Fig. 1.Fig. 1.
From hence, it would appear, or on this model, the early ideas of all peoples have been formed. Among the Greeks the name for heaven expresses the same idea of a hollow vault (κοῖλος, hollow, concave) and the earth is called γή, or mother. Among the Latins the namecœlumhas the same signification, while the earthterracomes from the participletersa(the dry element) in contradistinction tomarethe wet.
In this original Aryan notion, however, as represented by the figure, we have more than this, the origin of the namesJupiterandDeuscomes out. For it is easy to trace the connection betweenDyaus(the luminiferous air) and the Greek wordZeusfrom whenceDios, θεός,Deus, and the French wordDieu, and then by addingpateror father we getDeuspater,Zeuspater, Jupiter.
These etymologies are not however matters beyond dispute, and there are at least two other modes of deriving the same words. Thus we are told the earliest name for the Deity was Jehovah, the wordJehovmeaning father of life; and that the Greeks translated this intoDisorZeus, a word having, according to this theory, the same sense, being derived from ζαω to live. Of course there can be no question of the later wordDeusbeing the direct translation ofDios.
A third theory is that there exists in one of the dialects which formed the basis of the old languages of Asia, a wordYahouh, a participle of the verbnîh, to exist, to be; which therefore signifies the self-existent, the principle of life, the origin of all motion, and this is supposed to be the allusion of Diodorus, who explaining the theology of the Greeks, says that the Egyptians according to Manetho, priest of Memphis, in giving names to the five elements have called the spirit or ether Youpiter in theproper senseof the word, for the spirit is the source of life, the author of the vital principle in animals, and is hence regarded as the father or generator of all beings. The people of the Homeric ages thought the lightning-bearing Jupiter was the commencement, origin, end, and middle of all things, a single and universal power, governing the heavens, the earth, fire, water, day and night, and all things. Porphyry says that when the philosophers discoursed on the nature and parts of the Deity, they could not imagine any single figure that should represent all his attributes, though they presented him under the appearance of a man, who wasseatedto represent his immovable essence; uncovered in his upper part, because the upper parts of the universe or region of the stars manifest most of his nature; but clothed below the loins, because he is more hidden in terrestrial things; and holding a sceptre in his left hand, because his heart is the ruler of all things. There are, besides, the etymologies which assert that Jupiter is derived fromjuvareto help, meaningthe assisting father; or again that he isDies pater—the god of the day—in which case no doubt the sun would be alluded to.
It appears then that the ancient Aryan scheme, thoughpossiblysupplying us with the origin of one of the widest spread of our words, is not universally allowed to do so. This origin, however, appears to derive support from the apparent occurrence of the original of another well-known ancient classical word in the same scheme, that is Varuna, obviously the same word as Οὐρανος, and Uranus, signifying the heavens. Less clearly too perhaps we may trace other such words to the same source. Thus the Sun, which according to these primitive conceptions is the husband of the Earth, which it nourishes and makes fruitful, was calledSavitrandSurya, from which the passage to the GothicSauilis within the limits of known etymological changes, and so comes the LithuanianSaull, the CymricHaul, the GreekHeilos, the LatinSol, and the EnglishSolar. So from theirNakt, the destructive, we getNux,Nacht,Night. FromGlu, the Shining, whence the participleGlucina, and so toLucina,Luena,Luna,Lune.
Turning from the ancient Aryans, whose astronomy we know only from poems and fables, and so learn but little of their actual advance in the science of observation, we come to the Babylonians, concerning whose astronomical acquirements we have lately been put in possession of valuable evidence by the tablets obtained by Mr. Smith from Kouyunjik, an accountthe contents of which has been given by Mr. Sayce (Nature, vol. xii. p. 489). As the knowledge thus obtained is more certain, being derived from their actual records, than any that we previously possessed, it will be well to give as full an account of it as we are able.
