on Ancient M&iiumcnts. 165 



I. Concerning Myitiological Beings represented or sculptured 

 on Antique Monuments. 



The first of these beings with which we shall engage our at- 

 tention are the centaurs and the tauro-centaurs : After these 

 will follow the minotaur, the satyrs, the fauni, the Pans, the Mg\- 

 pans, and the Jaunisques. Both of these classes exhibit some 

 portion of the human body, having been represented either with 

 the head or with the trunk of man. The mythological beings 

 to whom the ancients have given the head or body of our race, 

 or both together, have never received extremities in accordance 

 with their superior portions ; that is to say, though they may 

 have the head or the trunk of a man, they never exhibit his 

 feet. It is the same with all those, who, like the sphinx, the 

 sirens, harpies, tritons, and the naiades, have any thing human 

 about them. The Greek and Roman statuaries do not appear 

 to have ever deviated from this rule, whilst those of ancient 

 Egypt, much more free, and less constrained by precise rules, 

 have but little regarded it. 



It is necessary to make this remark, that we may accurately 

 comprehend the monuments of antiquity. With this exception, 

 the extremities or the limbs of these mythological beings always 

 exhibit themselves in accordance with the supposed habits or 

 manners of these divinities. 



The ancients, then, have arranged the different portions of 

 their fabulous beings so as to represent tliem as requiring the 

 laws of an organization conformable to the habits which they 

 assign them. Accordingly, the forms they have chosen never 

 contradict these laws. In truth, when these beings are intended 

 to represent ruminating animals, their extremities are always 

 such as agree to this class of animals ; and it is quite the con- 

 trary, when, in their compositions, they have wished to retrace 

 the solidungula or the monodactyles. 



Regarding centaurs, hippo-centaurs, and ono-centaurs, with 

 which we are at first to occupy our attention, it is known that 

 the ancients constructed their monsters half men, half asses or 

 horses. Supposing them thus formed, they have never given 

 them the paws of hisulcated or of ruminating animals, but those 

 which suit with the monodactyles or solidungula. They have con- 



