may consider that on several imperial coins we meet with the figure of a funeral pile, without any thing to denote the burning of it, though indeed there is on some of them a flambeau sticking out on each side, to let us know it was to be consumed to ashes.

You have been so intent on the burning of the arms, says Cynthio, that you have forgotten the pillar on your 18th medal. You may find the history of it, says Philander, in Ovid de Fastis. It was from this pillar that the spear was tossed at the opening of a war, for which reason the little figure on the top of it holds a spear in its hand, and Peace turns her back upon it.

Prospicit à templo summum brevis area circum:

Est ibi non parvæ parva columna notæ :
Hinc solet hasta manu, belli prænuncia, mitti;
In regem et gentes cum placet arma capi.

Ov. de Fast. lib. 6.

Where the high fane the ample cirque commands,
A little, but a noted pillar stands,

From hence, when Rome the distant kings defies,
In form, the war-denouncing javelin flies.

The different interpretations that have been made on the next medal* seem to be forced and unnatural. I will therefore give you my own opinion of it. The vessel is here represented as stranded. The figure before it seems to come in to its assistance, and to lift it off the shallows: for we see the water scarce reaches up to the knees; and though it is the figure of a man standing on firm ground, his attendants, and the good office he is employed upon, resemble those the poets often attribute to Neptune. Homer tells us, that the whales leaped up at their god's approach, as we see in the medal. The two small

Fig. 21.

figures that stand naked among the waves, are sea deities of an inferior rank, who are supposed to assist their sovereign in the succour he gives the distressed vessel.

Cymothoë, simul et Triton adnixus acuto
Detrudunt naves scopulo; levat ipse tridenti,
Et vastas aperit syrtes, et temperat æquor.

VIRG. En. lib. 1,

Cymothoë, Triton, and the sea-green train
Of beauteous nymphs, the daughters of the main,
Clear from the rocks the vessels with their hands;
The god himself with ready trident stands,
And opes the deep, and spreads the moving sands.
Mr. DRYDEN.
Jam placidis ratis extat aquis, quam gurgite ab imo
Et Thetis, et magnis Nereus socer erigit ulnis.

VAL. FLAC. lib. 1.

The interpreters of this medal have mistaken

these two figures for the persons that are drowning.

representation of two But as they are both naked, and drawn in a posture rather of triumphing over the waves than of sinking under them, so we see abundance of water deities on other medals represented after the same manner.

Ite Dea virides, liquidosque advertite vultus,
Et vitreum teneris crinem redimite corymbis,
Veste nihil tectæ : quales emergitis altis
Fontibus, et visu Satyros torquetis amantes.

STATIUS de Balneo Etrusci. lib. 1.

Haste, haste, ye Naiads! with attractive art
New charms to ev'ry native grace impart :
With op'ning flow'rets bind your sea-green hair,
Unveil'd; and naked let your limbs appear:
So from the springs the Satyrs see you rise,
And drink eternal passion at their eyes.

After having thus far cleared our way to the medal, I take the thought of the reverse to be this.

The stranded vessel is the commonwealth of Rome, that, by the tyranny of Domitian, and the insolence of the Prætorian guards, under Nerva, was quite run aground and in danger of perishing. Some of those embarked in it endeavour at her recovery, but it is Trajan that, by the adoption of Nerva, stemsthe tide to her relief, and like another Neptune shoves her off the quicksands. Your device, says Eugenius, hangs very well together; but is not it liable to the same exceptions that you made us last night to such explications as have nothing but the writer's imagination to support them? To show you, says Philander, that the construction I put on this medal is conformable to the fancies of the old Romans, you may observe, that Horace represents at length the commonwealth of Rome under the figure of a ship, in the allegory that you meet with in the fourteenth ode of his first book.

O Navis, referent in mare te novi
Fluctus.

And shall the raging waves again

Bear thee back into the main ?

Mr. CREECH.

Nor was any thing more usual than to represent a god in the shape and dress of an emperor.

-Apelleæ cuperent te scribere ceræ,

Optassetque novo similem te ponere templo
Atticus Elei senior Jovis: et tua mitis
Ora Taras, tua sidereas imitantia flammas

Lumina, contempto mallet Rhodes aspera Phabo.

STATIUS de Equo Domitiani, Syl. 1.

Now had Apelles liv'd, he'd sue to grace
His glowing tablets with thy godlike face:
Phidias, a sculptor for the Pow'rs above!
Had wish'd to place thee with his iv'ry Jove.
Rhodes, and Tarentum, that with pride survey,
The thund'rer this, and that the god of day;

Each fam'd Colossus would exchange for thee,
And own thy form the loveliest of the three,

For the thought is general, you have just the same metaphorical compliment to Theodosius in Claudian, as the medal here makes to Trajan.

Nulla relicta foret Romani nominis umbra,

Ni pater ille tuus jamjum ruitura subisset

Pondera, turbatamque ratem, certâque levasset
Naufragium commune manu.~

CLAUDIAN. de 4to, Cons. Honorii.

Had not thy sire deferr'd th' impending fate,
And with his solid virtue propp'd the state;
Sunk in oblivion's shade, the name of Rome,
An empty name! had scarce surviv'd her doom:
Half wreck'd she was, till his auspicious hand
Resum'd the rudder, and regain'd the land.

I shall only add, that this medal was stamped in honour of Trajan, when he was only Cæsar, as appears by the face of it . . . SARL TRAIANO.

The next is a reverse of Marcus Aurelius. We have on it a Minerva* mounted on a monster, that Ausonius describes in the following verses.

Illa etiam Thalamos per trina ænigmata quærens
Qui bipes, et quadrupes foret, et tripes omnia solus,;
Terruit Aoniam Volueris, Leo, Virgo; triformis
Sphinx, volucris pennis, pedibus fera, fronte puella.

To form the monster Sphinx, a triple kind,
Man, bird, and beast, by nature were combin'd:
With feather'd fans she wing'd th' aërial space;
And on her feet the lion-claws disgrace
The bloomy features of a virgin-face.
O'er pale Aönia panic horror ran,

While in mysterious speech she thus began:
"What animal, when yet the morn is new,
"Walks on four legs infirm; at noon on two:
"But day declining to the western skies,
" He needs a third; a third the night supplies "`
Fig. 22:

The monster, says Cynthio, is a sphinx, but for her meaning on this medal, I am not Edipus enough to unriddle it. I must confess, says Philander, the poets fail me in this particular. There is however a passage in Pausanias that I will repeat to you, though it is in prose, since I know no body else that has explained the medal by it. The Athenians, says he, drew a sphinx on the armour of Pallas, by reason of the strength and sagacity of this animal. The sphinx therefore signifies the same as Minerva herself, who was the goddess of arms as well as wisdom, and describes the emperor, as one of the poets expresses it,

-Studiis florentem utriusque Minerva.

Whom both Minervas boast t' adopt their own.

The Romans joined both devices together, to make the emblem the more significant, as indeed they could not too much extol the learning and mititary virtues of this excellent emperor, who was the best philosopher and the greatest general of his age.

We will close up this series of medals 'with one that was stamped under Tiberius to the memory of Augustus*. Over his head you see the star that his father Julius Cæsar was supposed to have been changed into.

Ecce Dionai processit Cæsaris astrum.

VIRG. Ecl. 9.

See, Cæsar's lamp is lighted in the skies. Mr. DRYDEN.

-Micat inter omnes

Julium sidus, velut inter ignes

Luna minores.

HOR.

* Fig. 23.