This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1823. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... possibly (8) himself have made the verses, which the Salian Priests sung in his time. Pythagoras, either in the same reign, or if you please some time after, gave the Romans a tincture of poetry (9) as well as of philosophy; for Cicero assures us that the Pythagoreans made great use of poetry and music: and probably they, like our old Druids, delivered most of their precepts in verse. Indeed the chief employment of poetry in that and the following ages among the Romans, was of a religious kind. Their very prayers, and perhaps their whole 00) liturgy, were poetical. They had also a sort of prophetic, or sacred writers, who seem to have wrote generally in verse; and were so numerous, that there * Ovid seems to hint that Numa wrote some of their old religious forms, in some kind of verse: Conjuge qui felix nympha, ducibusque Camoeuis, Sacrificos docuit ritus; gentemque fcroci Assuetam bello pacis traduxit ad artes. Met. 15, 484. And Horace calls the old Salian verses, in particular, Numa's verses. Lib. 2. Ep. 1. 86. 'Cicero asserts this in general, Tusc. Quaest. Lib. 4. and Vitruvius says in particular, that Pythagoras and his followers delivered their precepts in a certain number of verses; or in a cube of 216 verses, as he calls it. Lib. 5. Procem. 10 Castis cum pueris ignara puella mariti , Disceret unde preces, vatem ni musa dedisset? Poscit ope m chorus, et presentia numina sen tit: Ccelestes implorat aquas docta prece blandus; Airertit morbos; metuenda pericula pellit: Impetrat et pacem, et locupletem frugibus annum: Carmine Dii superi placantur; carmine manes. Horace, Lib. 2. Ep. 1. v. 138. were above (H) two thousand of their volumes remaining even to Augustus's time. They had a. kind "These are probably what Horace calls Pontificum libros, annosa volumina ...
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