speaks of the eddyings of the stars.'1 A doubtful chorus in the Helenê,2 in which Dêmêter and Kybele are incorrectly identified, treats of the search of the former for her lost daughter Persephonê, and concludes-Of much power [i.e., of mighty occult influence] are the all-variegated garments of faun-skin, and the green ivy wound on the sacred wands, and the circular shaking of the magic wheels in the whirling ether. And the hair flowing like a Bakche, for Bromios, and the nightly vigils of the goddess.' Here we have a terrestrial representation of the etherial starry dance; everything turns, revolves, circles, and eddies; while the spotted dress and tresses flowing in honour of Dionysos Eurychaites, with their mystic meanings, are familiar incidents. The sacred wands are the stalks of the Narthex, or Fennel-giant, in a hollow stem of which Prometheus was said to have conveyed the spark of heavenly fire to earth, and which was carried at the Bakchik festivals.3 The Rhomboi, or magic Wheels, literally anything that has a spinning or circular motion, are like the cone among the symbols of the Dionysiak Mysteries.' Other writers, such as Maximus Tyrius, speak of the chorus of stars; '6 and the Pleiads, according to Hyginus, were thought to lead the starry chorus.'7 We have then, in passages such as these, the idea of a circular kosmic nature-dance, arising from a perception more or less real of cyclic movement in surrounding phenomena. Thus as regards the sun, moon, and stars, themselves, all circular in form, they pass across the semi-circle of the sky, apparently moving circularly round the earth; and so Professor Ruskin observes, that one of the meanings of the Dolphin in Hellenik symbolism is the ascending 1 Hellene, 1498. 2 Vs. 1301-68. 6 3 Cf. Bak. 147; vide inf. VIII. 2, Wand. 6 and descending course of any of the heavenly bodies from one sea-horizon to another-the dolphin's arching rise and replunge (in a summer evening, out of calm sea, their black backs roll round with exactly the slow motion of a waterwheel),' the mystic Rhombos, being taken as a type of the emergence of the sun or stars from the sea in the east, and plunging beneath in the west.'1 Again, as regards the seas and rivers, the Homerik ocean-stream into which all the rivers run, surrounds the earth as it did the shield of Achilleus,2 which displayed a pictorial representation of the Kosmogony. Okeanos is thus the vast 'circle of the earth,' the belt of the kosmogonic Dionysos, without the stars even, inasmuch as they sink into it, and when the Beaming Sun, Phaethôn, darts Golden rays on the flowings of Ocean, Wondrous the splendour appears on the surface and mixed with water, Whirling around and around, in circles revolving it sparkles, Full in the presence of God: while, beneath the breast boundless, the girdle Shows as a circle of Ocean, an infinite wonder to look at. And, again, this cyclic phenomenal movement is clearly connected with the circularity in the flight of time and the recurrence of the seasons, ' seed-time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night;' and it was this cyclic recurrence alike of seasons and phenomena which certain philosophers' of the present day are fond of dignifying under the name of Laws of Nature,' which smote with such weariness upon the heart of the aged Solomon, and made him exclaim, the sun ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place whence he arose.'-(First Circle.) The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it 3 Sup. II. iii. 6 whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again, according to his circuits.'-(Second Circle.) All the rivers run into the sea, yet the sea is not full; unto the place whence the rivers come, thither they return again.' -(Third Circle.) The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done.'-(Fourth Circle.) But this Solomonian feeling of weariness is alike far removed from the immortal chorus of stars singing together, and from the Dionysiak freshness of the earth, which, in comparison with her children, abideth ever. The stars in their courses are tireless; and on earth the Bakchik votary, representative of the unflagging earth-life, can dance and sing the live-long night in honour of his divinity. How exquisitely Milton, in that wonderful poem named after the impersonation of the band of Bakchik revellers, describes this universal kosmic dance : We that are of purer fire, Imitate the starry quire, Who in their nightly watchful spheres, Lead in swift round the months and years. Observe the close connection between the natural pheno. mena, circles, and the time or season-circles, and how all nature joins the mystic ritual: The sounds and seas, with all their finny drove, And, on the tawny sands and shelves, Trip the pert fairies and the dapper elves. The Bakchic votary must in his cult symbolise this nature-dance, so Come, knit hands, and beat the ground, In a light, fantastic round. Again, to quote from modern poetry in illustration of 'the stars' concentric rings,' Thou,' says the Morning Star to Lucifer, in the words of the greatest of English poetesses: Did'st sting my wheel of glory [Rhombos] Around, around, I wound and interwound, While all the cyclic heavens about me spun. And wound, and wound in one, And as they wound I wound, around, around, Nature,' says Emerson,' centres into balls. The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world. St. Augustin [following earlier sages] described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere and its circumference nowhere. We are all our lifetime reading the copious sense of this first of forms.' Elsewhere, when alluding to Phoenician architecture, and especially to their circular tower-pillars and to the circular form in which even cities, such as Hagmatana,2 or the Phoenician settlement at Caere in Italia, called Argylla, the Round Town, were sometimes 1 Works, i. 125. For illustration of this passage, vide inf. VIII. ii. Circle. 2 Agbatana, Herod. i. 98. Ekbatana is the general Hellenik form. a constructed, I ventured to suggest that the mysterious Kyklôpes, in illustration of whose single eye so many ingenious theories have been offered, were, as the name may fairly be interpreted, Circle-builders. And as the cyclic nature of things appears equally in human thought and action, according to the common saying, 'history repeats itself,' and in the material phenomena around, so it was most natural that man, whose inventions are never entirely original, but always more or less imitations of, or adaptations from, something beyond him, should in his works strive to copy and perpetuate this 'first of forms,' and hence, probably, circular cities and temples, and stone circles, not peculiar to one race or country, but widely scattered through the world.1 It matters comparatively little who built them, and how, if we know why they were built and what they symbolise. The Phoenicians were famous in the art of circle-building; but it would be most erroneous to suppose that all circular erections are Phoenician, for some are found in regions where probably the Phoenician never penetrated, and it is idle to imagine that proficiency in an art implies its monopoly. Yet at the same time, when we find such erections, or their connected symbolism, in regions within the limits of Phoenician enterprise, we have strong primâ facie evidence to connect the world-colonising nation with the work. Thus, one of the ancient names of the Dionysiak isle of Naxos was Strongylê the Circular, or Kyklôpian. The word implies that which is tightly pressed together, so that the angles are rounded off, and it becomes ball-shaped like the round world.' Of course, the natural shape of the island suggested the name, but It is somewhat singular that, considering the attention which is now bestowed on rude stone monuments,' the circular character of many of them should not be more noticed in connection with its ac |