FABLES AND PREJUDICES. 103 



lives, who governs and enlightens the world.* The priests 

 of that people kept in the temples living serpents ; and 

 when dead, interred them in those sanctuaries of supersti- 

 tion, t 



As an emblem of Prudence and of Circumspection, the 

 serpent was the constant attribute of JEsculapius, and the 

 same veneration was paid to those reptiles, as to the father 

 or the God of medicine and magic. + The Ophites were 

 Christian sectaries, who, towards the second century of our 

 era, established a worship which was particularly distinguished 

 from that of the Gnostics in this, that they adored a living 

 serpent ; conforming themselves to the ancient traditions of 

 their race, they regarded that animal as the image of Wis- 

 dom, and of the sensual emotions which it awakens. § The 

 monuments of the Mexicans, of the Japanese, and of many 

 other nations who owe the foundation of their civilization 

 to the ancient inhabitants of Asia, attest that the serpent 

 played also a part more or less important in their religious 

 mysteries ; but time and the relations which exist between 

 those nations and Europeans, have partly abolished these 

 usages ; and at this day it is only among negro tribes, and 

 on the west coast of Africa, that the serpent figures among 

 divinities of the first rank.|| 



It does not enter into the plan of my work to explain or 

 even to allude to the numerous allegories which the serpent 

 represented among the ancients. Every one knows that 

 the snakes armed the hand of Discord, no less than the whip 

 of the Furies, and that the head of the Eumenides bristled 

 with serpents ; the two snakes twisted around the caduceus 

 of Mercury is the type of insinuating eloquence ; the circle 

 formed of a snake biting its own tail, without beginning and 

 without end, was the chosen symbol of eternity ; the cele- 

 rity of movements uniformly repeated to execute progres- 

 sive motion, became the emblem of the swiftness of time, 



* EusEBii, Fred. Evang., 33 ; Horopollo, ap. i. 2 ; Creutzeh, 

 Stjmb. L. i. 507 and 824. 



t -^LiAN., xvii. 5 ; Herodotus, ii. 74. 

 + Pausaxius, ii. 26-28. 

 § MosHEiM, Gesch. der Schlangcnbr. p. 1. 

 II See our article on the Python bivittatus. 



