BOOK II. OF THE SUN. HEAD I. OF MACROBIUS, AND OF THE REDUCTION OF THE GODS TO THE SUN.

×It were premature, at the opening of a Book which is to be occupied with the transfer of the divine titles to the sun, to do more than indicate the ground upon which the first of the modes of corruption is to be examined, and the place which, as I conceive, it is entitled to hold among the rest. The opinion which has been maintained by Mr. Bryant, and which Mr. Faber, though differing from him in the order of the steps, has in great part adopted, makes the worship of the sun either the beginning of all idolatry or so intimately united with its beginning that the two cannot be distinguished; and the effect of this opinion upon the inquiry has been that whatever in the fables of the heathen could be referred to the luminary has been referred to it, and set down as primitive, upon no other ground than that the reference was possible.¹ I shall endeavour to show that the transfer of the titles to the sun is one mode of corruption, and one only; that it is later than the tradition which it obscured; and that the fountain from which the moderns have drawn the whole of their confidence in it is to be found in a single place of Macrobius, to which it is necessary, in the first instance, to attend. The objections which may be urged against this order, and which I do not affect to underrate, will be considered after the testimonies have been set down. NB-22-009 NB-21-034

×The place is in the conversation which Macrobius relates as having been held at the Saturnalia, and in which Avienus is made to inquire "quid sit quod solem modo Apollinem modo Liberum modo sub aliarum appellationum varietate veneremur" (that is, "why it is that we worship the sun now as Apollo, now as Liber, now under a variety of other titles"), and to beg that the reason of so great a diversity of names under a single name may be laid open to him.² To this Vettius Praetextatus, who is described as chief over all sacred rites, returns an answer which it is necessary to give at length, since upon the single sentence which follows the whole structure of the solar interpretation has in effect been raised: "Nam quod omnes paene deos, dumtaxat qui sub caelo sunt, ad solem referunt, non vana superstitio sed ratio divina commendat" (that is, "For when they refer nearly all the gods, at least those beneath the heaven, to the sun, it is not empty superstition but divine reason that commends it").³ It is to be observed that the speaker does not say that the gods were originally the sun, nor that the earliest of mankind so held; he says that certain persons, whom he does not name, refer nearly all the gods to the sun, and that he approves the reference. What he has delivered is therefore the judgment of a company of philosophers upon a body of titles which were already in use, and not a relation of the manner in which the titles came to be used; and the writer who records it is a witness to the prevalence of the opinion in his own age, and, so far as this place is concerned, to nothing more.⁴ NB-22-009

×Mr. Bryant, whose system is the most considerable that has been raised upon this foundation, lays it down at the outset that "The Deity, which they originally worshiped, was the Sun. But they soon conferred his titles upon some of their ancestors: whence arose a mixed worship."⁵ The order is here stated with perfect clearness, and it is the inverse of that in which, as I shall endeavour to show, the testimonies of the ancients themselves dispose it. For the single witness who professes to deliver the reference of the gods to the sun describes it as the opinion of persons who were already in possession of the gods, and Mr. Bryant has accordingly made that to be original which the witness himself presents as an interpretation laid upon what was already there; and to make the explanation of a thing prior to the thing explained is to suppose beforehand what the argument is designed to prove. Mr. Faber, who is not less learned, and who has had the advantage of observing the difficulty, adopts the opposite order, and affirms that "The early postdiluvians, unawed by the recent judgment of God, soon converted the pious remembrance of their ancestors, into a blind superstition; and, as error is rarely stationary, the idolatrous veneration of the Sun, the Moon, and the Stars, was ere long superadded."⁶ Two writers of the first reputation, reading the same fables with the same care, have thus assigned to the sun opposite places, the one a first and the other a second; and it is evident that both cannot be right. It is of consequence which of them is, for upon it depends whether the solar reading is to be regarded as a beginning or as a later corruption; and the question is not to be decided, as I conceive, from either book, but by the ancient witnesses, taken in their order.⁷ NB-22-009 NB-21-034

