DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.43363#0318
ioo PLUTARCH’S Treatife of
y^, Nov/ as to that notion, which we find asserted
by many Authorr, “ that the l'oul of Typho himself was
ic split, or divided as it were, amongst these animals”—»
this flory, ’tis not difficult to perceive, was formed on
purpose to insinuate, that the irrational and brutal na-
ture proceeds from, and falls under the dominion of
the evil Principle; and consequently, that all the regard
and reverence which is paid these creatures, is with a
design to pacify and mollify him. For agreeably to this
sentiment, whenever any great and excessive drought
happens attended with pestilential diseases, or any other
slrange and extraordinary calamity, ’tis customary for
the priests to seleCt some of these sacred animals, and
conducting them with all imaginable silence and secrecy
into some dark place, there first to terrify them with
threats, and afterwards, if the disorder still continues, to
devote them to death it self— whether they look up-
on this procedure as a kind of puniihment inssicted up-
on the evil Being, or regard it rather, as the highest
expiatory sacrifice they can offer, in order to avert the
greateit of afssictions. For upon these same principles, as
we are informed by Manetho, were they formerly wont
in the city of Idithya to burn even Men alive, giving
them the name of Typhos, and winnowing their allies
through a sieve, to scatter and disperse them in the
air——Now as to these human sacrifices, they, ’tis
true, were persormed in public and at one stated season
of the year, in the Dog-days; whereas the devoting
these sacred animals to death in the afore-mentioned
manner, as it was always performed in secret, and at
no fixed time of the year, but as occasion required, was
wholly unknown to the generality of the people-ex-
cepting
y^, Nov/ as to that notion, which we find asserted
by many Authorr, “ that the l'oul of Typho himself was
ic split, or divided as it were, amongst these animals”—»
this flory, ’tis not difficult to perceive, was formed on
purpose to insinuate, that the irrational and brutal na-
ture proceeds from, and falls under the dominion of
the evil Principle; and consequently, that all the regard
and reverence which is paid these creatures, is with a
design to pacify and mollify him. For agreeably to this
sentiment, whenever any great and excessive drought
happens attended with pestilential diseases, or any other
slrange and extraordinary calamity, ’tis customary for
the priests to seleCt some of these sacred animals, and
conducting them with all imaginable silence and secrecy
into some dark place, there first to terrify them with
threats, and afterwards, if the disorder still continues, to
devote them to death it self— whether they look up-
on this procedure as a kind of puniihment inssicted up-
on the evil Being, or regard it rather, as the highest
expiatory sacrifice they can offer, in order to avert the
greateit of afssictions. For upon these same principles, as
we are informed by Manetho, were they formerly wont
in the city of Idithya to burn even Men alive, giving
them the name of Typhos, and winnowing their allies
through a sieve, to scatter and disperse them in the
air——Now as to these human sacrifices, they, ’tis
true, were persormed in public and at one stated season
of the year, in the Dog-days; whereas the devoting
these sacred animals to death in the afore-mentioned
manner, as it was always performed in secret, and at
no fixed time of the year, but as occasion required, was
wholly unknown to the generality of the people-ex-
cepting