Note 257 — ARRIAN ON COURSING.

We cannot but admire the fine feelings of piety, and conscious dependence on an over-ruling Providence, which pervade the closing chapters of the Cynegeticus.

Many splendid passages might be selected from the classical writings of Greece and Rome, demonstrative of the fact that, however darkened by mythological allusions, the most enlightened heathens supported a conviction of the affairs of this lower world being under the guidance of a Supreme Intelligence, and of man himself being utterly weak and destitute when unsupported by the aid and influence of Heaven. This feeling is strongly manifested in the works of Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Orpheus, Phocylides, and a host of others among the Greeks: and notwithstanding the mischievous attempt of the philosophy of Epicurus to eradicate from the Roman mind all sense of dependency on Heaven, (as if the Divine Essence, in relation to human conduct,Lucretii L. i. 62. “nec benè promeritis capitur, nec tangitur irâ,”) the works of Virgil, Horace, and Claudian afford splendid examples of the important truth that the natural aspirations of poetry tend to the honour of the Gods, and that when rightfully employed, the genius of man is ever directed to the advancement of religion and morality. It is unnecessary to refer to the innumerable passages illustrative of the creed of ancient philosophers, contained in their works; let it suffice that Pliny, in speaking of the unity of the Deity, gives the reason why men commonly spoke of more than one God:Hist. Natur. L. ii. c. vii. “Fragilis et laboriosa mortalitas in partes ista digessit, infirmitatis suæ memor; ut portionibus quisque coleret, quo maximè indigeret,” &c. The catalogue of subordinate deities, enumerated by our author as directing the affairs, destinies, and pursuits of mankind, merged with him in the belief of one Supreme Intelligence, of which these subaltern deities were the several attributes and manifestations, in the government of the universe and its constituent parts. According to Hermesianax,

an opinion which was general with the superior philosophers of Greece and Rome, in opposition to the polytheistic notions of their inferiors, who, while worshipping the “portiones” of Pliny, violated most grossly the unity of the Εἷς Θεὸς of philosophy;—the understandings of the former being too strong (as Sir W. Jones has remarked in the argument of his Hymn to Surya) to admit the popular belief, but their influence too weak to reform it, and establish in its place, in the public mind at large, the supreme unity of the Deity—

Hor. Carm. L. iii. od. iv.

For further notice of this subject, the reader is referred to Maximus Tyrius, Dissert. 17., a Greek philosopher of the second century, contemporary, I believe, with Arrian.