114 COSMOS. 



ley of the Nile : " the stars did not yet revolve in the heavens ; 

 nor had the Danaides yet appeared, or the race of Deucalion."^ 



* Since the explanations which Heyne has given of the origin of the 

 astronomical myth of the Proselenes, so widely diffused in antiquity (De 

 Arcadibus Luna Antiquioribus, in Opusc. Acad., vol. ii., p. 332), were 

 unsatisfactory to me, I was greatly rejoiced to receive from my acute 

 philological friend, Professor Johannes Franz, a new and very happy 

 solution of this much-debated problem, by simple combinations of ideas. 

 This solution is unconnected with either the arrangement of the calen- 

 dar by the Arcadians, or their worship of the Moon. I restrict myself 

 here to an extract from an unpublished and more extended work. This 

 explanation will not be unwelcome to some of my readers in a work 

 in which I have made a rule frequently to trace back the whole of our 

 present knowledge to the knowledge of the ancients, and even to tra- 

 ditions believed generally or by very many. 



" We shall commence with a few of the principal passages from the 

 ancients which treat of the Proselenes. Stephanus of Byzantium (v. 

 'ApKtif) mentions the logographs of Hippys of Rhegium, a co temporary 

 of Darius and Xerxes, as the first who called the Arcadians npoa&r)- 

 vovf. The scholiasts (ad Apollon. Rhod. IV., 264, and ad Aristopk., 

 Nub., 397) agree in saying, the remote antiquity of the Arcadians be- 

 comes most clear from the fact of their being called Trpoosfyvot. They 

 appear to have been there before the Moon, as Eudoxus and Theodoras 

 also say ; the latter adds that it was shortly before the labors of Her- 

 cules that the Moon appeared. In the government of the Tegeates, 

 Aristotle states that the barbarians who inhabited Arcadia were driven 

 out by the later Arcadians before the Moon appeared, and therefore 

 they were called npociT^rjvoL. Others say, Endymion discovered the 

 revolution of the Moon ; but, as he was an Arcadian, his countrymen 

 were called after him irpoa&ijvot. Lucian expresses himself slighting- 

 ly. (Astrolog., 26.) According to him, it was from stupidity and folly 

 that the Arcadians said they were there before the Moon. In the Schol. 

 ad^Eschyl., Prom., 436, it is observed, that irpoaehovfievov is called v6pi- 

 6f*vov, whence, therefore, the Arcadians were called irpoa&Tjvoi, be- 

 cause they are arrogant. The passages in Ovid as to the existence of 

 the Arcadians before the Moon are universally known. Recently, in- 

 deed, the idea has sprung up that all the ancients were deceived by 

 the form irpoc^vot, and that the word (properly Trpoe^rjvoi) meant 

 only pre-Hellenic, as Arcadia certainly was a Pelasgian country. 



"If, now, it can be proved," continues Professor Franz, " that an- 

 other people connected their origin with another cosmical body, the 

 trouble of taking refuge in deceptive etymological explanations will 

 be obviated. This kind of testimony exists in the most suitable form. 

 The learned rhetorician Menander says literally in his work, De Econ- 

 omiis (sec. ii., cap. 3, ed. Heeren), as follows: ' A third motive for the 

 praise of objects is the time ; this is the case in all the most ancient na- 

 tions : when we say of a town or of a country it was founded before 

 this or that star, or with those stars, before the flood or after the flood 

 as the Athenians affirm they originated at the same time as the Sun, 

 the Arcadians before the Moon, the Delphians immediately after the 

 flood these are epochs, and, as it were, starting-points in time.' 



" Therefore Delphi, the connection of which with the flood of Deu- 

 calion is otherwise proved (Pausan., x., 6), is surpassed by Arcadia, 

 and Arcadia by Athens. Apollouius Rhodius, who was so fond of imi 



