Note 425 — Chapter VI · [263]

The tower of Belus, with its retreating stories, described by Herodotus (Clio, sec. 181), has been selected as the model of the teocalli; which leads Vater somewhat shrewdly to remark that it is strange no evidence of this should appear in the erection of similar structures by the Aztecs in the whole course of their journey to Anahuac. (Mithridates, Theil. iii. Abtheil. 3, pp. 74, 75.) The learned Niebuhr finds the elements of the Mexican temple in the mythic tomb of Porsenna. (Roman History, Eng. trans. (London, 1827), vol. i. p. 88.) The resemblance to the accumulated pyramids composing this monument is not very obvious. Com. Pliny (Hist. Nat., lib. 36, sec. 19). Indeed, the antiquarian may be thought to encroach on the poet’s province when he finds in Etruscan fable—“cum omnia excedat fabulositas,” as Pliny characterizes this—the origin of Aztec science.