Note 2 — BOOK IV.

—Page 255, stanza xi.

Diodorus Siculus speaks with great respect of the Saronides as the Druid priests of Gaul; and Mr. Davis, in his Celtic Researches, insists upon it that Saronides is a British word, compounded from sêr, stars; and honydd, "one who discriminates or points out:" in fine, according to him, the Saronides are Seronyddion, i. e. astronomers. For the initiation of Pythagoras into the Druid mysteries, see Clem. Alex. Strom. L. i. Ex. Alex. Polyhist. It will be observed that the author here takes advantage of the well-known assertions of many erudite authorities that the Phœnician language is the parent of the Celtic, in order to obtain a channel of oral communication between Arthur and the Etrurian;[C] though, contented with those authorities, as sufficing for all poetic purpose, he prudently declines entering into a controversy equally abstruse and interminable, as to the affinity between the countrymen of Dido and the scattered remnants of the Briton. It is not surprising that the Augur should know Phœnician, for we have only to suppose that he maintained, as well as he could in his retreat, the knowledge common among his priestly forefathers. The intercourse between Etruria and the Phœnician states (especially Carthage) was too considerable not to have rendered the language of the last familiar to the learning of the first;—to say nothing of those more disputable affinities of origin and religion, which, if existing, would have made an acquaintance with Phœnicia necessary to the solution of their historical chronicles and sacred books. Nor, when the Augur afterwards assures Arthur that Ægle also understands Phœnician, is any extravagant demand made upon the credulity of the indulgent reader; for, those who have consulted such lights as research has thrown upon Etrurian records, are aware that their more high-born women appear to have received no ordinary mental cultivation.