DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4372#0092
76
arts, should have been wholly neglected, at a period when such
a numerous influx of foreigners from the country where it had
already reached the summit of perfection, and a cotemporary
increase of wealth, population, and of empire, offered such a fa-
vourable opportunity for facilitating and promoting it.
Plutarch is, I believe, the only Greek writer of credit, by whom
this Aroeres is mentioned. In his treatise upon Isis and Osiris
he relates, as one of the fables of Egyptian mythology, that a
secret connection between Rhea and Saturn being discovered by
the Sun, who threatened that she should not be delivered of any
child in any month or year, Mercury, who was also in love with
Rhea, having won from the moon at play* the twentieth part of
each of her annual illuminations, composed of them the five epact,
or superadded days, on each of which days, the five great deities
of Egypt were successively born of Rhea. These were Osiris,
Aroeres, also called Apollo, or The Elder Orus, Typhon, Isis and
Nephthe; to this last were likewise given the names of Teleute,
aphrodite, and Nike.
Plutarch adds that the Sun was the father of Osiris and Aroe-
res: Mercury the father of Isis; and Saturn the father of Typhon
and Nephthe.
It is impossible to give any more rational account of the ori-
gin of this fable, than that when the Egyptians, by their advance-
ment in astronomical science, had discovered the means of reme-
dying the inconvenience to which they had been subjected from
the want of these intercalary days, they consecrated their disco-
very by the dedication of each of them to one of their five prin-
cipal deities. We very soon indeed lose sight of two of them,
* The expression in Plutarch (§ 12) is irai'Javra wirna irposrijy SjjXtjVijv. These irirria.
were either dice or counters. The same author, in another part of his works., has:
i. e.
arts, should have been wholly neglected, at a period when such
a numerous influx of foreigners from the country where it had
already reached the summit of perfection, and a cotemporary
increase of wealth, population, and of empire, offered such a fa-
vourable opportunity for facilitating and promoting it.
Plutarch is, I believe, the only Greek writer of credit, by whom
this Aroeres is mentioned. In his treatise upon Isis and Osiris
he relates, as one of the fables of Egyptian mythology, that a
secret connection between Rhea and Saturn being discovered by
the Sun, who threatened that she should not be delivered of any
child in any month or year, Mercury, who was also in love with
Rhea, having won from the moon at play* the twentieth part of
each of her annual illuminations, composed of them the five epact,
or superadded days, on each of which days, the five great deities
of Egypt were successively born of Rhea. These were Osiris,
Aroeres, also called Apollo, or The Elder Orus, Typhon, Isis and
Nephthe; to this last were likewise given the names of Teleute,
aphrodite, and Nike.
Plutarch adds that the Sun was the father of Osiris and Aroe-
res: Mercury the father of Isis; and Saturn the father of Typhon
and Nephthe.
It is impossible to give any more rational account of the ori-
gin of this fable, than that when the Egyptians, by their advance-
ment in astronomical science, had discovered the means of reme-
dying the inconvenience to which they had been subjected from
the want of these intercalary days, they consecrated their disco-
very by the dedication of each of them to one of their five prin-
cipal deities. We very soon indeed lose sight of two of them,
* The expression in Plutarch (§ 12) is irai'Javra wirna irposrijy SjjXtjVijv. These irirria.
were either dice or counters. The same author, in another part of his works., has:
i. e.