The originators of Babylonian astronomy were not the Chaldæans, but another race from the mountains of Elam, who are generally called Acadians. Of the astronomy of this race we have no complete records, but can only judge of their progress by the words and names left by them to the science, as afterwards cultivated by the Semitic Babylonians. These last were a subsequent race, who entering the country from the East, conquered the original inhabitants about 2000B.C., and borrowed their civilization, and with it their language in the arts and sciences. But even this latter race is one of considerable antiquity, and when we see, as we shortly shall, the great advances they had made in observations of the sun and moon, and consider the probable slowness of development in those early ages, we have some idea of the remoteness of the date at which astronomical science was there commenced. Our chief source of information is an extremely ancient work called TheObservations of Bell, supposed to have been written before 1700B.C., which was compiled for a certain King Saigou, of Agave in Babylonia. This work is in seventy books or parts, and is composed of numerous small earthen tablets having impressed upon them the cuneiform character in whichthey printed, and which we are now able to read. We generally date the art of printing from Caxton, in 1474, because it took the place of manuscript that had been previously in use in the West; but that method of writing, if in some respects an improvement on previous methods of recording ideas as more easily executed, was in others a retrogression as being less durable: while the manuscripts have perished the impressions on stone have remained to this day, and will no doubt last longer than even our printed books. These little tablets represented so many leaves, and in large libraries, such as that from which those known have been derived, they were numbered as our own are now, so that any particular one could be asked for by those who might wish to consult it. The great difficulty of interpreting these records, which are written in two different dialects, and deal often with very technical matters, may well be imagined. These difficulties however have been overcome, and a good approach to the knowledge of their contents has been made. The Chaldæans, as is well known, were much given to astronomy and many of their writings deal with this subject; but they did practical work as well, and did not indulge so much in theory as the Aryans. We shall have future occasion in this book to refer to their observations on various points, as they did not by any means confine themselves to the simplest matters; much, in fact, of that with which modern astronomy deals, the dates and duration of eclipses of the sun and moon, theaccurate measurement of time, the existence of cycles in lunar and solar phenomena, was studied and recorded by them. We can make some approach to the probable dates of the invention of some part of their system, by means of the signs of the Zodiac, which were invented by them and which we will discuss more at length hereafter. We need only say at present that what is now the sign of spring, was not reckoned so with them, and that we can calculate how long ago it is that the sign they reckoned the spring sign was so.
Semiramis also raised in the centre of Babylon a temple consecrated to Jupiter, whom the Babylonians called Bel. It was of an extraordinary height and served for an observatory. The whole edifice was constructed with great art in asphalte and brick. On its summit were placed the statues of Jupiter, Juno, and Rhea, covered with gold.
The Egyptians have always been named as the earliest cultivators of astronomy by the Grecian writers, by whom the science has been handed down to us, and the Chaldæans have even been said to have borrowed from them. The testimony of such writers however is not to be received implicitly, but to be weighed with the knowledge we may now obtain, as we have noticed above with respect to the Babylonians, from the actual records they have left us, whether by actual records, or by words and customs remaining to the present day.
Plate I.Plate I.—Babylonian Astronomers.
Herodotus declares that the Egyptians had made observations for 11,340 years and had seen the course of the sun change four times, and the ecliptic placed perpendicular to the equator. This is the style of statement on which opinions of the antiquity of Egyptian astronomy have been founded, and it is obviously unworthy of credit.
Diodorus says that there is no country in which the positions and motions of the stars have been so accurately observed as in Egypt (i.e.to his knowledge). They have preserved, he says, for a great number of years registers in which their observations are recorded. Expositions are found in these registers of the motions of the planets, their revolutions and their stations, and, moreover, the relation which each bears to the birthdays of animals, and its good or evil influence. They often predicted the future with success. The earthquakes, inundations, the appearance of comets, and many other phenomena which it is impossible for the vulgar to know beforehand, were foreseen by them by means of the observations they had made over a long series of years.
On the occasion of the French expedition to Egypt, a long passage was discovered leading from Karnak to Lucksor. This passage was adorned on each side of the way with a range of 1600 sphinxes with the body of a lion and the head of a ram. Now in Egyptian architecture, the ornaments are never the result of caprice or chance; on the contrary, all is done with intention, and what often appears at first sight strange,appears, after having been carefully examined and studied, to present allegories full of sense and reason, founded on a profound knowledge of natural phenomena, that the ornaments are intended to record. These sphinxes and rams of the passage were probably the emblems of the different signs of the Zodiac along the route of the sun. The date of the avenue is not known; but it would doubtless lead us to a high antiquity for the Egyptian observations.
The like may be said of the great pyramid, which according to Piazzi Smyth was built about 2170B.C.Certainly there are no carvings about it exhibiting any astronomical designs; but the exact way in which it is executed would seem to indicate that the builders had a very clear conception of the importance of the meridian line. It should, however, be stated that Piazzi Smyth does not consider it to have been built by the Egyptians for themselves; but under the command of some older race.
There seem, however, to be indications in various festivals and observances, which are met with widely over the earth's surface, as will be indicated more in detail in the chapter on the Pleiades, that some astronomical observations, though of the rudest, were made by races anterior even to those whose history we partially possess; and that not merely because of its naturalness, but because of positive evidence, we must trace back astronomy to a source from whence Egyptians, Indians, and perhaps Babylonians themselves derived it.
