to the time of Jupiter, who is said to have restored them. What stamps them with the most unerring badge of great antiquity, is their being mentioned by Sanchoniatho, as particularly worshipped by the Phoenicians 1300 years before the christian æra, and before the actual formation of the Grecian mythology. No wonder then that the Cabirean festivals should have travelled with the Phoenician colonists cotemporary with Sanchoniatho to Ireland, in which they made a permanent settlement. Nor will it appear strange to the reflecting observer, that although, in process of time, these Cabirean rites should amongst the fabulous Greeks have been embellished or disguised by the introduction of their more recent deities, yet they remained with the Irish, as they were first imported by those, to whom the Grecian mythology was unknown. These traces of the Cabiric rites to such high antiquity illustrate what the indefatigable and scientific Vallancey has latterly added to his valuable elucubrations *. quity of the rites. "Artemidorus is my authority, that the ancients Great antiknew of the Cabiric mysteries being established in Ire- Cabiric land. There is an island," says he, "near Britain, in which the sacred rites of Ceres and Proserpine áre observed, as in Samothrace." (Quoted by Strabo, lib. iv. p. 191.) On which Bochart observes, "These islanders could not have been instructed in these rites by the Greeks, for Artemidorus wrote in the age of Ptolemæus Lathyrus, ; at which time, every school-boy Coll. part vi. ch. x. Of the Dioscuri and Cabiri, and the Cabiric or Mythratic laws in Ireland. knows, the Greeks had not navigated to the British isles, and therefore the rites of the Cabiri must have been introduced there by the Phoenicians." (Geogr. Sacr. p. 650.) "And," adds the same author, “Orpheus, or rather Onomacritus, indeed mentions Ireland, but he learned the name and site of it from the Phoenicians; the Greeks had not at that time sailed into those seas. Onomacritus lived 560 years before Christ. Polybius, who lived but 124 before Christ, acknowledges they knew nothing of the northern nations. Itaque multa potuisse illis esse perspecta de occidentalis oceani insulis quæ Polybius ignoraverit." Eleusynian It must be remarked, that both Greeks and Romans mysteries. affected to speak of the religious rites and ceremonies of other nations with immediate reference to their own, and in the names of their own deities. What Artemidorus then says of the rites of Ceres and Proserpine being known in Ireland, obviously means no inore, than that these rites, which amongst the Greeks were known and practised in honour of Ceres and her daughter Proserpine, were also observed in this western island; thereby referring to those most ancient rites, which were called by preeminence the mysteries; and by the Greeks, from the place of their celebration, Eleusynian. They were holden in such dread estimation by the ancient Greeks, that if any person divulged them, the vengeance of the gods was sure to light on the guilty head, and no one would on that account remain either under the same roof or in the same vessel with the offender. To these mystic and dark rites Virgil alludes in the sixth book of his Eneid, and strongly expresses the impenetrable secrecy with which they were believed in his days to have been enveloped from the earliest times. Cumaa Sibylla Horrendas canit ambages, antroque remugit Obscuris vera involvens. • Virgil's connecting these sacred mysteries with the Cumaan Sibyll, carries with it a very strong inference of the ceremonies or mystic rites alluded to pre-existing the time of the Grecian mythology and this will well account for the existence of them in Ireland without any tincture or admixture of the Grecian fable, or the obscenities, with which their observance was latterly contaminated. Ceres and Proserpine are not mentioned in the Irish metrical annals, however they superabound with poetical fancy and allegory; it was, according to Virgil, the stile of the day both to write in verse, and wrap up truth in mystery, obscuris vera involvens. It was one amongst the few singularities of the learned Dr. Prideaux, to explode the authenticity of the Sibyll's prophecies, and to regard them as pious fictions of the early christians to strengthen their arguments against the heathens. Without entering upon the controversy, which would necessarily run into great length, it will not be irrelevant to the scope of this Dissertation first to remark, that this charge of forgery (however piously intended) is too serious to be lightly adopted. The most learned fathers of