and Diana: befides thefe popular gods, and in preference to them, their princes worship Mercury. They swear by him alone, and call themfelves his defcendants. VIII. The funerals of their chief men are of this kind: For three days the deceafed is publicly exposed; then having facrificed animals of every description, and uttered many and loud lamentations, they celebrate a feaft, and the body is finally either • Bacchus.]-That Bacchus was worshipped in Thrace, is attested by many authors, and particularly by Euripides: in the Rhefus, attributed to that poet, that prince, after being slain by 4 Ulyffes, was tranfported to the caverns of Thrace by the mufe who bore him, and becoming a divinity, he there declared the oracles of Bacchus. In the Hecuba of the fame author, Bacchus is called the deity of Thrace. Some placed the oracle of Bacchus near mount Pangaa, others near mount Hamus.Larcher. 37 1 Celebrate a feast.]-It appears from a paffage in Jeremiah, that this mixture of mourning and feafting at funerals. was very common amongst the Jews: "Both the great and the small shall die in this land: they fhall not be buried, neither shall men lament for them, nor cut themselves, nor make themselves bald for them. "Neither shall men tear themselves for them in mourning,, to comfort them for the dead; neither fhall men give them the cup of confolation to drink for their father or for their mother. 1.2 313 3 3 223 either burned or buried. They afterwards raise a mound of earth" upon the fpot, and celebrate games 12 of various kinds, in which each particular contest has a reward affigned suitable to its nature. - IX. With respect to the more northern parts of this region, and its inhabitants, nothing has been yet decifively afcertained. What lies beyond the Ifter, is a vast and almoft endless fpace. The whole "Thou shalt not also go into the house of feasting, to fit with them to eat and to drink."-xvi. 6, 7, 8. The fame custom is still observed in the countries of the east. -T. Mound of earth.]-Over the place of burial of illuftrious perfons, they raised a kind of tumulus of earth. This is well expreffed in the « ingens aggeritur tumulo tellus," of Virgil. -Larcher. The practice of raifing barrows over the bodies of the deceased was almost universal in the earlier ages of the world. Homer mentions it as a common practice among the Greeks and Trojans. Virgil alludes to it as ufual in the times treated of in the Æneid. Xenophon relates that it obtained among the Perfians. The Roman historians record that the fame mode of interring took place among their countrymen; and it appears to have prevailed no lefs among the ancient Germans, and many other uncivilized nations.-See Coxe's Travels through Poland, &c. 12 Celebrate games.]-It is impoffible to fay when funeral games were firft inftituted. According to Pliny, they existed before the time of Thefeus; and many have fuppofed that the famous games of Greece were in their origin funeral games. The best defcription of thefe is to be found in Homer and in Virgil. In the former, thofe celebrated by Achilles in honour of Patroclus; in the latter, thofe of Eneas in memory of his father.-T. TERPSICHORE. 375 of this, as far as I am able to learn, is inhabited by the Sigynæ, a people who in drefs refemble the Medes; their horfes are low in stature, and of a feeble make, but their hair grows to the length of five digits; they are not able to carry a man, but, yoked to a carriage, are remarkable for their swiftnefs, for which reafon carriages are here very com mon. The confines of this people extend almost to the Eneti" on the Adriatic. They call themfelves a colony of the Medes 14; how this could be, I am not able to determine, though in a long feries of time it may not have been impoffible. The Sigynæ are called merchants" by the Ligurians, 13 Eneti, or rather Heneti, which afpirate, represented by the Eolic digamma, forms the Latin name Veneti. Their horfes were anciently in great estimation. See the Hippolytus of Euripides, ver. 230. Homer fpeaks of their mules.-T. A 14 Colony of the Medes.]-Strabo fays that this people obferved in a great measure the cuftoms of the Perfians: thus the1035 people whom Herodotus calls Medes might be considered as genuine Perfians, according to his cuftom of confounding their names, if Diodorus Siculus had not decided the matter, 15 Called merchants.]-The whole of this fentence Larcher omits, giving as his opinion, that it was inferted by fome Scholiast in the margin, and had thence found its way into the text. For my part, I fee no reason for this; and I think the explication given by the Abbe Bellanger, in his Effais de Critique fur les Traduct. d'Herodote, may fairly be accepted. Herodotus means, says he, to inform his reader, that Sigynæ is not an unufual word; the Ligurians use it for merchants, the Cyprians for fpears."-But if this be true, the following verfion by Littlebury muft appear abfurd enough: "The Ligurians," fays he, "who inhabit beyond Marfeilles, call the Sigynes brokers; and the Cyprians give them the name of javelins."-T. Bb 4 who 25 364 37 376 2 Donce TERPSICHOR E.. who live beyond Maffilia: with the Cyprians, Si- X. The Thracians affirm that the places beyond the Ifter are poffeffed wholly by bees, and that a paffage beyond this is impracticable. To me this feems altogether impoffible, for the bee is an infect 27/ known to be very impatient of cold"; the extre mity of which, as I fhould think, is what renders XI. Darius having croffed the Hellefpont, went f immediately to Sardis, where he neither forgot the fervice of Hiftiæus, nor the advice of Coes of 266 Mitylene. He accordingly fent for these two perfons, and defired them to afk what they would. Hiftiæus, who was tyrant of Miletus, wifhed for no acceffion of power; he merely required the Edonian " Myncinus, with the view of building 438 there 16 Impatient of cold.]-This remark of Herodotus concernng bees, is in a great measure true, because all apiaries are found to fucceed and thrive beft, which are expofed to a degree of middle temperature: yet it would be difficult perhaps to ascertain the precife degree of cold in which bees would cease to live and multiply. Modern experiments have made it obvioutly appear, that in fevere winters this infect has perished as frequently from famine as from cold. It is alfo well known that bees have lived in hollow trees in the colder parts of Ruffia. ---T. 7 Edonian.]-This diftrict is by fome writers placed in Thrace, |