The Chinese astronomy is totally removed from these and stands on its own basis. With them it was a matter concerning the government, and stringent laws were enforced on the state astronomers. The advance, however, that they made would appear to be small; but if we are to believe their writers, they made observations nearly three thousand years before our era.
Under the reign of Hoangti, Yuchi recorded that there was a large star near the poles of the heavens. By a method which we shall enlarge upon further on, it can be astronomically ascertained that about the epoch this observation was said to be made there was a star (α Draconis) so near the pole as to appear immovable, which is so far a confirmation of his statement. In 2169 the first of a series of eclipses was recorded by them; but the value of their astronomy seems to be doubtful when we learn that calculation proves that not one of them previous to the age of Ptolemy can be identified with the dates given.
Amongst all nations except the Chinese, where it was political, and the Greeks, where it was purely speculative, astronomy has been intimately mixed with religious ideas, and we consequently find it to have taken considerable hold on the mind.
Just as we have seen among the Indians that the basis of their astronomical ideas was the two-fold division into heaven and earth, so among other nations this duality hasformed the basis of their religion. Two aspects of things have been noticed by men in the constitution of things—that which remains always, and that which is merely transitory, causes and effects. The heaven and the earth have presented the image of this to their minds—one being the eternal existence, the other the passing form. In heaven nothing seems to be born, increase, decrease, or die above the sphere of the moon. That alone showed the traces of alteration in its phases; while on the other hand there was an image of perpetuity in its proper substance, in its motion, and the invariable succession of the same phases.
From another point of view, the heavens were regarded as the father, and the earth as the mother of all things. For the principle of fertility in the rains, the dew and the warmth, came from above; while the earth brought forth abundantly of the products of nature. Such is the idea of Plutarch, of Hesiod, and of Virgil. From hence have arisen the fictions which have formed the basis of theogony. Uranus is said to have espoused Ghe, or the heavens took the earth to wife, and from their marriage was born the god of time or Saturn.
Another partly religious, and partly astronomical antagonism has been drawn between light and darkness, associated respectively with good and evil. In the days when artificial lights, beyond those of the flickering fire, were unknown, and with the setting of the sun all the world was enveloped in darkness and seemed for a time to be without life, or at leastcut off entirely from man, it would seem that the sun and its light was the entire origin of life. Hence it naturally became the earliest divinity whose brilliant light leaping out of the bosom of chaos, had brought with it man and all the universe, as we see it represented in the theologies of Orpheus and of Moses; whence the god Bel of the Chaldeans, the Oromaza of the Persians, whom they invoke as the source of all that is good in nature, while they place the origin of all evil in darkness and its god Ahrinam. We find the glories of the sun celebrated by all the poets, and painted and represented by numerous emblems and different names by the artists and sculptors who have adorned the temples raised to nature or the great first cause.
Among the Jews there are traditions of a very high antiquity for their astronomy. Josephus assures us that it was cultivated before the Mosaic Deluge. According to him it is to the public spirit and the labour of the antediluvians that we owe the science of astrology: "and since they had learnt from Adam that the world should perish by water and by fire, the fear that their science should be lost, made them erect two columns, one of brick the other of stone, on which they engraved the knowledge they had acquired, so that if a deluge should wash away the column of brick, the stone one might remain to preserve for posterity the memory of what they had written. The prescience was rewarded, and the column of stone is still to be seen in Syria." Whatever we may thinkof this statement it would certainly be interesting if we could find in Syria or anywhere else a monument that recorded the ancient astronomical observations of the Jews. Ricard and others believe that they were very far advanced in the science, and that we owe a great part of our present astronomy to them; but such a conjecture must remain without proof unless we could prove them anterior to the other nations, whom, we have seen, cultivated astronomy in very remote times.
One observation seems peculiar to them, if indeed it be a veritable observation. Josephus says, "God prolonged the life of the patriarchs that preceded the deluge, both on account of their virtues, and to give them the opportunity of perfecting the sciences of geometry and astronomy which they had discovered; which they could not have done if they had not lived for 600 years, because it is only after the lapse of 600 years that thegreat yearis accomplished."
Now what is this great year or cycle of 600 years? M. Cassini, the director of the Observatory of Paris, has discussed it astronomically. He considers it as a testimony of the high antiquity of their astronomy. "This period," he says, "is one of the most remarkable that have been discovered; for, if we take the lunar month to be 29 days 12h. 44m. 3s. we find that 219,146½ days make 7,421 lunar months, and that this number of days gives 600 solar years of 365 days 5h. 51m. 36s. If this year was in usebefore the deluge, it appears very probable it must be acknowledged that the patriarchs were already acquainted to a considerable degree of accuracy with the motions of the stars, for this lunar month agrees to a second almost with that which has been determined by modern astronomers."
