Classical antiquities Author:Johann Joachim Eschenburg Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: general security and the community of goods in the Saturnian or golden age. The chief festival of this deity was the Saturnalia of the Romans, which was, like... more » the Peloria (llEjiugta) of the Thessalians, devoted to freedom, mirth and indiscriminate hospitality. Saturn was represented by the figure of an old man having a scythe or sickle in one hand, and often in the other a serpent with its tail in its mouth in the form of a circle, both emblems of lime. There are, however, but few ancient monuments of this deity. Also thus described; ' a decrepid old man with a long beard and hoary head; his shoulders are bowed like an arch, his jaws hollow and thin, his cheeks sunk; his nose is flat, his forehead full of furrows, and his chin turned up; his right hand holds a rusty scythe, and his left a child, which he is about to devour.' The custom of sacrificing children to Saturn seems to identify him with Mo- loch, the Phoenician idol, to whom the apostate Israelites sacrificed their offspring. Cf. Diod. Sic. ix. 14. John, Bibl. Arch. § 211. The Sun-god of the South-Americans was worshiped with the same cruel rites.—Southcy's Madoc, Jfotc. § 18. (2) Janus. He was one of the Superior Gods of the Romans. They represent him as of Thessalian origin, and as reigning over the earliest and so called aboriginal inhabitants of Italy, in the time of Saturn. It was to Janus that Saturn fled, and under them was the golden age, a period of uninterrupted peace. To Janus, therefore, Romulus dedicated that celebrated temple, which was always open in time of war, and was closed with much solemnity, whenever there was general peace in the Roman empire; a thing which happened but three times during 724 years from the building of the city. From this deity the month of January was named, and t...« less