BOOK II. OF THE SUN. HEAD II. OF LIBER, APOLLO AND ADONIS.

×It will be sufficient, in the present head, to examine three of the deities whom Macrobius reduces to the sun, namely Apollo, Liber and Adonis, and to indicate, in the case of each, the point at which the reduction is to be judged not so much untrue as unproved; the greater and more general question, whether the reference to the sun can be regarded as primitive, having been opened in the head which precedes, and being reserved, so far as its decision is concerned, for the heads which follow.¹ The testimony which Macrobius delivers is of two kinds, which it has been the habit of the moderns to unite, and which it is the first duty of an inquirer to keep apart: the rites which he describes, and the reasons which he assigns for them. The rites are testified; the reasons rest upon his own reckoning, or upon that of those whom he follows; and it will appear that in each of the three instances the rite is older than the reason, and survives it. NB-23-006 NB-20-004 NB-22-014

×The two names of Apollo and Liber are made one sun by a division of the day and the night, and the doctrine is declared to be kept in the sacred rites: "In sacris enim haec religiosi archani observatio tenetur, ut sol, cum in supero, id est in diurno, hemisphaerio est, Apollo vocitetur: cum in infero, id est nocturno, Dionysus, qui est Liber pater, habeatur" (that is, "For in the sacred rites this observance of a religious secret is kept: that the sun, when he is in the upper, that is the daytime, hemisphere, is called Apollo; when in the lower, that is the night, hemisphere, he is held to be Dionysus, who is Father Liber").² It is to be observed that the division of the hemispheres is here the whole of the proof; that no testimony of any people is adduced to shew that the name of Apollo was given by those who first used it for the sun in the upper, or the name of Liber for the sun in the lower; and that the rule which is laid down, being one which a reasoner might construct at any time from the two names and the course of the day, is exactly of that kind which cannot be distinguished, by any mark of its own, from a reading imposed on titles already in use. I ask whether the division into the upper and the lower hemispheres be not the reason of philosophers, laid upon names which they received; and I do not find in the place anything which determines the contrary. NB-23-006

×Mr. Faber, in his later work, has approached the question from another side, and has allowed, with a candour which is not always to be found in writers upon the subject, that "whatever properly belonged only to the latter was transferred with most curious systematical regularity to the former," the latter being the worship of deified mortals and the former that of the sun and the moon; and he adds that "Helius and Lunus were equally the great father."³ The transfer is thus placed in the direction which I take to be the right one, and I avail myself of the admission the more readily since it proceeds from an author who cannot be suspected of having made it in my favour. What he does not say is why the sun should have been the receiver. If the attributes were carried over, then Apollo by day and Liber by night are titles carried; and from what they were carried is the very thing which the reading of Macrobius leaves out, and which the learned writer, having stated that a transfer took place, has not undertaken to supply.⁴ NB-23-006

×Of the child whom the Egyptians bring forth from the shrine, Macrobius relates two things, and they are to be entered apart: that the Egyptians bring forth such a child on a certain day, and that this child is the sun at the shortest day of the year. "Hae autem aetatum diversitates ad solem referuntur, ut parvulus videatur hiemali solstitio, qualem Aegyptii proferunt ex adyto die certa" (that is, "These differences of age, however, are referred to the sun: he is seen as a little child at the winter solstice, such as the Egyptians bring forth from the shrine on a certain day"), and he gives as the reason "quod tunc brevissimo die veluti parvus et infans videatur" (that is, "because on that shortest day he appears like a little one and an infant").⁵ The first of these is a rite, and is therefore testified by the Egyptians' own practice, as reported. The second is the reason which he assigns to it, and rests upon his own reckoning; and what the child of the shrine was before it was referred to the sun, the passage does not say. Vossius, who has shewn the worship of the sun to be very ancient, since Moses mentions it, and so did one who lived in the time of Moses or before him, has by that proof established that the worship was early; he has not established that it was first, and the antiquity of a corruption is no argument against the existence of that which it corrupted.⁶ NB-20-004

×Of Adonis, Macrobius affirms that there will be no doubt that he is the sun "inspecta religione Assyriorum" (that is, "if the religion of the Assyrians be examined"), and relates that among the Assyrians or Phenicians the goddess is introduced mourning: "quod sol annuo gressu per duodecim signorum ordinem pergens partem quoque hemisphaerii inferioris ingreditur" (that is, "because the sun, advancing in his yearly course through the order of the twelve signs, enters also a part of the lower hemisphere").⁷ The reason which he gives is the reckoning of the natural philosophers, and not the relation of a people; the mourning is the datum, and the passage of the sun through the lower signs is the explanation, which belongs, if I mistake not, to the second of the sources which Sir William Jones has enumerated, namely the systems and calculations of astronomers, which are later than that to which they are applied.⁸ Of what the essay relates of countries beyond Greece and Italy I speak only as I find it there; but that a system of astronomy cannot be older than the rite which it is brought to explain is a proposition which requires no particular authority. NB-22-014

×The view which I propose, as at present sketched, is that in each of these three instances a rite or a title, the origin of which the testimonies do not give, has been explained by a reference to the sun; that the explanation is of the same kind in all, being a division of the day, of the year or of the hemispheres; and that the rite is therefore to be sought, in each, where the explanation did not reach. The proof of it requires the collection of the testimonies, among peoples other than the Greeks, of the child, of the mourning goddess and of the god who is double, and will be found in its place. It may be objected that the Egyptians themselves are said to have held the child to be the sun; to which I answer that Macrobius does not say that they held it, but only that the child is referred to the sun, and that the reference is his. It may be objected, in the second place, that a rite which is explained with so much regularity must have been instituted for the explanation; to which I answer that regularity is the mark of a reading which has been applied to every instance alike, and not of a rite which has been observed. And it may be objected, lastly, that the transfer which Mr. Faber allows is the transfer of the attributes of mortals to the sun, and not of the titles of the sun to mortals; to which I answer that this is precisely the direction which I have maintained, and that I am obliged to him for stating it.⁹ NB-23-006 NB-20-004 NB-22-014