BOOK IV. OF THE WATERS. HEAD IV. OF ATARGATIS AND DERCETO.

○It will not be thought, I trust, that the testimonies respecting the goddess of the Syrians, whom the Greeks called Derceto and the Syrians themselves, as it is reported, Atargatis, are here set down with any other design than that of completing the collection which the heads of Dagon and of Oannes have begun; and it is to be understood that the present head proposes no more than to state, with such exactness as the sources allow, what the ancient writers affirm of her image, of her fable, of her founder and of her name, to distinguish it from what the moderns have added, and to consider, in the order in which they present themselves, the objections which the testimony of Lucian and of Diodorus is thought to suggest against the view already sketched.¹ The proof of that view, being dependent upon the whole of the testimonies, and not upon this or that of them, is not to be looked for until they have been set side by side; and I shall be content to leave it in the place which I have assigned it. NB-36-017 NB-37-005 NB-36-025

○Diodorus relates, in the second book of his history, that there is in Syria a city named Ascalon, and not far from it a large and deep lake, full of fish; that upon its shore is a precinct of a famous goddess, whom the Syrians call Derceto; and that this goddess has the head of a woman, but all the rest of her body is that of a fish (Diod. Sic. ii. 4).² Two of the moderns, having disposed of her in different manners, require to be heard: Mr. Bryant, in the place cited in the two preceding heads, makes her the same deity as Dagon, styled Atargatis, and "worshiped under the same mixed figure" (Bryant, Analysis, vol. ii. Jonah, Put, Chaldaeorum); Mr. Faber makes her the mate of that deity, saying that "the fish-goddess Derceto is evidently the mate of the fish-god Dagon," and that Dagon himself is "clearly the same character as the fish-god Oan of the Babylonians" (Faber, Origin of Pagan Idolatry, vol. i. bk. i. ch. iv.).³ The testimony of Diodorus names a goddess and a lake, and, in the place which I have copied, no Dagon; whether she is Dagon in another sex, or his companion, it does not determine, and I enter both opinions and decide neither. NB-36-017

○The same author gives, in the following section, the story as it is told by the most learned of the inhabitants of the region (Diod. Sic. ii. 4). Venus, offended with this goddess, inspired her with a violent passion for a youth among her votaries; she bore a daughter to the Syrian, and, filled with shame at her deed, killed the youth, and exposed the child in a rocky and desert place; and she herself, from shame and grief, threw herself into the lake, and was changed, as to the form of her body, into a fish.⁴ The fish is here a consequence; it is a punishment, or a refuge; and the water is a lake, and not a flood. The relation has the character of one framed to give a cause to a form already in the precinct; that the form was framed upon the relation is not impossible, and nothing in the place which I have copied determines which; but of the Deluge the relation says nothing. I do not on that account say that the fish of this goddess has nothing to do with it.⁵ NB-37-005 NB-36-017

○Lucian, in the treatise already cited, states what is of the first importance to the matter in hand, namely, that he has seen the semblance of Derceto in Phenicia, and that it is a woman as far as the thighs, and that the part which extends from the thighs to the feet ends in the tail of a fish; while the effigy which is at Hierapolis, he says, is a complete woman (Lucian. de Dea Syria, c. 14).⁶ Selden has the same; and he lays down that, unless the goddess be half fish, she is by no means to be called Derceto, Nisi vero semipiscis fuerit, Derceto nequaquam appellanda (Unless she was half fish, she is by no means to be called Derceto); and he observes that the great writers nevertheless give this name to the Hierapolitan goddess (Selden, de Dis Syris, synt. ii. cap. 3).⁷ By his own rule, then, the name has gone from the image which bears it to one which does not; and I add only that Lucian says that he saw the one, and does not say that the other was made after it. The two images are not to be entered under a single head because one name is used of both; and it is the more necessary to observe this, since the half-fish figure, upon which the whole of the argument from the image depends, is, upon the testimony of the one eye-witness whom we have, to be sought in Phenicia, and is not the figure of the Syrian temple.⁸ NB-36-025 NB-36-017

○Of the founder of the temple at Hierapolis Lucian reports several opinions, and among them that which attributes the building to Semiramis of Babylon, who has left many mighty works in Asia; and he adds that she dedicated it not to Juno, but to her own mother, whose name was Derceto (Lucian. de Dea Syria, c. 14).⁹ Vossius, in the argument of his chapter, has various opinions out of Lucian upon the founder, and takes the Syrian goddess, with Atergatis or Derceto, to signify, together with the moon, the Earth, and, as he says in his own words, "the Earth and all nature subject to the moon": Similiter per Atergatin, sive Derceto, una cum Luna Tellurem indicari (in like manner by Atergatis, or Derceto, together with the moon, the Earth is signified).¹⁰ In the argument as I have it the founder is a person, and the goddess a part of nature; who built the house is answered from history, and who is worshipped in it from physics. Nothing in what Lucian reports makes the mother of Semiramis a part of nature; she is a mother, and her name is Derceto; and the reading of Vossius must stand with the physical readings of which I have spoken in the second Book, and is of a later mode.¹¹ That the mother of Semiramis is called by the name of the goddess, and is not said to be the goddess, I observe as the plain sense of what is reported.¹² NB-38-023 NB-36-025

