316 On Scriptural and profane Accounts 
sented as a being, this must be denoted by the 
body of the divinity being of both sexes. 
Hence many gods were 2jje%nrs; or herma- 
phrodite ; (**) hence we find the same divi- 
nity at times engaged in all manly and war- 
like occupations, at another clothed in female 
attire, delicate and effeminate in person and 
employments, nay even changing the most 
essential attributes of the sex (muliebria pa- . 
tientem). (*?) Ontheother hand, but from 
the same principle, deities ordinarily repre- 
sented as female, are exhibited with male at- 
tributes, armed and bearded, and the priests 
to express this double and variable sex, served 
the divinity in female garments, (**) or even 
deprived themselves of manhood, in order to 
produce an imitation of the deity, who was at 
once of both sexes and of neither. All these 
particulars will be found established by quo- 
tations in the notes ; we shall now proceed to 
show how they have influenced the Ctesian 
history. 
The name of Belus, with whom the line of 
kings, according to some accounts, begins, 
shows him to have been the great solar divi- 
nity, to whom the nations of the East una- 
nimously gave the titles of royalty, calling 
him Baal and Moloch and Adonis, (Lord and 
King) the former of which names the Greeks 
