CHAP. XVI. GREEK FABLES FROINI EGYPT. 431 



the more expensive processes of embalming. * This 

 cannot fail to recall the " centum errant annos, voli- 

 tantque hsec litora circum" of Virgil t ; and though 

 the souls he mentions were condemned to hover a 

 hundred years about the Stygian shores in conse- 

 quence of their bodies having remained unburiedt, 

 the resemblance is sufficiently striking : as are 

 the many tales related by the Greeks respecting 

 the " Stygicm marsh" and the various places or 

 personages of their Hades, to those connected 

 with the funeral rites of the Egyptians. Of their 

 introduction into Greece Diodorus gives the fol- 

 lowing account§: — "Orpheus is shown to have 

 introduced from Egypt the greatest part of his 

 mystical ceremonies, the orgies that celebrate the 

 wanderings of Ceres, and the whole fable of the 

 shades below. The rites of Osiris and Bacchus 

 are the same; those of Isis and Ceres exactly 

 resemble each other, except in name : and the 

 punishments of the wicked in Hades, the Elysian 

 fields of the pious, and all the common imaginary 

 fictions, were copied from the ceremonies of the 

 Egyptian funerals. Herme-s, the conductor of souls, 

 according to the ancient institutions of Egypt, 



* Vide my Plan of Thebes, the S. W. corner of the lake. 



f Virgil, Mn. vi. 330. 



j For which reason the soul of Patroclus, appearing to Achilles in 

 a dream, prays him to bury his body as quickly as possible: — 

 QaTTTi jxe OTTi Ta\i(TTa, TTvXag a'icao Trepijaai. 

 T)jXt fxt ttpyovcri \//ii\'Oi, eiCwXa Kaj-iorTwi', 

 Ovds lit TVdjQ fj.iayi(TGai vinp ■KOTctnoio eoiaiv. (II. xxiii. 71.) 



Conf. Hor. Car. lib. i. od. 23. ; and Virg. Mn. vi. 526., " hi quos veliit 

 unda, sepulti." 

 § Diodor. i. 96. 