○Of the name of the goddess it is convenient to speak in this place. Cornutus says that this one, namely Rhea, seems also to be the Atargatis among the Syrians (Phurnut. (Cornut.) de Nat. Deor.); and it is to be observed that the writers who have derived the name, taking Derceto and Atargatis for one, are three, and that the three derivations are different.¹³ Selden brings it from Addirdaga, that is, a great or mighty fish: Atergatis autem, Adargatis, Atargata, Derceto, Derce, Adargidis, Atargatis, quae omnia reperiuntur pro hac Dea, corrupta vocabula, ab Addirdaga sunt, hoc est, Piscis magnificus, seu potens (Atergatis, Adargatis, Atargata, Derceto, Derce, Adargidis, Atargatis, all of which are found for this goddess, are corrupt words and come from Addirdaga, that is, a great or mighty fish); Mr. Faber, from Adar-Daga, the illustrious fish (Faber, Cabiri, vol. i. ch. ii.); and Mr. Bryant, from Atar or Athar, "the same as On and Osiris," with Gatus or Catus, "rendered by the Ionians, a fish."¹⁴ They differ in the first part of the word, and they agree in the second; and the opening sounds of Atar, Adar and Addirdaga are near enough to carry any of the three senses, so that I decide none. That the last part of the name is a fish I do not dispute; what the fish is remains to be shewn. NB-37-015

○The same author adds, of the same goddess, that the Syrians honour her by abstaining from the dove and the fish: "whom they also honour by abstaining from dove and fish" (Phurnut. (Cornut.) de Nat. Deor.).¹⁵ That the two creatures are named together I enter without inference, and I add that Mr. Bryant states that the dove which returned to Noah with a leaf of olive "was held in many nations as particularly sacred," that it was looked upon as a peculiar messenger of the Deity, and that its name among the ancient Amonians was Ion, and Ionah (Bryant, Analysis, vol. ii. Jonah, Put, Chaldaeorum); and the Syrian abstention would stand, in his reckoning, as one instance of the sanctity of the dove. Whether it is an instance of the Deluge also I cannot say, since the abstention is reported with no reason that I can copy; the clause which follows in my text is doubtful, and I leave it.¹⁶ NB-38-007

○It remains to consider the objections which these testimonies are thought to raise, and which, as I have already intimated, I do not affect to underrate. It may be objected, in the first place, that the worship of the fish in Syria is of an antiquity which precludes any reference to the Deluge; to which I answer that the story given by the most learned of the inhabitants of the region is itself of the character of a relation framed to give a cause to a form already in the precinct, and that if the form is the more ancient, the argument is not touched, for the question is not when the form was made, but what it was made to signify.¹⁷ It may be objected, in the second place, that the image at Hierapolis is a complete woman, and that a goddess who is not a fish can have no fish to explain; to which I answer that the half-fish figure was seen by Lucian in Phenicia, and that I have not said that the Syrian effigy was formed upon it. It may be objected, in the third place, that the story of the lake supplies a cause for the fish, and that no other is required; to which I answer that a cause for a form is not the same as the origin of a form, and that a lake is a collection of waters, as a flood is. It may be objected, in the fourth place, that Vossius, with the physical interpreters, explains the goddess without recourse to any fish at all; to which I answer that an explanation which has no need of the fish has not explained why the fish is there. And it may be objected, lastly, that the Syrian abstention from the dove and the fish is the abstention of a people which has no memory of the Deluge; to which I answer that the abstention is reported without its reason, and that a custom of which the reason is not reported is not on that account a custom of which no reason existed.¹⁸ NB-36-017 NB-37-005 NB-36-025 NB-38-023 NB-37-015 NB-38-007

○The testimonies of the three heads may now be said to be collected, so far as they are within my reach: the Phenician, the Chaldaean, and the Syrian. The fish and the grain are found together in the first and in the second; the fish and the lake, and the fish and the dove, in the third; and the fish and the Deluge in the Chaldaean fragment, in the relation of Hierapolis, and, if Sir William Jones is to be trusted, in that of India. That these several conjunctions are not independent, but are the conjunction of a single event with a single figure, is the view which I have sketched, and which the testimonies, if I mistake not, are at least not unfavourable to; but it is a view which, being a view of the whole, can be pronounced upon only when the whole has been laid before the reader, and the proof of it will be found at the conclusion of the present Book.¹⁹ NB-36-017 NB-37-005 NB-36-025 NB-38-023 NB-37-015 NB-38-007

The collections contain no material for the conclusion promised here.