Short Notes. 179 
must have obtained every relative argument on its history ; however I have 
ventured to hazard an opinion that the Bethyle or stone of adoration, situated 
without the cespetitious or grass circle, was the primary erection, to which 
the temple was dedicated ; the stone in the first place to the pure worship 
of the Deity and the temple afterwards to the Mithraic, or fire worship ; 
and therefore considered justly by Stukeley as a temple to the Sun, especially 
as the adytum is certainly open to the Eastern quarter. Sammes who wrote 
before Stukeley is right in his conjecture of its being of Pheenician origin, 
erected to their celebrated Hercules, whose rites were symbolic of the Sun 
and therefore this Deity [is] represented as looking through chinks or 
crevises with this motto OMNIA VIDENS. Both Greek and Roman authority 
assert the existence of his pillars at Cades; doubtless a structure of unhewn 
stone; and his representation of leaning on a club is only a vulgar perversion 
of his real history by the ignorant Greek writers, who had assimilated the 
mythology of all nations to theirs and by their national vanity, confounded 
and perplexed the real history of their progenitors. Holingshed, in his 
chronicle of Scotland, has this curious entry in the life of King Mamius ; 
I shall here transcribe it for your perusal as an argument to prove that the 
writers of the Scottish history from whom he quotes always considered these 
cirques of unhewn stones of a far remoter period than the succeeding writers 
in Charles’s days. 
“* Mamius King of Scotland upon a religious devotion towards the Goddes, 
having an assured belief, that without their favour all worldly policies were 
but vain, devysed sundrie partes of his dominions to be appoynted out, and 
compassed about with great huge stones round lyke a ring, but towards 
the south was one mightie stone farre greater than all the rest, pitched 
up im manner of an aulter, whereon (at which) their priests might make 
their sacrifices in honour of their Goddes. In witness of the thing there 
remayneth unto this day certaine of those greate stones standing round, 
ring-wise (vid: Rolrick stones) which places are called by the common 
people the old Chapels of the Goddes. A man would marvel by what shift, 
policy or strength such mightie stones were raised in that manner.’ 
“N.B.—This king according to Harrison and Boethius florished about 
three hundred years before Christ. 
“Tf not tired with my antiquarian gossip, I shall venture on another 
remark. Had Stonehenge been of Druid origin or even afterwards conse- 
crated to their rites, the Romans under Claudius and the succeeding 
emperors, who abolished their rites and supprest their convocations, would 
most assuredly have overthrown the Temple of Stonehenge. The absurd 
idea that has been started of its being erected after their times, from its not 
being mentioned in their writings by Tacitus or Dio, may be satisfactorily 
answered with this remark ; that these erections or similar cirques of the 
Eastern colonizers were common in all the northern regions which they 
overran; (nor do I think they were dilapidated before the Christian era ;) 
and which the Romans held sacred to the Gods of those nations whom they 
conquered. In my letter to Mr. Coxe I mentioned the prostrate stone just 
opposite the Bethyle and close within. the outward circle. This puzzled 
Stukeley, who ascribed it to an altar stone. I think this probable, but not 
