114 COSMOS. 



*ey of the Nile : " the sta?-s did not yet revolve in the heavens , 

 ftor hat^. the Danaides yet appeared, or the race of Deucalion."* 



* Since the explanations which Heyne has given of the origin of the 

 astronomical myth of the Proselenes, so widely diffused in antiqnity (De 

 Arcadibus Luna Antiquioribus, in Opusc. Acad., vol. ii., p. 332), were 

 msatisfactory to me, I was greatly rejoiced to receive from my acute 

 philological friend, Professor Johannes Franz, a new and very hnppy 

 solution of this much-debated problem, by simple combinations of ideas. 

 This solution is xincounected with either the arrangement of the calen- 

 dar by the Arcadians, or their worship of the Moon. I restrict myself 

 faere to an extract from an unpublished and more extended work. This 

 explanation will not be unwelcome to some of my renders in a work 

 ,'u which I have made a rule frequently to trace back the whole of our 

 present knowledge to the knowledge of the ancients, and even to tra- 

 iitions believed generally or by very many. 



" We shall commence with a few of the principal passages from the 

 uncients which treat of the Proselenes. Stephanus of Byzantium (v. 

 Apudg) mentions the logographs of Hippys of Rhegium, a cotemporaiy 

 of Darius and Xerxes, as the first who called the Arcadiails TrpocrfZ?;- 

 »ovQ. The scholiasts {ad Apollon. Rhod. IV., 264, and ad Aristoph., 

 Wub., 397) agree in saying, the remote antiquity of the Arcadians be- 

 comes most clear from the fact of their being called TrpoaDiTjvoL. They 

 appear to have been there before the Moon, as Eudoxus and Theodoras 

 ilso say ; the latter adds that it was shortly before the labors of Hei-- 

 '-ules that the Moon appeared. In the government of the Tegeates, 

 A.ristotle states that the barbarians who inhabited Arcadia were driven 

 jut by the later Arcadians before the Moon appeared, and therefore 

 ;hey were called Trpoai7ir]voi. Others say, Endymion discovered the 

 revolution of the Moon ; but, as he was an Arcadian, his countrymen 

 KQve called after him irpoaiT.TjvoL. Lucian expresses himself slighting- 

 /y. {Astrolog., 26.) According to him, it was from stupidity and folly 

 that the Arcadians said they were there before the Moon. In the Schol. 

 udj^schyl., Prom., 436, it is observed, that 7rpoGe?.ovfj.evov is called vGpL" 

 lofZEvov, whence, therefore, the Arcadians were called npo<y£?irivot, be- 

 viause they are arrogant. The passages in Ovid as to the existence of 

 vhe Arcadians before the Moon are universally known. Recently, in- 

 ieed, the idea has sprung up that all the ancients were deceived by 

 jhe form TcpoatTiTivoi, and that the word (properly TcpoDJirjvoL) meant 

 only pre-Hellenic, as Arcadia certainly was a Pelasgian country. 



" If, now, it can be proved," continues Professor Franz, " that an- 

 other people connected their origin with another cosmical body, the 

 u'ouble of taking refuge in deceptive etymological explanations will 

 be obviated. This kind of testimony exists in the most suitable form. 

 The learned rhetorician Menander says literally in his work, De Econ- 

 n%jiiis (sec. ii., cap. 3, ed. Heeren), as follows: ' A third motive for the 

 ^Taise of objects is the time; this is the case in all the most ancient na- 

 tions : when we say of a town or of a country it was founded before 

 this or that star, or with those stars, before the flood or after the flood 

 • — as the Athenians affirm they originated at the same time as the Sun, 

 ike Arcadians before tlio Moon, the Delphians immediately after the 

 !lood — these are epochs, and, as it were, starting-points in time.' 



*' Therefore Delphi, the connection of which with the flood of Deu« 

 •>alioTi is otherwise prove 1 {Pausan., x., G), is surpassed by Arcadia 

 Lnd Arcadia by Athens. Aptllonius Rhodius. wlio was so fond t)*"imi 