A very similar argument has been used by Prof. Piazzi Smyth to prove that the Great Pyramids were built by the descendants of Abraham near the time of Noah; namely, that measures of two different elements in the measurement of time or space when multiplied or divided produce a number which may be found to represent some proportion of the edifice, and hence to assume that the two numbers were known to the builders.
We need scarcely point out that numbers have always been capable of great manipulation, and the mere fact of one number being so much greater than another, is no proof thatbothwere known, unless we knew thatoneof them was known independently, or that they are intimately connected.
In the case of Josephus' number the cycle during which the lunar months and solar years are commensurable has been long discussed and if the number had been 19 instead of 600, we should have had little doubt of its reference; yet 600 is a very simple number and might refer to many other cycles than the complicated one pointed outby M. Cassini. A similar case may be quoted with regard to the Indians, which, according to our temperament, may be either considered a proof that these reasonings are correct, or that they are easy to make. They say that there are two stars diametrically opposite which pass through the zodiac in 144 years; nothing can be made of this period, nor yet of another equally problematical one of 180 years; but if we multiply the two together we obtain 25,920, which is very nearly the length of the cycle for the precession of the equinoxes.
In this review of the ancient ideas of different peoples, we have followed the most probable order in considering that the observation of nature came first, and the different parts of it were afterwards individualized and named. It is proper to add that according to some ancient authors—such as Diodorus Siculus—the process was considered to have been the other way. That Uranus was an actual individual, that Atlas and Saturn were his sons or descendants or followers, and that because Atlas was a great astronomer he was said to support the heavens, and that his seven daughters were real, and being very spiritual they were regarded as goddesses after death and placed in heaven under the name of the Pleiades.
However, the universality of the ideas seems to forbid this interpretation, which is also in itself much less natural.
These various opinions lead us to remark, in conclusion,that the fables of ancient mythological astronomy must be interpreted by means of various keys. Allegory is the first—the allegory employed by philosophers and poets who have spoken in figurative language. Their words taken in the letter are quite unnatural, but many of the fables are simply the description or explanation of physical facts. Hieroglyphics are another key. Having become obscure by the lapse of time they sometimes, however, present ideas different from those which they originally expressed. It is pretty certain that hieroglyphics have been the source of the men with dogs' heads, or feet of goats, &c. Fables also arise from the adoption of strange words whose sound is something like another word in the borrowing language connected with other ideas, and the connection between the two has to be made by fable.
The numerous stone monuments that are to be found scattered over this country, and over the neighbouring parts of Normandy, have given rise to many controversies as to their origin and use. By some they have been supposed to be mere sepulchral monuments erected in late times since the Roman occupation of Great Britain. Such an idea has little to rest upon, and we prefer to regard them, as they have always been regarded, as relics of the Druidical worship of the Celtic or Gaulish races that preceded us in this part of Europe.
If we were to believe the accounts of ordinary historians, we might believe that the Druids were nothing more than a kind of savage race, hidden, like the fallow-deer in the recesses of their woods. Thought to be sanguinary, brutal, superstitious, we have learned nothing of them beyond their human sacrifices, their worship of the oak, their raisedstones; without inquiring whether these characteristics which scandalize our tastes, are not simply the legacy of a primitive era, to which, by the side of the tattered religions of the old Paganism, Druidism remained faithful. Nevertheless the Druids were not without merit in the order of thought.
For the Celts, as for all primitive people, astronomy and religion were intimately associated. They considered that the soul was eternal, and the stars were worlds successively inhabited by the spiritual emigrants. They considered that the stars were as much the abodes of human life as our own earth, and this image of the future life constituted their power and their grandeur. They repelled entirely the idea of the destruction of life, and preferred to see in the phenomena of death, a voyage to a region already peopled by friends.
Under what form did Druidical science represent the universe? Their scientific contemplation of the heavens was at the same time a religious contemplation. It is therefore impossible to separate in our history their astronomical and theological heavens.
