722 Legends of Sepulchral and Perpetual Lamps . [November, 
acuteness in research or originality of conception. His 
treatise “ De Monstrorum Causis ” (1668) abounds with in- 
stances of his credulity and with the superstitions and fables 
of his predecessors. Of all his works none is more cele- 
brated than his treatise on the Sepulchral and Perpetual 
Lamps of the Ancients (“ De Lucernis Antiquorum recon- 
ditis,” Venet., 1652). This work, of 640 pages in quarto, is 
written expressly to prove the truth of the traditions con- 
cerning sepulchral lamps. The author accumulates a great 
number of witnesses, ancient and modern, quoting legends 
of Merlin, Porta, Scardeonius, and many others. The work 
is abundantly illustrated with engravings of the perpetual 
lamps, and forms a notable example of misplaced erudition 
and credulity. In his first book Licetus mentions thirty in- 
stances of perpetual lamps, including those connected with 
the mysteries of the Delphic Oracle, the ceremonies of 
Jupiter Ammon, and of the Vestal Virgins. The lamp of 
Demosthenes, which burned in the Temple of Minerva at 
Athens, also furnished him with a proof of the possibility of 
an inextinguishable fire. Licetus also relates the testimony 
of Jacobonus, author of the “ Book of the House of Cesi,” 
who mentions several persons who had seen these lamps 
still burning. He confidently relies on the testimony of such 
an unreliable author as Pausanias (175 A.D.), who speaks of 
a golden lamp, in the Temple of Minerva, which, when once 
filled with oil, burned a whole year without replenishing — 
a marvel which he attributed to the nature of the wick. 
Licetus refers to the statement of Plutarch, who relates that 
Cleombrotus, the Lacedemonian, visited the Temple of 
Jupiter Ammon, and saw a lamp which the priests said 
burned continually without oil. 
Vigneul-Marville, writing of Licetus’s work, very justly 
remarks that in it 4 ‘Licetus exhausts all the resources at his 
command, but after all does not inform us of what we most 
want to know, viz., the secret of these perpetual lamps. 
Many endeavours have been made by modern authors to 
account for the persistence of this belief by reference to 
natural causes. Montfaucon remarks no one doubts that 
burning lamps were placed in tombs by the ancients, and 
gives the following inscription from a tomb at Salerno 
“ Adieu Septima ; may the earth lie lightly upon you ; may 
a golden oil cover the ashes of him who placed in this tomb 
a burning lamp.” * 
* “ Have Septima, sit tibi terra levis quisque huic tumulo posuit ardente 
lucernam illius cineres aurea terra tegat.” 
