tical number preceding the celebrated epocha of Jesus Christ, as shewn by Cassini, should be found by our modern doctors as a boundary line in the way the reader has seen. There must have been some circumstances closely connected with the great Neros in the ancient data on which our modern divines have founded their calculations, to induce them to pitch upon this number. The effect must have a cause: accident will not account for it. The reader must not forget that all the ancients who give us the account of this philosopher, pretend to what they may, are only possessed of shreds and patches of his system. But I have little doubt that out of the shreds and patches left us by his successors, of the real value of which they were perfectly ignorant, a beautiful oriental garment might be manufactured—bearing a close analogy to the purest of what we find in the East, which, in our eyes, at this day, would be beautiful, but which, by bis ancient biographers, would, like his planetary orbits, be treated with contempt. Before I conclude what I have to say, at present, respecting this great man, I will make one more observation. It is said, that the Monad, the Duad, the Triad, and the Tetractys, were numbers held in peculiar respect by him. The last is called the perfection of nature. But Dr. Lempriere says, “Every attempt, however, to unfold the nature of this last mysterious number has hitherto been unsuccessful.” This seems wonderful. Surely Dr. Lempriere cannot have understood the Hebrew language, or he would at once have seen that this can be nothing but the Tetragrammaton of the Hebrews—the sacred name יהוה ieue or ieu-e—the self-existent, the I am, often called the name of four letters, or, in other words, the Tetractys. This is confirmed by what, according to Aristotle, Pythagoras said of his Triad. “He affirmed that the whole and all things are terminated by three.” Here are the three letters of the sacred word, without the emphatic article,—the three signifying I am Jah. Of the Tetractys he says, “Through the superior world is communicated from the Tetractys to the inferior, Life and the being (not accidental, but substantial) of every species.” “The Tetractys is the divine mind communicating.” This can be nothing but the Tetragrammaton of the Hebrews. I confess I can entertain no doubt that his Monad, his Duad, his Triad, and his Tetractys, formed the Hindoo Trinity, and the sacred name of four, including the three.
We have already seen that Buddha was born after ten months, sans souillure, that is, he was the produce of an immaculate conception. This was attributed to many persons among the Gentiles; and whenever any man aspired to obtain supreme power, or to tyrannize over his countrymen, he almost always affected to have had a supernatural birth, in some way or other. This was the origin of the pretended connexion of Alexander’s mother, Olympias, with Jupiter. Scipio Africanus was also said to be the son of God. There is no doubt that he aimed at the sovereignty of Rome, but the people were too sharp-sighted for him. A. Gellius says, “The wife of Publius Scipio was barren for so many years as to create a despair of issue, until one night, when her husband was absent, she discovered a large serpent in his place, and was informed by soothsayers that she would bear a child. In a few days she perceived signs of conception, and after ten months gave birth to the conqueror of Carthage.”[1] Arion was a divine incarnation, begotten by the gods, in the citadel Byrsa, and the Magna Mater brought him forth after ten months, μετα δεκα μηνας. Hercules was a ten months’ child, as were also Meleager, Pelias, Neleus, and Typhon.[2] The child foretold in the fourth eclogue of Virgil was also a ten months’ child. Augustus also was the produce, after a ten months’ pregnancy, of a mysterious connexion of his mother with a serpent in the temple of Apollo.[3] The ten months’ pregnancy of all the persons named above, had probably an astrological allusion to the ten ages. The name of Augustus, given to Octavius, was allusive to his sacred character of presiding dæmon of the Munda, κοσμος or cycle. Solomon, according to the Bible, was also a ten months’ child.