In their theological astronomy, or astronomical theology, the Druids considered the totality of all living beings as divided into three circles. The first of these circles, the circle of immensity,Ceugant, corresponding to incommunicable, infinite attributes, belonged to God alone; it wasproperly the absolute, and none, save the ineffable being, had a right there. The second circle, that of blessedness,Gwyn-fyd, united in it the beings that have arrived at the superior degrees of existence; this was heaven. The third, the circle of voyages,Abred, comprised all the noviciate; it was there, at the bottom of the abysses, in the great oceans, as Taliesin says, that the first breath of man commenced. The object proposed to men's perseverance and courage was to attain to what the bards called the point of liberty, very probably the point at which, being suitably fortified against the assaults of the lower passions, they were not exposed to be troubled, against their wills, in their celestial aspirations; and when they arrived at such a point—so worthy of the ambition of every soul that would be its own master—they quitted the circle of Abred and entered that of Gwyn-fyd; the hour of their recompense had come.
Demetrius, cited by Plutarch, relates that the Druids believed that these souls of the elect were so intimately connected with our circle that they could not emerge from it without disturbing its equilibrium. This writer states, that being in the suite of the Emperor Claudius, in some part of the British isles, he heard suddenly a terrible hurricane, and the priests, who alone inhabited these sacred islands, immediately explained the phenomenon, by telling him that a vacuum had been produced on the earth, by the departure of an important soul. "The great men," he said,"while they live are like torches whose light is always beneficent and never harms any one, but when they are extinguished their death generally occasions, as you have just seen, winds, storm, and derangements of the atmosphere."
The palingenetic system of the Druids is complete in itself, and takes the being at his origin, and conducts him to the ultimate heaven. At the moment of his creation, as Henry Martyn says in his Commentary, the being has no conscience of the gifts that are latent in him. He is created in the lowest stage of life, inAnnwfn, the shadowy abyss at the base ofAbred. There, surrounded by nature, submitted to necessity, he rises obscurely through the successive degrees of inorganic matter, and then through the organic. His conscience at last awakes. He is man. "Three things are primarily contemporaneous—man, liberty, and light." Before man there was nothing in creation but fatal obedience to physical laws; with man commences the great battle between liberty and necessity, good and evil. The good and the evil present themselves to man in equilibrium, "and he can at his pleasure attach himself to one or the other of them."
It might appear at first sight that it was carrying things too far to attribute to the Druids the knowledge, not indeed of the true system of the world, but the general idea on which it was constructed. But, on closer examination, thisopinion seems to have some consistency. If it was from the Druids that Pythagoras derived the basis of his theology, why should it not be from them that he derived also that of his astronomy? Why, if there is no difficulty in seeing that the principle of the subordination of the earth might arise from the meditations of an isolated spirit, should there be any more difficulty in thinking that the principles of astronomy should take birth in the midst of a corporation of theologians embued with the same ideas as the philosophers on the circulation of life, and applied with continued diligence to the study of celestial phenomena. The Druid, not having to receive mythological errors, might be led by that circumstance to imagine in space other worlds similar to our own.
Independently of its intrinsic value, this supposition rests also upon the testimony of historians. A singular statement made by Hecatæus with regard to the religious rites of Great Britain exhibits this in a striking manner. This historian relates that the moon, seen in this island, appears much larger than it does anywhere else, and that it is possible to distinguish mountains on its surface, such as there are on the earth. Now, how had the Druids made an observation of this kind? It is of not much consequence whether they had actually seen the lunar mountains or had only imagined them, the curious thing is that they were persuaded that that body was like the earth, and had mountains and otherfeatures similar to our own. Plutarch, in his treatiseDe facie in orbe Lunæ, tells us that, according to the Druids, and conformably to an idea which had long been held in science, the surface of the moon is furrowed with several Mediterraneans, which the Grecian philosophers compare to the Red and Caspian seas. It was also thought that immense abysses were seen, which were supposed to be in communication with the hemisphere that is turned away from the earth. Lastly, the dimensions of this sky-borne country were estimated; (ideas very different to those that were current in Greece): its size and its breadth, says the traveller depicted by the writer, are not at all such as the geometers say, but much larger.
It is through the same author, who is in accordance in this respect with all the bards, that we know that this celestial earth was considered by the theologians of the West as the residence of happy souls. They rose and approached it in proportion as their preparation had been complete, but, in the agitation of the whirlwind, many reached the moon that it would not receive. "The moon repelled a great number, and rejected them by its fluctuations, at the moment they reached it; but those that had better success fixed themselves there for good; their soul is like the flame, which, raising itself in the ether of the moon, as fire raises itself on that of the earth receives force and solidity in the same way that red-hot iron does when plunged into the water."
They thus traced an analogy between the moon and the earth, which they doubtless carried out to its full development, and made the moon an image of what they knew here, picturing there the lunar fields and brooks and breezes and perfumes. What a charm such a belief must have given to the heavens at night. The moon was the place and visible pledge of immortality. On this account it was placed in high position in their religion; the order of all the festivals was arranged after that which was dedicated to it; its presence was sought in all their ceremonies, and its rays were invoked. The Druids are always therefore represented as having the crescent in their hands.
