Thrice-Greatest Hermes, Vol. I — G. R. S. Mead (1906)
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increase. For as they cannot lay in the water, and fear to do so far from it, they so accurately fore-feel what will be, that they make use of the rise of the river for laying their eggs and hatching them, and yet keep them dry and beyond the danger of being wetted.
4. And they lay sixty [eggs] and hatch them out in as many days, and the longest-lived of them live as many years, — which is the first of the measures for those who treat systematically of celestial [phenomena].1
5. Moreover, of those that have honours paid them for both [reasons]2 — of the dog, we have already treated above.3
6. As for the ibis, while killing the death-dealing of the reptiles,4 it was the first to teach them the use of me Ucinal evacuation, when they observed it being thus rinsed out and purged by itself.5
7. While those of the priests who are most punctilious in their observances, in purifying themselves, take the water for cleansing from a place where the ibis has drunk ; for it neither drinks unwholesome or poisoned 6 water, nor [even] goes near it.
8 Again, by the relative position of its legs to one another, and [of these] to its beak, it forms an equilateral triangle ; and yet again, the variegation and admixture of its black with its white feathers suggest the gibbous moon.7
9. Nor ought we to be surprised at Egyptians being so fond of meagre likenesses ; for Greeks too in both their pictured and plastic resemblances of Gods use many such [vague indications].
1 That is, presumably, either the 60 of the Chaldseans, or the 3 x 4 x 5 of the " most perfect " triangle of the Mathematici.
2 Namely, the utilitarian and symbolical ; cf. Ixxiv. 1.
3 Cf. xiv. 6.
4 Cf. Rawlinson's Herodotus, ii. 124, 125.
5 There is a similar legend in India, I am told. 8 May also mean "bewitched."
7 That is, the moon in its third quarter.
10. For instance, in Crete there was a statue of Zeus which had no ears, — for it behoves the Euler and Lord of all to listen to no one.
11. And Pheidias used the serpent in the [statue] of
Athena, and the tortoise in that of Aphrodite at Elis,
— because on the one hand virgins need protecting, and on the other because keeping-at-home and silence are becoming to married women.
12. Again, the trident of Poseidon is a symbol of the third region, which the sea occupies, assigned [to him] after the heaven and air. For which cause also they invented the names Amphi-trite and Trit-ons.1
13. And the Pythagoreans have embellished both numbers and figures with appellations of Gods.
For they used to call the equilateral triangle Athena
— Head-born and Third-born2 — because it is divided by three plumb-lines 3 drawn from the three angles.
14. And [they called] " one " Apollo, from privation of multitude,4 and owing to the singleness5 of the monad; and "two" Strife and Daring, and "three" Justice [or Eightness], — for as wronging and being wronged were according to deficiency and excess, rightness [or justice] was born to equality between them.6
1 From rpirbs, " third."
2 Kopv^ayewTj Kal rptToyfvdav, — that is, Koryphagennes and
Tritogeneia.
3 rptffl (cafleTois, — a Kfi6*Tos (sc. ypufjifn-fi) is generally a perpendicular ; but here the reference must be to this appended figure :
4 That is, presumably, a-ir4\\av, from d (priv.) and
(many).
5 5«' air\<$T7jTa, — the play being apparently d-iroA. (ITA.O)-TIJJ.
6 Lit., in the midst.
15. And what is called the Tetraktys, the six-andthirty, was [their] greatest oath (as has been said over and over again), and is called Cosmos, — which is produced by adding together the first four even and [the first] four odd [numbers].1
LXXVI. 1. If, then, the most approved of the philosophers, when they perceived in soulless and bodiless things a riddle of the Divine, did not think it right to neglect anything or treat it with disrespect, still more liking, I think, we should then have for the peculiarities in natures that are endowed with sense and possess soul and passion and character, — not paying honour to these, but through them to the Divine ; so that since they are made by Nature into mirrors clearer [than any man can make], we should consider this as the instrument and art of God who ever orders all things.
2. And, generally, we should deem that nothing soulless is superior to a thing with soul, nor one without sense to one possessing it ; not even if one should bring together into one spot all the gold and emeralds in the world.