329 



culations, made abundant use of the astrolabe, and in due time 

 recorded me on their cabalistical tablets as a very lucky man; for 

 which I was indebted to my friends and protectors in the coluber 

 tribe. Tacitus says, Nero in his infancy was supposed to have 

 been guarded by two serpents. According to Murphy, Suetonius 

 explains the origin of this fable, from a report that certain assassins 

 were hired by Messalina to strangle Nero in his bed, in order to 

 remove the rival of Britannicus. The men went to execute their 

 purpose, but were frightened by a serpent that crept from under 

 his pillow. This tale was occasioned by a serpent's skin being 

 found near Nero's pillow; which, by his mother's order, he wore 

 for some time upon his right arm, enclosed in a golden bracelet. 



In the Indian Antiquities, a work of deep research and great 

 merit, the author ingeniously remarks, " that it is impossible to 

 say in what country the worship of serpents first originated. The 

 serpent was probably a symbol of the x.a.x.o$ot.ijxuv, or evil genius; 

 and those whose fears led them to adore, by way of pacifying the 

 evil daemon, erected to the serpent the first altar. In succeeding 

 periods, its annual renewing of its skin, added to the great ao-e to 

 which it sometimes arrived, induced the primitive race to make it 

 the symbol of immortality. Serpents biting their tails, or inter- 

 woven in rings, were thenceforwards their favourite symbols of 

 vast astronomical cycles, of the zodiac, and sometimes of eternity 

 itself. In this usage of the symbol we see it enfolding all the sta- 

 tues of gods and deified rajahs in the sacred caverns of Salsette 

 and Elephanta. Symbols also being the arbitrary sensible sio-ns 

 of intellectual ideas, in moral philosophy, the serpents, doubtless 

 from what they themselves observed of it, and from the Mosaic 



VOL. II. 2 u 