the primitive church are unanimous in urging their authenticity as Justin, who suffered martyrdom, A. D. 163, in his Apology for the Christians; Origen against Celsus; Arnobius, and his scholar Lactantius, against the Gentiles; St. Cyrrill against Julian the apostate; St. Augustine in his City of God; Eusebius, Constantine the emperor, and several others. The modern Pyrrhonism concerning the Sibyll's prophecies, is but the revival of the old pagan opposition to christianity; and as the Emperor Constantine, in a Latin oration, which he wrote to a convention of prelates, undertook to prove their authenticity against The Cumæan Si byll. When we fully reflect upon the elaborate pains, which the emperor Constantine submitted to in proving the old antichristian heathens, we shall refer to his arguments as being equally conclusive against their antichristian imitators. The whole oration is to be seen in Eusebius, 1. iv. c. 32. First, They could not have been forged by christians, or made after the nativity of Christ, because Marcus Varro, who lived near 100 years before Our Blessed Lord, makes large mention of their predictions, and (as does Fenestella and other heathen writers) affirms, that they were gathered by the Romans from all parts of the world, and laid up with diligence and great reverence in the capitol under the immediate custody of the high priest, and other officers called the fifteen. Secondly, because the Sibylla Erythrea (called afterwards the Cumaan) testified of herself, that she lived about 600 years after the flood of Noah; and her countryman Appollodorus Erythræus, as well as Varro, reported, that she lived before the siege of Troy; and amongst the works of Cicero extant at that time, was a translation into Latin verses of the famous acrostic lines of the Cumæan Sibyll, predicting the birth of Our Lord Christ; and Cicero was killed nearly forty years before Christ was born. Thirdly, because Cicero in several of his works, as in his letters to Lentulus and De Divinatione, 1. ii. makes very explicit mention of these predictions. Fourthly, because Augustus, before Christ was born, had, according to Suetonius, such reverence for them, as to put them into closer custody under the altar of Apollo, on the hill Palatine, where no one without special licence could have access to them, which as a special favour was allowed to Virgil; and from this inspection did he write his famous eclogue Pollio. Ultima Cumai venit jam carminis, ætas; and though the predictions of this Sibyll contained truths, which the pagan poet did not see the force of, every christian reader must admit, Te duce, si qua manent sceleris vestigia nostri, That is, Thou being our leader or captain, the remnant of our sins to his council of bishops, and to the whole empire the genuine authority of this Cumæan Sibyll's predictions, and that he was so far from considering her as an idolatress or magician, that he held her in the highest veneration, as an inspired favourite of heaven; we shall the more readily reconcile with truth the report of Justin the Martyr, who asserts, that she was of Babylonish descent. No author relates either the time or the occasion of her passing out of Asia to Cumæ in Italy. The appellation of Cumaan may have been given to this Ærithrean Sibyll, not from the place of her residence, but from her prophecies being there known or preserved, or from her worship having been there instituted or encouraged; for the Sibylls were worshipped in many places from very early times. If the first druids, who went over to Ireland directly or indirectly from Asia, carried with them these ancient rites or ceremonies, the earlier the period was, shall be made void or taken away, and the world shall be delivered for ever from fear for the same. Greater weight is due to the arguments of this learned and respectable emperor, than to Dr. Prideaux or any Pyrrhonite, for the following reasons: First, He only rests his argument upon the authority of authors who pre-existed christianity. Second, His arguments are addressed to a council of learned prelates. Third, Being emperor, he commanded access to all records and authorities then existing. Fourth, He was attended by the most learned men of his day, such as Lactantius, the preceptor to his son Crispus; and, therefore, he ends his discourse in these remarkable words, "These are the things which fell from heaven into the mind of this virgin to foretell; for which cause I am induced to account her for blessed, whom our Saviour did vouchsafe to choose for a prophet, to denounce unto the world his holy providence towards us," |