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But these are, in truth, the obscure accounts of antiquity: between Ptolomy and Tiberius the interval was shorter, not two hundred and fifty years: hence some have believed that the present was a spurious phoenix, and derived not its origin from the territories of Arabia, since it observed nothing of the instinct which ancient tradition attributes to the genuine: for that the latter having completed his course of years, just before his death builds a nest in his native land, and upon it sheds a generative power, from whence arises a young one, whose first care, when he is grown, is to bury his father: neither does he undertake it unadvisedly, but by collecting and fetching loads of myrrh, tries his strength in great journeys; and as soon as he finds himself equal to the burden, and fit for the long flight, he rears upon his back his father's body, carries it quite to the altar of the sun, and then flies away.
I have the book before me, and have selected the following list of persons and allusions; many of which are indeed of so little use or ornament to their stations in this speech, that one would have thought even a republican requisition could not have brought them there: "Sampson, Dalila, Philip, Athens, Sylla, the Greeks and Romans, Brutus, Lycurgus, Persepolis, Sparta, Pulcheria, Cataline, Dagon, Anicius, Nero, Babel, Tiberius, Caligula, Augustus, Antony, Lepidus, the Manicheans, Bayle and Galileo, Anitus, Socrates, Demosthenes, Eschinus, Marius, Busiris, Diogenes, Caesar, Cromwell, Constantine, the Labarum, Domitius, Machiavel, Thraseas, Cicero, Cato, Aristophanes, Riscius, Sophocles, Euripides, Tacitus, Sydney, Wisnou, Possidonius, Julian, Argus, Pompey, the Teutates, Gainas, Areadius, Sinon, Asmodeus, Salamanders, Anicetus, Atreus, Thyestus, Cesonius, Barca and Oreb, Omar and the Koran, Ptolomy Philadelphus, Arimanes, Gengis, Themuginus, Tigellinus, Adrean, Cacus, the Fates, Minos and Rhadamanthus," &c. &c.
As too much speaking hurts, too much galling smarts; so too much music gluts and distempereth. As PLATO and ARISTOTLE are accounted Princes in philosophy and logic; HIPPOCRATES and GALEN, in physic; PTOLOMY in astromony; EUCLID in geometry; and CICERO in eloquence: so BOETIUS is esteemed a Prince and captain in music.
In this view he was, however, so far misled in his estimation of the distance, by the erroneously spread-out longitudes of Ptolomy, bringing these regions much farther towards the east, and consequently nearer by the west, than their actual situation; and was stopped in his western course, by the important and unexpected discovery of many islands, and a vast interposed continent; which, from preconceived theory, he named the West Indies.
There is nothing therefore in St. Austin that justifies the being of Men Pygmies, or that the Pygmies were Men; he rather makes them Apes. And there is nothing in his Scholiast Ludovicus Vives that tends this way, he only quotes from other Authors, what might illustrate the Text he is commenting upon, and no way asserts their being Men. I shall therefore next enquire into Bochartus's Opinion, who would have them to be the Nubæ or Nobæ. Hos Nubas Troglodyticos (saith[A] he) ad Avalitem Sinum esse Pygmæos Veterum multa probant. He gives us five Reasons to prove this. As, 1. The Authority of Hesychius, who saith, [Greek: Noboi Pygmaioi]. 2. Because Homer places the Pygmies near the Ocean, where the Nubæ were. 3. Aristotle places them at the lakes of the Nile. Now by the Nile Bochartus tells us, we must understand the Astaborus, which the Ancients thought to be a Branch of the Nile, as he proves from Pliny, Solinus and Æthicus. And Ptolomy (he tells us) places the Nubæ hereabout. 4. Because Aristotle makes the Pygmies to be Troglodytes, and so were the Nubæ. 5. He urges that Story of Nonnosus which I have already mentioned, and thinks that those that Nonnosus met with, were a Colony of the Nubæ; but afterwards adds, Quos tamen absit ut putemus Staturâ fuisse Cubitali, prout Poetæ fingunt, qui omnia in majus augent. But this methinks spoils them from being Pygmies; several other Nations at this rate may be Pygmies as well as these Nubæ. Besides, he does not inform us, that these Nubæ used to fight the Cranes; and if they do not, and were not Cubitales, they can't be Homer's Pygmies, which we are enquiring after. But the Notion of their being Men, had so possessed him, that it put him upon fancying they must be the Nubæ; but 'tis plain that those in Nonnosus could not be a Colony of the Nubæ; for then the Nubæ must have understood their Language, which the Text saith, none of the Neighbourhood did. And because the Nubæ are Troglodytes, that therefore they must be Pygmies, is no Argument at all. For Troglodytes here is used as an Adjective; and there is a sort of Sparrow which is called Passer Troglodytes. Not but that in Africa there was a Nation of Men called Troglodytes, but quite different from our Pygmies. How far Bochartus may be in the right, in guessing the Lakes of the Nile (whereabout Aristotle places the Pygmies) to be the Fountains of the River Astaborus, which in his description, and likewise the Map, he places in the Country of the Avalitæ, near the Mossylon Emporium; I shall not enquire. This I am certain of, he misrepresents Aristotle where he tells us,[B] Quamvis in ea fabula hoc saltem verum esse asserat Philosophus, Pusillos Homines in iis locis degere: for as I have already observed; Aristotle in that Text saith nothing at all of their being Men: the contrary rather might be thence inferred, that they were Brutes. And Bochart's Translation, as well as Gaza's is faulty here, and by no means to be allowed, viz. Ut aiunt, genus ibi parvum est tam Hominum, qu
Ptolomy considers all this coast as Karmania, quite to Mosarna; and whether Gadrosia is a part of that province, or a province itself, is a matter of no importance; but the coast must have received the name Nearchus gives it from Nearchus himself; for it is Greek, and he is the first Greek who explored it.
But this is undoubtedly what is now called Monaco; the harbour of which exactly tallies with what Strabo says of the Portus Monaeci neque magnas, neque multas capit naves, It holds but a few vessels and those of small burthen. Ptolomy, indeed, seems to mention it under the name of Herculis Portus, different from the Portus Monaeci.
It was inhabited by a people, whom Ptolomy and Pliny call the Vedantij: but these were undoubtedly mixed with a Roman colony, as appears by the monuments which still remain; I mean the ruins of an amphitheatre, a temple of Apollo, baths, aqueducts, sepulchral, and other stones, with inscriptions, and a great number of medals which the peasants have found by accident, in digging and labouring the vineyards and cornfields, which now cover the ground where the city stood.
It is by the vulgar tradition fixed at five hundred years: but there are those, who extend it to one thousand four hundred and sixty-one; and assert that the three former phoenixes appeared in reigns greatly distant, the first under Sesostris, the next under Amasis; and that one was seen under Ptolomy the third King of Egypt of the Macedonian race, and flew to the city of Heliopolis, accompanied by a vast host of other birds gazing upon the wonderful stranger.
And then we see Alexander the Great, Demetrius, and Ptolomy, famous kings, together with many other princes, who readily boast of understanding it; and amongst the Cæsars, Augustus the divine Cæsar, Octavian Augustus, M. Agrippa, Claudius, and Caligula and Nero, in this alone virtuous, likewise Vespasian and Titus, as was shown in the famous retable of the Temple of Peace, which he built after having vanquished the Jews and their Jerusalem.
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