444

SUMMARY.

companion of iEsculapius. In the distributionof his qualities the genius of mythology did noteven gloss over his malignant attributes. Thefascination with which he intoxicated the soulsof the first sinners, depriving them at once ofpurity and immortality, of the image of God andof the life of angels, was symbolically remem-bered and fatally celebrated in the orgies ofBacchus , where serpents crowned the heads of theBacchantes, and the “ Poculum Boni Dsemonis”circulated under the auspices of the Ophitehierogram chased upon its rim 1 . But the mostremarkable remembrance of the power of theparadisiacal serpent is displayed in the positionwhich he retains in Tartarus. A cunodraconticCerberus guards the gates ; serpents are coiledupon the chariot wheels of Proserpine; serpentspave the abyss of torment; and even serpentsconstitute the caduceus of Mercury, the talis-man which he holds when he conveys thesoul to Tartarus. The image of the serpent isstamped upon every mythological fable con-nected with the realms of Pluto. Is it not thenprobable, that in the universal symbol of hea-

See Archaeol. vol. 7.