×Mr. Faber, it should be added, does not content himself with the order which he has chosen, but unites the solar worship with that which he calls the Arkite, and by this union is enabled to find either wherever he looks for the other.⁸ A reading which accepts both, whichever the occasion offers, is refuted by no instance and established by none; and I observe, without pressing the observation, that the same facility which is the recommendation of the one system is the objection to the other, since an interpretation which cannot be put to the test by any fable, because it fits every fable alike, has not on that account explained any. NB-22-009

×An objection of some weight, and one which it is necessary to anticipate, is drawn from the antiquity of the solar worship, which Vossius has shewn to be very great. "Atque ex his satis elucet, quam antiquus sit cultus Solis" (that is, "From these things it is clear enough how ancient the worship of the sun is"), he says, since Moses mentions it, and so does one who lived in the time of Moses or before him; and the rite which he draws from the place in Job is the kissing of the hand toward the sun.⁹ That the sun was worshipped at an early period I do not question; but the antiquity of a worship is not the priority of the error, and it does not shew that the sun was worshipped as a god before men were; and the same writer, in his first book, holds that the gods were first men, citing Euhemerus of Messene, and affirming, prius homines fuisse (that men were first), that the gods were of the number of those who had been men.¹⁰ Whether Vossius perceived that his two books are to be reconciled, and in what manner, I do not find; but it is clear that an antiquity which he has shewn, and a priority which he has himself denied, are not to be confounded by those who cite him in support of the latter. NB-20-031

×Sir William Jones, of whom I have the one essay only, is to be mentioned here, lest it be supposed that his authority is on the side of the order which Mr. Bryant has adopted; for his place in the matter is not that which Mr. Bryant has assigned to the sun. He says that there seem to have been four principal sources of all mythology, of which the first is history, or natural truth perverted into fable, with the deifying of great men; the second "a wild admiration of the heavenly bodies, and, after a time, the systems and calculations of Astronomers"; the third the personifications of poets; and the fourth the allegories of moralists and metaphysicians.¹¹ The sun has here a second place, after the deifying of men, and is made to yield, not the whole, but "a considerable portion of Egyptian and Grecian fable." Of the Persian types and emblems which he joins to it I know only what he tells, and can say nothing; but so far as concerns the order, the learned judge appears to be with the objectors, and against the system which it might be thought that he confirms. NB-22-035 NB-22-009

×The view which I propose, as it is at present sketched, is therefore this: that the reference of the gods to the sun is a reading, made by philosophers who possessed the titles, and laid upon them; that it is attested for the first time by a writer who collects, in the mouth of Praetextatus, what he supposes to have been said; and that the worship of the luminary, which was early, was nevertheless a substitution, and presupposes that for which it was substituted. The proof of it will be found in the several deities, which are to be taken in the order in which Macrobius has set them, from the seventeenth chapter to the twenty-third; and I shall here content myself with indicating, as I have undertaken, the principal objections. It may be objected, in the first place, that the antiquity of the worship is sufficient to prove its priority; to which I answer that a corruption may be of any age, and that the antiquity of a corruption is no argument against the existence of that which it corrupts. It may be objected, in the second place, that the tradition which I suppose to have been obscured is nowhere visible; to which I answer that it is visible precisely in those places where the sun is asserted and the persons are not named, and that these are the places to which the following heads will be directed. And it may be objected, lastly, that a mode which is admitted by Mr. Faber to have been superadded cannot be distinguished from one which is said by Mr. Bryant to have been original, the practical result being in either case the same; to which I answer that the practical result is not the same, since upon the one order the gods are suns and upon the other they are persons to whom the sun was afterwards given for a dwelling, and that the whole classification depends upon the difference.¹² NB-22-009 NB-20-031 NB-21-034 NB-22-035