66
Proofs of the Enquiry into
Sect.' the Ancients, and particularly their Oracles : X. • But now they are almost wholly neglected.' 1
The Roman State contented itself with con sulting the Sibylline Verses upon any Emergen cy ; and the Greeks were dispirited by their De pendency. This, with the general Spreading of Learning at that Time, which is no Friend to religious Impositions, brought the Reputation of the Oracles very low. It is Application from the Rich, and Countenance from the Great, that give Life and Name to any sacred Institution, where Enthusiasm is not intermixed; in that case, a little Persecution does rather better. 3|f? EA0E MAKAP IIAIAN, TITTOKTONE, 0>OIBE, ATKOPET, MEM<J>IT ArAAOTIME, IHIE, OABIOApTA!
p. 200. (j) It would not be easy to translate these two 209. (b) Verses from Orpheus' Hymns, so as to make them intelligible to an English Reader, without such Circumlocutions as would swell them to six or eight. The most learned Joseph Scaliger, though he had Roman Indigitamenta, to answer to the greater Part of the Greek, has yet left out some of the Epithets of these in his Translation, and substituted others not exactly
adapted to the Original. The nearest Sense of