elegant and alle-hey representeddestruction, asecking fruits andocks fighting, orre Romans seem:ath as the eldestseveral of theirtwo winged geniilages, and some-on his shoulder,ands. It is very)lized the humanthat is extremelyLt. In a very in-in p. 7 of Spon's►strate corpse isst escaped fromter expresses it,re excellent anti-ius sepulchral in-

IBVS MEIS MANDOkPILIO OSSA IPSA

ymbol altogether,! ages have sub-in the mouths ofeir souls,irodotus, that in

was introduceduests were seated;omn, exclaiming

of what your-and be happy." 3t manuscript toa LacedaemonianI poem of Coppa,)posed to invite

oroni's Gemmse An-ypifies mortality, and1 Diarium, p. 212.

The Dance of Death. 3

Maecenas to a rural banquet. It concludes with theselines :—

Pone merum et talos ; pereat qui crastina curat,Mors aurem vellens, vivite ait, venio.

The phrase of pulling the ear is admonitory, that organbeing regarded by the ancients as the seat of memory.It was customary also, and for the same reason, to takean oath by laying hold of the ear. It is impossible on thisoccasion to forget the passage in Isaiah xxii. 13, afterwardsused by Saint Paul, on the beautiful parable in Luke xii.Plutarch also, in his banquet of the wise men, hasremarked that the Egyptians exhibited a skeleton at theirfeasts to remind the parties of the brevity of human life ;the same custom, as adopted by the Romans, is exemplifiedin Petronius's description of the feast of Trimalchio,where a jointed puppet, as a skeleton, is brought inby a boy, and this practice is also noticed by SiliusItalicus :

.......^Egyptia tellus

Claudit odorato post funus stantia Saxo

Corpora, et a mensis exsanguem haud separat umbram. 5

Some have imagined that these skeletons were intended torepresent the larvae and lemures, the good and evilshadows of the dead, that occasionally made their ap-pearance on earth. The larvae, or lares, were of a beneficentnature, friendly to man ; in other words, the good demonof Socrates. The lemures, spirits of mischief and wicked-ness. The larva in Petronius was designed to admonishonly, not to terrify; and this is proved from Seneca :" Nemo tarn puer est ut Cerberum timeat et tenebras, etlarvarum habitum nudis ossibus cohaerentium." 6 There is,however, some confusion even among the ancients them-selves, as to the respective qualities of the larvae andlemures. Apuleius, in his noble and interesting defenceagainst those who accused him of practising magic, tellsthem, "Tertium mendacium vestrum fuit, macilentam velomninoevisceratamformam diri cadaverisfabricatam prorsushorribilem et larvalem;" and afterwards, when producingthe image of his peculiar Deity, which he usually carried5 Lib. xiii. 1. 474. 6 Epist XJ a V .

B 2