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Article ON SILENCE AND ITS ANCIENT SYMBOLS. ← Page 4 of 7 →
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On Silence And Its Ancient Symbols.
In the ingenious , but over-fanciful treatise of Horapollo , * the number 1095 ( being 365 x 3 ) is given as a symbol of silence , for the reason that , " if a child does not speak within three years from its birth , it must labour under impediment of speech . " To say the truth , however , interpretations of numbers , whether in the Pythagorean or Egyptian mysteriesdeserve but little
re-, liance . The KEY may next be noticed , as a popular and obvious symbol of silence . It is applied to the preservation of the Eleusinian mysteries by Sopliocles , f and readily reminds us of the Avords of the Psalmist : "keep the door of ray lips . " Examples are too numerous to require citation . But the grand mystery of all is the bull . In Blackey ' s
spirited Aversion of iEschylus Ave read : " But soft—the rest is silence—a huge ox Has passed upon my lips ; but the house itself , Could it find tongue , would tell the tale I mean , Excellent well . "
I am not going to detain my readers with a long dissertation on the real import of this much disputed j ) assage , but simply to lay before them the various reasons alleged for making the bull an emblem of silence . Some assert % that the Athenian money bore the effigy of a bull stamped upon it , and that the " bull upon the lips" was
hence expressive of " hush money" or bribery . Philostratus § makes the proverb of Pythagorean origin , alleging that " as he was the first to restrain the tongues of men , so he made the symbol thereof , a bull placed on the tongue . " || Perhaps the simplest solution of the proverb is to suppose , that as the ox was used as an example of heavy Aveihtso this symbol w as
g , intended to express a severe and responsible obligation to silence . But , as Hermann truly obsen es , " many proverbs have so accidental an origin , that , unless that very origin happen to be preserved , it is in vain to investigate their meaning . " I have already , in a former article , alluded to the symbol of the rose , If and will not , therefore , repeat Avhat has probably met
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
On Silence And Its Ancient Symbols.
In the ingenious , but over-fanciful treatise of Horapollo , * the number 1095 ( being 365 x 3 ) is given as a symbol of silence , for the reason that , " if a child does not speak within three years from its birth , it must labour under impediment of speech . " To say the truth , however , interpretations of numbers , whether in the Pythagorean or Egyptian mysteriesdeserve but little
re-, liance . The KEY may next be noticed , as a popular and obvious symbol of silence . It is applied to the preservation of the Eleusinian mysteries by Sopliocles , f and readily reminds us of the Avords of the Psalmist : "keep the door of ray lips . " Examples are too numerous to require citation . But the grand mystery of all is the bull . In Blackey ' s
spirited Aversion of iEschylus Ave read : " But soft—the rest is silence—a huge ox Has passed upon my lips ; but the house itself , Could it find tongue , would tell the tale I mean , Excellent well . "
I am not going to detain my readers with a long dissertation on the real import of this much disputed j ) assage , but simply to lay before them the various reasons alleged for making the bull an emblem of silence . Some assert % that the Athenian money bore the effigy of a bull stamped upon it , and that the " bull upon the lips" was
hence expressive of " hush money" or bribery . Philostratus § makes the proverb of Pythagorean origin , alleging that " as he was the first to restrain the tongues of men , so he made the symbol thereof , a bull placed on the tongue . " || Perhaps the simplest solution of the proverb is to suppose , that as the ox was used as an example of heavy Aveihtso this symbol w as
g , intended to express a severe and responsible obligation to silence . But , as Hermann truly obsen es , " many proverbs have so accidental an origin , that , unless that very origin happen to be preserved , it is in vain to investigate their meaning . " I have already , in a former article , alluded to the symbol of the rose , If and will not , therefore , repeat Avhat has probably met