Astronomy and theology being so intimately connected in the spirit of the Druids, we can easily understand that the two studies were brought to the front together in their colleges. From certain points of view we may say that the Druids were nothing more than astronomers. This quality was not less striking to the ancients in them than in the Chaldæans. The observation of the stars was one of their official functions. Cæsar tells us, without entering more into particulars, that they taught many things aboutthe form and dimensions of the earth, the size and arrangements of the different parts of heaven, and the motions of the stars, which includes the greater part of the essential problems of celestial geometry, which we see they had already proposed to themselves. We can see the same fact in the magnificentpassage of Taliesin. "I will ask the bards," he says in hisHymn of the World, "and why will not the bards answer me? I will ask of them what sustains the earth, since having no support it does not fall? or if it falls which way does it go? But what can serve for its support? Is the world a great traveller? Although it moves without ceasing, it remains tranquil in its route; and how admirable is that route, seeing that the world moves not in any direction." This suffices to show that the ideas of the Druids on material phenomena were not at all inferior to their conceptions of the destiny of the soul, and that they had scientific views of quite another origin from the Alexandrian Greeks, the Latins, their disciples, or the middle ages. An anecdote of the eighth century furnishes another proof in favour of Druidical science. Every one knows that Virgilius, bishop of Salzburg, was accused of heresy by Boniface before the Pope Zacharias, because he had asserted that there were antipodes. Now Virgilius was educated in one of the learned monasteries of Ireland, which were fed by the Christian bards, who had preserved the scientific traditions of Druidism.
Plate II.Plate II.—Druidical Worship.
The fundamental alliance between the doctrine of the plurality of worlds and of the eternity of the soul is perhaps the most memorable character in the thoughts of this ancient race. The death upon earth was for them only a psychological and astronomical fact, not more grave than that whichhappened to the moon when it was eclipsed, nor the fall of the verdant clothing of the oak under the breath of the autumnal breeze. We see these conceptions and manners, at first sight so extraordinary, clothe themselves with a simple and natural aspect. The Druids were so convinced of the future life in the stars, that they usedto lend money to be repaid in the other world. Such a custom must have made a profound impression on the minds of those who daily practised it. Pomponius Mela and Valerius Maximus both tell us of this custom. The latter says, "After having left Marseilles I found that ancient custom of the Gauls still in force, namely, of lending one another money to be paid back in the infernal regions, for they are persuaded that the souls of men are immortal."
In passing to the other world they lost neither their personality, their memory, nor their friends; they there re-encountered the business, the laws, the magistrates of this world. They had capitals and everything the same as here. They gave one another rendezvous as emigrants might who were going to America. This superstition, so laudable as far as it had the effect of pressing on the minds of men the firm sentiment of immortality, led them to burn, along with the dead, all the objects which had been dear to them, or of which they thought they might still wish to make use. "The Gauls," says Pomponius Mela, "burn and bury with the dead that which had belonged to the living."
They had another custom prompted by the same spirit, but far more touching. When any one bade farewell to the earth, each one charged him to take letters to his absent friends, who should receive him on his arrival and doubtless load him with questions as to things below. It is to Diodorus that we owe the preservation of the remembrance of this custom. "At their funerals," he says, "they place letters with the dead which are written to those already dead by their parents, so that they may be read by them." They followed the soul in thought in its passage to the other planets, and the survivors often regretted that they could not accomplish the voyage in their company; sometimes, indeed, they could not resist the temptation. "There are some," says Mela, "who burn themselves with their friends in order that they may continue to live together." They entertained another idea also, which led even to worse practices than this, namely, that death was a sort of recruiting that was commanded by the laws of the universe for the sustenance of the army of existences. In certain cases they would replace one death by another. Posidonius, who visited Gaul at an epoch when it had not been broken up, and who knew it far better than Cæsar, has left us some very curious information on this subject. If a man felt himself seriously warned by his disease that he must hold himself in readiness for departure, but who, nevertheless, had, for the moment, some important business on hand, or the needs of his familychained him to this life, or even that death was disagreeable to him; if no member of his family or his clients were willing to offer himself instead, he looked out for a substitute; such a one would soon arrive accompanied by a troop of friends, and stipulating for his price a certain sum of money, he distributed it himself as remembrances among his companions,—often even he would only ask for a barrel of wine. Then they would erect a stage, improvise a sort of festival, and finally, after the banquet was over, our hero would lie down on the shield, and driving a sword into his bosom, would take his departure for the other world.
