beings. When the silver "larva" was brought in and handed to him by an attendant, he toyed with it, and made it assume various (ridiculous) postures, exclaiming "Eheu! Nos miseros! Quam totus homuncio nil est ! Sic erimus cuncti, postquam nos auferat Orcus. Ergo vivamus dum licet esse bene." Perhaps these lines were inspired by Lucretius (De Rerum Naturá, iii. 925): "Hoc etiam faciunt, ubi discubuere, tenentque Pocula saepe homines, et inumbrant ora coronis ; Ex animo ut dicant, brevis est hic fructus homullis; Trimalchio in his manner is about as serious as Justice Shallow (Shakespeare's Henry IV, Second Part, Act iii., Scene 2), when the latter says: "Certain, 'tis certain; very sure, very sure; death, as the Psalmist saith, is certain to all; all shall die"; and then proceeds at once to ask the price of a yoke of bullocks at Stamford Fair. But Trimalchio was not, of course, meant to appear serious; he wanted to amuse, not to sadden, his guests. What the original significance of such a custom may have been we need here scarcely pause to discuss. On the one hand, it may have been the so-called "Epicurean" ideal of life, namely, a life accompanied by beauty, wine, and garlands of roses (for those who can get them), till the gloomy unknown takes everything away. The ancient Egyptians seem, indeed, to have taken what one would now term a rather "Epicurean" view of life. According to E. A. Wallis Budge (in one of the Guide Books to the Egyptian Department of the British Museum) "the Egyptian was easy and simple in disposition, and fond of pleasure and of the good things of this world. He loved eating and drinking, and lost no opportunity of enjoying himself. The literature of all periods is filled with passages in which the living are exhorted to be happy." Cf. also A. E. P. Weigall, "The Temperament of the Ancient Egyptians," Blackwood's Magazine, July, 1908, p. 58. Édouard Naville (La Religion des Anciens Égyptiens, Paris, 1906, pp. 170-175) likewise emphasizes the carpe diem temperament of the ancient Egyptians. On the other hand, there are Plutarch (Sept. Sap. Conviv.26) and Sir J. G. Wilkinson (Rawlinson's History of Herodotus, third edition, London, 1875, vol. ii. p. 130), who suggest that the original purpose was to teach men "to love one another, and to avoid those evils which tend to make them consider life too long when in reality it is. too short." Analogously, in the 90th Psalm (ver. 12) and in Ecclesiasticus (ch. xxviii. 6) we have passages (already quoted) advising mindfulness of death, so that men shall be wise and cease from enmity. The ancient Egyptian "Song of the Harper," probably of far earlier date than the famous British Museum papyrus (papyrus "Harris 500") which contains it-the papyrus is probably of the 13th century B.C., but the "Song of the Harper" (the song of the harpers to the guests at a banquet) is perhaps as early as the twelfth or eleventh Egyptian dynasty—well expresses "Epicurean" or carpe diem sentiments, very similar to those frequently occurring in Greek and Roman poetry of a later date. It is written on the wall of a tomb at Thebes (Egypt), and enjoins the hearers to make 26 Plutarch, in his Septem Sapientium Convivium (c. 2), says that the Egyptian custom of introducing a skeleton at their banquets and reminding their guests that they also would soon die, tended to incite them, not to drunkenness and sensual pleasure, but to mutual friendship, deterring them from wasting their short span of life in wickedIn De Iside et Osiride (c. 17), Plutarch again refers to the same Egyptian custom. ness. themselves happy and enjoy life, with ointments, scents, music and song, until they have to depart to the silent land; everything of life is uncertain, mutable and fleeting. The following translation of the last portion of the song is quoted from E. A. Wallis Budge's The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians (London, 1914, p. 243): 66 Enjoy thyself more than thou hast ever done before, Never shall cries of grief cause To beat [again] the heart of a man who is in the grave. Behold, a man is not permitted To carry his possessions away with him. Behold, there never was any one who, having departed, Was able to come back again." 27 The following advice given in the oldest Egyptian book of Moral Precepts, that of Ptah-hetep (Governor of Memphis in the reign of Assa, a king of the fifth dynasty, about 3500 B.C.), seems to be of a rather different kind. I quote from the same work by E. A. W. Budge (op. cit., p. 229): "When the messenger of [death] cometh to carry thee away, let him find thee prepared. Alas, thou wilt have no opportunity for speech, for verily his terror will be before thee. Say not, 'Thou art carrying me off in my youth.' Thou knowest not when thy death will take place. Death cometh, and he seizeth the babe at the breast of his mother, as well as the man who hath arrived at a ripe old age. Observe this, for I speak unto thee good advice, which thou shalt meditate upon in thy heart." 27 See also the English translation given in J. H. Breasted's History of Egypt, second edition, New York, 1909, p. 206. D In regard to Egyptian ideas on a future life there is a papyrus at Berlin, which J. H. Breasted (History of Egypt, second edition, New York, 1909, p. 204) refers to as а remarkable philosophizing treatise representing "a man weary of life involved in a long dialogue with his reluctant soul, as he vainly attempts to persuade it that they should end life together and hope for better things beyond this world." The soul tells the man (I quote from one of the British Museum Guide Books, by Budge) to remember that the grave only brings sorrow to the heart and fills the eyes with tears; and advises him thus: "Hearken unto me, for, behold, it is good for men to hearken; follow after pleasure and forget care.' The advice given to a high-priest of Memphis on the sepulchral stele of That-I-em-hetep, his dead wife (in the British Museum, Ptolemaic period, first century B.C.), enjoins him (I quote from one of the British Museum Guide Books, by Budge): "Hail, my brother, husband, friend, . . . . let not thy heart cease to drink water, to eat bread, to drink wine, to love women, to make a happy day, and to seek thy heart's desire by day and by night." That a degraded Epicureanism existed in Roman times is well shown by certain gems (which I shall describe in Part IV.) engraved with "skeleton and wine-jar" devices, and likewise by the design on two magnificent GraecoRoman silver one-handled wine-cups,28 forming part of the " Boscoreale treasure" in the Louvre Museum at Paris, and supposed to date from the first century of the Christian era (see Fig. 4). These cups belong to a period when the philosophy of Epicurus was popularly supposed to advocate devotion to sensual pleasures. They are adorned with figures of skeletons ("shades")29 28 For beautiful illustrations of these cups, see A. Héron de Villefosse, "Le Trésor de Boscoreale," Monuments et Mémoirs (Fondation Eugène Piot), Paris, vol. v., 1899, Pl. vii. and Pl. viii. 29 The skeleton in this sense would doubtless have been termed a “larva” by the Romans. The Greek word σKeλeróv originally meant a shrivelled body or mummy, i.е. OKEλETÓV oŵμa. It appears to represent and garlands of roses, and bear various inscriptions, some of which urge the enjoyment of pleasure whilst yet life lasts, and whilst enjoyment of anything is possible; their advice FIG. 4.-Silver cup forming part of the so-called Boscoreale treasure in the Louvre Museum at Paris, supposed to date from the first century of the Christian era. Photograph from the facsimile in the Victoria and Albert Museum, showing the skeletons, or "shades," of the philosophers Epicurus and Zeno, the Stoic. is: Eat, drink, and enjoy life whilst you can, for to-morrow you may die, and become merely a "shade" or "spirit." Some of the skeletons on these cups represent the shades of Greek poets and philosophers, whose names are what we might speak of as the "spirit" of the dead philosopher or poet. I shall return to the subject of the representation of "larvae " in Roman and Graeco-Roman art (especially of a late period), when I come to the description of engraved gems in Part IV. |