Plutarchus; Squire, Samuel [Editor]; Xylander, Wilhelm [Oth.]; Baxter, William [Oth.]; Bentley, Richard [Oth.]; Markland, Jeremiah [Oth.]: Plutarchu Peri Isidos kai Osiridos: Graece et Anglice (Cantabrigiae, 1744)

ISIS and OSIRIS. 41
those who pretend that typho escaped out of the battle
upon an Ass after a ssight of seven days, and that, after
he had got into a place of security, he begat two sons,
Hierofolymus and Judaeus-—-’tis obvious from the very
face of the relation, that their design is to give an air of
fable to [what] the Jewiih history [relates of the
ssight of Moses out of Egypt, and of the settlement of
the Jews about Hierufalem and in Judaea.]
A third and more philofophical explication of
the mythological hifiory of Iiis and Oiiris.
32. Such then are the arguments ofthose, who en-
deavour to account for the abovementioned history of
Ips andQ/fWj upon a supposition that they were of the
order of Demons: but there are others who pretend to
explain it upon other principles, and in a more philo-
sophical manner. To begin then with those whose rea-
soning is the moil Ample and obvious—as the Greeks
allegorise their Saturn into Ume, their Juno into Air,
and tell us moreover that the birth of Vulcan is no
other than the change of air into fire: in the same man-
ner, say these Philosophers, by OJiris do the Egyptians
mean the Nile, by Ips that part of the country which
Ofiris or the Nile overssows, and by typho the Jea,
which by receiving theM’Z? as it runs into it, does as it
were tear it into many pieces, and indeed entirely de-
flroy it, excepting only so much of it, as is admitted
into the bosom of the earth in its passage over it, which is
thereby rendered fertile-—The truth of this explanation
is confirmed, say they, from that sacred dirge or lamen-
tation