Such a custom, indeed, shows anything but what we should rightly call civilization, however admirable may have been their opinions; but it receives its only palliation from the fact that their indifference to death did not arise from their undervaluing life here, but that they had so firm a belief in the existence and the happiness of a life hereafter.
That these beliefs were not separated from their astronomical ideas is seen from the fact that they peopled the firmament with the departed. The Milky Way was called the town of Gwyon (Coër or Ker Gwydion, Ker in Breton, Caer in Gaulish, Kohair in Gaelic); certain bardic legends gave to Gwyon as father a genius called Don, who resides in the constellation of Cassiopeia, and who figures as "the king of the fairies" in the popular myths of Ireland. The empyrean is thus divided between various heavenly spirits. Arthur had forresidence the Great Bear, called by the Druids "Arthur's Chariot."
We are not, however, entirely limited to tradition and the reports of former travellers for our information as to the astronomy of the Druids, but we have also at our service numerous coins belonging to the old Gauls, who were of one family with those who cultivated Druidism in our island, which have been discovered buried in the soil of France. The importance which was given to astronomy in that race becomes immediately evident upon the discovery of the fact that these coins are marked with figures having reference to the heavenly bodies, in other words are astronomical coins. If we examine, from a general point of view, a large collection of Gaulish medals such as that preserved in the National Museum of Paris, we observe that among the essential symbols that occupy the fields are types of the Horse, the Bull, the Boar, the Eagle, the Lion, the Horseman, and the Bear. We remark next a great number of signs, most often astronomical, ordinarily accessory, but occasionally the chief, such as the sign∾, globules surrounded by concentric circles, stars of five, six, or eight points, radiated and flaming bodies, crescents, triangles, wheels with four spokes, the sign∞, the lunar crescent, the zigzag, &c. Lastly, we remark other accessory types represented by images of real objects or imaginary figures, such as the Lyre, the Diota, the Serpent, the Hatchet, theHuman Eye, the Sword, the Bough, the Lamp, the Jewel, the Bird, the Arrow, the Ear of Corn, the Fishes, &c.
On a great number of medals, on the stateres of Vercingetorix, on the reverses of the coins of several epochs, we recognize principally the sign of the Waterer, which appears to symbolize for one part of antiquity the knowledge of the heavenly sphere. On the Gaulish types this sign (an amphora with two handles) bears the name of Diota, and represents amongst the Druids as amongst the Magi the sciences of astronomy and astrology.
Some of these coins are represented in the woodcut below.
Fig. 2.Fig. 2.
The first of these represents the course of the Sun-Horse reaching the Tropic of Cancer (summer solstice), and brought back to the Tropic of Capricorn (winter solstice).
On the second is seen the symbol of the year between the south (represented by the sun☉) and the north (represented by the Northern Bear). In the third the calendar (or course of the year) between the sun☉and the moon☾. Time the Sun, and the Bear are visible on the fourth. The diurnal motion of the heavens is represented on the fifth; and lastly, on the sixth, appears the Watering-pot, the Sun-Horse, and the sign of the course of the heavenly bodies.
On other groups of money the presence of the zodiac may be made out.
These medals would seem to show that some part of the astronomical knowledge of the Druids was not invented by themselves, but borrowed from the Chaldeans or others who in other lands invented them in previous ages, and from whom they may have possibly derived them from the Phenicians.
We may certainly expect, however, from these pieces of money, if found in sufficient number and carefully studied, to discover a good many positive facts now wanting to us, of the religion, sciences, manners, language, commercial relation, &c. which belonged to the Celtic civilization. It was far from being so barbarous as is ordinarily supposed, and we shall do more justice to it when we know it better.
M. Fillioux, the curator of the museum of Guéret, who has studied these coins with care, after having sought for a long time for a clear and concise method of determiningexactly the symbolic and religious character of the Gaulish money, has been able to give the following general statements.
The coins have for their ordinary field the heavens.
On the right side they present almost universally the ideal heads of gods or goddesses, or in default of these, the symbols that are representative of them.
On the reverse for the most part, they reproduce, either by direct types or by emblems artfully combined, the principal celestial bodies, the divers aspects of the constellations, and probably the laws, which, according to their ancient science, presided over their course; in a smaller proportion they denote the religious myths which form the base of the national belief of the Gauls. As we have seen above, for them the present life was but a transitory state of the soul, only a prodrome of the future life, which should develop itself in heaven and the astronomical worlds with which it is filled.
