OF THE R(3MAN EMPIRE 327 he was brave and liberal, an eloquent poet and a successful robber : forty camels were roasted at his hospitable feast ; and at the prayer of a suppliant enemy he restored both the captives and the spoil. The freedom of his countrymen disdained the laws of justice ; they proudly indulged the spontaneous impulse of pity and benevolence. The reliffion of the Arabs,*^ as well as of the Indians, consisted Ancient fi > ' Idolatry in the worship of the sun, the moon, and the fixed stars ; a primi- tive and specious mode of superstition. The bright luminaries of the sk}' display the visible image of a Deity : their number and distance convey to a philosophic, or even a vulgar, eye the idea of boundless space : the character of eternity is marked on these solid globes, that seem incapable of coiTuption or decay : the regularity of their motions may be ascribed to a principle of reason or instinct ; and their real or imaginary influence encour- ages the vain belief that the earth and its inhabitants are the object of their peculiar care. The science of astronomy was cultivated at Babylon ; but the school of the Arabs was a clear firmament and a naked plain. In their nocturnal marches, they steered by the guidance of the stars ; their names, and order, and daily station were familiar to the curiosity and devotion of the Bedoween ; and he was taught by experience to divide in twenty-eight parts the zodiac of the moon, and to bless the con- stellations who refreshed with salutary rains the thirst of the desert. The reign of the heavenly orbs could not be extended beyond the visible sphere ; and some metaphysical powers vere necessary to sustain the transmigration of souls and the resurrec- tion of bodies ; a camel was left to perish on the grave, that he might serve his master in another life ; and the invocation of departed spirits implies that they were still endowed with consciousness and power. I am ignorant, and I am careless, of the blind mythology of the barbarians ; of the local deities, of the stars, the air, and the earth, of their sex or titles, their attributes or subordination. Each tribe, each family, each inde- pendent warrior, created and changed the rites and the object of his fantastic worship ; but the nation, in every age, has bowed ■"■Whatever can now be known of the idolatry of the ancient Arabians may be found in Pocock (Specimen, p. 80-136, 163, 164). His profound erudition is more clearly and concisely interpreted by Sale (Preliminary Discourse, p. 14-24) ; and Assemanni (Bibliot. Orient, torn. iv. p. 580-590) has added some valuable remarks. [On the state of Arabia and its religion before Islam, see Caussin de Perceval, Essai sur I'histoire des Arabes, vol. fi., and E. H. Palmer's Introduction to his translation of the Koran (in the " Sacred Books of the East ").]
