BABYLONIAN LITERATUEE. 3 



chaos of ideas into which the East was 

 plunged during the first centuries of our 

 era, we have still, in three or four forms, 

 writings of Babylonian origin. And first, 

 Berosus, although of the epoch of the 

 Seleucides, was not the less a purely Baby- 

 lonian writer, and the fragments which have 

 come down to us of his works, although 

 they require to be treated with the greatest 

 caution, are, with the cosmogonies pre- 

 served by Damascius and by the author 

 of the 4>iAo<ro<pou//,j/a, invaluable remains of 

 Chaldean philosophy. Secondly, a class of 

 writings very contemptible certainly if we 

 only regard the depth of their ideas, the 

 writings composed in Greek and Arabic on 

 astrology, magic, oneirocriticism, such as the 

 Cyranides, the works of the false Zoroaster, 

 the books attributed to Seth, and to Noah, 

 the fragments of Paxamus, of Teucer the 

 Babylonian, and of Lasbas the Babylonian, 1 



1 Fabricii Bibl. Gr. Harles IV. p. 148, 166, etc. See hereafter 

 my conjecture on Teucer. On Lasbas on Meo-Aos, and on the 

 book, certainly a Babylonian one, called 2eAex fii&\os, see Miller, 

 "Journal des'Savans," October 1839, p. 607, note. 