Borrowed from an elevated spiritualism, incessantly tending towards the celestial worlds, these ideas were singularly appropriate to a nation at once warlike and commercial. These circumstances explain the existence of these strange types, founded at the same time on those of other nations, and on the symbolism which was the soul of the Druidical religion. To this religious caste, indeed, we must give the merit of this ingenious and original conception, of turningthe reverses of the coins into regular charts of the heavens. Nothing indeed could be better calculated to inspire the people with respect and confidence than these mysterious and learned symbols, representing the phenomena of the heavens.
Not making use of writing to teach their dogmas, which they wished to maintain as part of the mysteries of their caste, the Druids availed themselves of this method of placing on the money that celestial symbolism of which they alone possessed the key.
The religious ideas founded on astronomical observations were not peculiar to, or originated by, the Druids, any more than their zodiac. There seems reason to believe that they had come down from a remote antiquity, and been widely spread over many nations, as we shall see in the chapter on the Pleiades; but we can certainly trace them to the East, where they first prevailed in Persia and Egypt, and were afterwards brought to Greece, where they disappeared before the new creations of anthropomorphism, though they were not forgotten in the days of the poet Anacreon, who says, "Do not represent for me, around this vase" (a vase he had ordered of the worker in silver), "either the heavenly bodies, or the chariot, or the melancholy Orion; I have nothing to do with the Pleiades or the Herdsman." He only wanted mythological subjects which were more to his taste.
The characters which are made use of in these astronomical moneys of the Druids would appear to have a more ancient origin than we are able to trace directly, since they are most of them found on the arms and implements of the bronze age. Some of them, such as the concentric pointed circles, the crescent with a globule or a star, the line in zigzag, were used in Egypt; where they served to mark the sun, the month, the year, the fluid element; and they appear to have had among the Druids the same signification. The other signs, such as the∿, and its multiple combinations, the centred circles, grouped in one or two, the little rings, the alphabetical characters recalling the form of a constellation, the wheel with rays, the radiating discs, &c. are all represented on the bronze arms found in the Celtic, Germanic, Breton, and Scandinavian lands. From this remote period, which was strongly impressed with the Oriental genius, we must date the origin of the Celtic symbolism. It has been supposed, and not without reason, that this epoch, besides being contemporaneous with the Phenician establishments on the borders of the ocean, was an age of civilization and progress in Gaul, and that the ideas of the Druids became modified at the same time that they acquired just notions in astronomy and in the art of casting metals. At a far later period, the Druidic theocracy having, with religious care, preserved the symbols of its ancient traditions, had them stamped on the coins which they caused to be struck.
This remarkable fact is shown in an incontestable manner in the rougher attempts in Gaulish money, and this same state of things was perpetuated even into the epoch of the high arts, since we find on the imitation statues of Macedonia the old Celtic symbols associated with emblems of a Grecian origin.
In Italy a different result was arrived at, because the warlike element of the nobles soon predominated over the religious. Nevertheless the most ancient Roman coins, those which are known to us under the name of Consular, have not escaped the common law which seems to have presided, among all nations, over the origin of money. The two commonest types, one in bronze ofJanus Bifronswith thepalus; the other in silver, theDioscureswith their stars, have an eminently astronomical aspect.
The comparison between the Gaulish and Roman coins may be followed in a series of analogies which are very remarkable from an astronomical point of view. To cite only a few examples, we may observe on a large number of pennies of different families, the impression of Auriga "the Coachman" conducting a quadriga; or the sun under another form (with his head radiated and drawn in profile); or Diana with her lunar attributes; or the five planets well characterised; for example, Venus by a double star, as that of the morning or of the evening; or the constellations of the Dog, Hercules, the Kid, the Lyre, and almost allthose of the zodiac and of the circumpolar region and the seven-kine (septemtriones). In later times, under the Cæsars, in the villa of Borghèse, is found a calendar whose arrangements very much recall the ancient Gaulish coin. The head of the twelve great gods and the twelve signs of the zodiac are represented, and the drawing of the constellations establishes a correspondence between their rising and the position of the sun in the zodiac. It may therefore be affirmed that in the coinage and works of art in Italy and Greece, the characteristic influence of astronomical worship is found as strongly as among the Druids. Nor have the Western nations alone had the curious habit of impressing their astronomical ideas upon their coinage, for in China and Japan coins of a similar description have been met with, containing on their reverse all the signs of the zodiac admitted by them.
In conclusion, we may say, that it was cosmography, that constructed the dogmas of the Druidical religion, which was, in its essential elements, the same as that of the old Oriental theocracies. The outward ceremonies were addressed to the sun, the moon, the stars, and other visible phenomena; but, above nature, there was the great generating and moving principle, which the Celts placed, at a later period perhaps, among the attributes of their supreme deities.