By William Long, Esq., M.4., F.S.A. 335 
made a serpentine temple, for there are‘certain limits to the credulity 
of mankind (p. 68, p. 75). 
“Therefore Dr. Stukeley boldly asserted, that the snake- eirt 
temple was a well-known thing, and ‘denominated of old time’ a 
Dracontium. Mr. Twining had held the candle to him, when he 
coined the word Cunetium for a wedge-shaped temple. ‘The temples 
of old made in the form of a serpent were called, for that reason, 
Dracontia.’ ‘ Dracontia was a name among the first learned nations, 
for the very ancient sort of temples of which they could give no 
account, nor well explain their meaning upon it. Strabo, xiv.’ (See 
Abury, p. 9, p. 54, p. 55.) The last words seem inconsistent ; for 
if they called it Dracontium for resembling a draco, they could per- 
fectly well explain their meaning. These impudent fictions have 
obtained an extraordinary currency. ‘ Hence (said Mr. W. Cooke) 
were these temples called Dracontia.’’ (Patr. and Druid. Rel., p. 28.) 
Sir R. Colt Hoare mentions ‘ ¢hat class called by the ancients Dra- 
contia,’ as a notorious fact. Ane. N. Wilts, p. 67, p. 70. ‘Even 
temples from their resemblance in form, assumed the title of 
Dracontia.’. Mod. N. Wilts, II., p. 51. Mr. Bathurst Deane, in 
Archeologia, xxv., has an essay on Dracontia, in which the common 
learning of serpent-worship is brought up, and everything receives 
from it a Dracontian colour. We hear of the god Ophel, alias 
Apollo, and his ‘ Dracontic tripod ;’ we see ‘ defined the nature and 
object of a Dracontium ;’ and we learn that dracon is derived from 
derech on, avenue of the sun, although General de Penhouet ‘ does 
not understand the term dracontium’ in that way. It is quite im- 
material how he understood a term that hath no existence ; otherwise 
I think the General is much in the right. : 
© This oft-repeated name, Dracontium, is nowhere to be found. 
It is unknown to Stephens and Facciolati. And ‘Strabo xiv’ has 
not a word of allusion to any part of this topic. When we see the 
assertion, upon which the whole case is made to hinge supported by 
no reference except a false one, we can make sure that there is none 
to produce. That name and the assertions concerning it were a 
deliberate forgery which supine credulity has screened from detection 
a hundred years ” (Cyclops Christianus, pp. 106-7), 
VOL. XVII.—No. LI. 2B 
