28 



Moloch, to the planet Saturn, which is not unlikely ; or 

 Dagon, who is represented by Sanchoniatho as a deified man, 

 and the improver of agriculture. 



However, the remainder of the fragment presents sjicli a 

 tissue of absurdities, that the son of Thabian, the most 

 ancient of the Phenician Hierophants, considered them as 

 allegorical representations of the operations of nature. 

 Euseb. 39.* 



I now proceed to state the origin of the Greek mythology. 

 Under the appellation of Greeks, I principally understand the 

 Hellenistic race, and only incidentally, the Pelasgi, who pos- 

 sessed tlie Grecian territory long before the arrival of the 

 Hellenes, by whom many of them were expelled ; but 

 fflan}', also, retained the possession of the Peloponesus, and 

 finally were incorporated with the Hellenes, whose language 

 they also adopted. 



The Hellenes for several centuries resided in Lesser Asia, 

 as I have shewn in a late paper read in this Acadc my, vol. 

 X. p. 149 and 152: they preserved not only the primitive 

 language, but also the primitive religion of mankind ; and 

 this last subsisted also among the Carians and Lydians, 

 the purity of whose worship has been proved, p. 6. Eusebius, 

 Lib. i. p. 413, expressly says that the Greeks originally held 

 the true worship of God, but afterwards depraved it. Hence, 

 when Plato-f says that the first inhabitants of Greece believed 



the 



* A very ingenious and learned account of these fables is given by Jackson, in 

 the third vol. of Chronological Anticjuities. 

 t 111 Cratylo. 



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