ancient sculpture and painting, as indeed it was impossible to take it from the life:

Ter nova Nestoreos implevit purpura fusos:
Et toties terno cornix vivacior ævo :

Quam novies terni glomerantem sæcula tractûs
Vincunt aripedes ter terno Nestore cervi:
Tres quorum ætates superat Phœbeius oscen :
Quem novies senior Gangeticus anteit ales,
Ales cinnameo radiatus tempora nido:

AUSON. Idyll. 11.

Arcanum radiant oculi jubar: igneus ora
Cingit honos, rutilo cognatum vertice sidus
Attollit cristatus apex, tenebrasque serenâ
Luce secat.

CLAUD. de Phoen.

His fiery eyes shoot forth a glitt'ring ray,
And round his head ten thousand glories play:
High on his crest, a star celestial bright
Divides the darkness with its piercing light.

-Procul ignea lucet

Ales, odorati redolent cui cinnama busti.

CLAUD. de Laud. Stil. lib. 2.

If you have a mind to compare this scale of beings with that of Hesiod, I shall give it you in a translation of that poet:

Ter binos deciesque novem super exit in annos
Justa senescentum quos implet vita virorum.
Hos novies superat vivendo garrula cornix :
Et quater egreditur cornicis sæcula cervus.
Alipidem cervum ter vincit corvus: et illum
Multiplicat novies phanix, reparabilis ales:
Quam vos perpetuo decies prævertitis ævo,
Nympha Hamadryades, quarum longissima vita est.
Hi cohibent fines vivacia fata animantum.
AUSON. Idyll. 18.

The utmost age to man the gods assign

Are winters three times two, and ten times nine :
Poor man nine times the prating daws exceed :
Three times the daw's the deer's more lasting breed:
The deer's full thrice the raven's race outrun :
Nine times the raven Titan's feather'd son:
Beyond his age, with youth and beauty crown'd,
The Hamadryads shine ten ages round:

Their breath the longest is the fates bestow :
And such the bounds to mortal lives below.

A man had need be a good arithmetician, says Cynthio, to understand this author's works. His description runs on like a multiplication table. But methinks the poets ought to have agreed a little better in the calculations of a bird's life that was probably of their own creation.

We generally find a great confusion in the traditions of the ancients, says Philander. It seems to me, from the next medalo, it was an opinion among them, that the phoenix renewed herself at the beginning of the great year, and the return of the golden age. This opinion I find touched upon in a couple of lines in Claudian:

Quicquid ab externis ales longava colonis
Colligit, optati referens exordia sæcli.

CLAUD. de Rap. Proserp. lib. 2.

The person in the midst of the circle is supposed to be Jupiter, by the author that has published this medal; but I should rather take it for the figure of Time. I remember I have seen at Rome an antique statue of Time, with a wheel or hoop of marble in his hand, as Seneca describes him, and not with a serpent, as he is generally represented:

• See first series, figure 14.

-Properat cursu

Vita citato, volucrique die
Rota præcipitis volvitur anni.

HERC. Fur. Act. 1.

-Life posts away,

And day from day drives on with swift career
The wheel that hurries on the headlong year.

As the circle of marble in his hand represents the common year, so this that encompasses him is a proper representation of the great year, which is the whole round and comprehension of time. For when this is finished, the heavenly bodies are supposed to begin their courses anew, and to measure over again the several periods and divisions of years, months, days, etc. into which the great year is distinguished:

-Consumto, magnus qui dicitur, anno
Rursus in antiquum veniant vaga sidera cursum,
Qualia dispositi steterant ab origine mundi.

AUSON. Idyll. 18.

When round the great Platonic year has turn'd,
In their old ranks the wand'ring stars shall stand
As when first marshall'd by the Almighty's hand.

To sum up, therefore, the thoughts of this medal. The inscription teaches us that the whole design must refer to the golden age, which it lively represents, if we suppose the circle that encompasses Time, or, if you please, Jupiter, signifies the finishing of the great year, and that the phoenix figures out the beginning of a new series of time. So that the compliment on this medal to the emperor Adrian, is in all respects the same that Virgil makes to Pollio's son, at whose birth he supposes the annus magnus, or Platonical year, run out, and renewed again with the opening of the golden age:

Magnus ab integro sæclorum nascitur ordo.
Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna:
Et nova progenies cœlo demittitur alto.

VIRG. Ecl. 4.

The time is come the Sibyls long foretold,
And the blest maid restores the age of gold,
In the great wheel of Time before enroll'd.
Now a new progeny from heaven descends.

LORD LAUDERDALE.

-Nunc adest mundo dies

Supremus ille, qui premat genus impium
Cali ruina; rursus ut stirpem novam
Generat renascens melior: ut quondam tulit
Juvenis tenente regna Saturno poli. SEN. Oet. Act. 2.

-The last great day is come,

When earth and all her impious sons shall lie
Crush'd in the ruins of the falling sky,

Whence fresh shall rise, her new-born realms to grace,

A pious offspring and a purer race,

Such as erewhile in golden ages sprung,

When Saturn govern'd, and the world was young.

You may compare the design of this reverse, if you please, with one of Constantine, so far as the phoenix is concerned in both. As for the other figure, we may have occasion to speak of it in another place. Vid. figure 15. King of France's medallions.

The next figure shadows out Eternity to us, by the sun in one hand and the moon in the other, which in the language of sacred poetry is, "as long as the sun and moon endureth." The heathens made choice of these lights as apt symbols of Eternity, because, contrary to all sublunary beings, though they seem to perish every night, they renew themselves every morning.

P See first series, figure 16.

Soles occidere et redire possunt :
Nobis, cum semel occidit brevis lux,
Nox est perpetua una dormienda.

The suns shall often fall and rise:
But when the short-lived mortal dies

A night eternal seals his eyes.

CATUL. Carm. 5.

Horace, whether in imitation of Catullus or not, has applied the same thought to the moon; and that too in the plural number:

Damna tamen celeres reparant cœlestia lunæ :

Nos, ubi decidimus

Quò pius Eneas, quò Tullus dives, et Ancus,
Pulvis et umbra sumus.

HOR. Od. 7. lib. iv.

Each loss the hast'ning moon repairs again.

But we, when once our race is done,
With Tullus and Anchises' son,

(Though rich like one, like t'other good)
To dust and shades, without a sun,
Descend, and sink in dark oblivion's flood.

SIR W. TEMPLE.

In the next figure, Eternity sits on a globe of the heavens adorned with stars. We have already seen how proper an emblem of Eternity the globe is, and may find the duration of the stars made use of by the poets, as an expression of what is never like to end: