# Poems, Sacred and Moral/Consolation: a Lyric Poem

CONSOLATION:
A
LYRIC POEM.
ARGUMENT.
The purport of the following Poem is to compare Christianity with the three leading systems of Antient Philosophy, namely, the system of Pyrrho, that of Epicurus, and that of Zeno, as to influence on human happiness. After some description preparatory to the introduction of the subject, the characteristical tenets and the practical effects of each of these philosophical systems are illustrated. Those of the Christian Religion are afterwards exemplified and appretiated in a similar manner.
CONSOLATION:
A
LYRIC POEM.
⟨"Cecropia calls thee; Mortal, rise!"⟩
* ↑ Athens, originally denominated Cecropia from its founder Cecrops, was built on a high rock situated on a large plain near the middle of Attica. The citadel, in the centre of which was the vast Temple of Minerva, constructed wholly with Parian marble and still subsisting, occupied the summit. In process of time the whole plain was covered with buildings. The city was joined to the harbour of Piræeus by the walls called Μακρα Τειχη, the Long Walls, being about five miles in length; whence they are styled by Propertius, "Long Arms."Inde ubi Piræei capient me littora portus,Scandam ego Theseæ brachia longa viæ.Lib. iii. Eleg. The road from the harbour was named Οδος Θησεια, the road of Theseus.—See Potter's Antiquities of Greece, 3d edit. vol. i. ch. 8.
* ↑ Among the Grecians, Truth was represented as a Goddess clothed in white robes.
* ↑ From the present stanza to the nineteenth inclusive, the leading tenets of the Pyrrhonic Philosophers are under consideration.
* ↑ In allusion to the characteristical principle of the Pyrrhonic school, which was, to consider every thing as a matter of doubt and uncertainty.
* ↑ Sunium, a promontory of Attica.
* ↑ One of the Epicurean sect of Philosophers. The present stanza and those that follow, to the thirtieth inclusive, are intended to characterise the system of that sect.
* ↑ A high mountain on the confines of Attica.
* ↑ From this place to the end of the forty-fourth Stanza the tenets and the natural effects of the system of the Stoics are characterised.
* ↑ "And calls her crawling brood, and bids them share the feast."Mason.
* ↑ ———Infixum stridet sub pectore vulnus.Virg.
* ↑ "They drew Paul and Silas into the market-place unto the "Rulers;—and rent off their clothes, and laid many stripes upon them; and thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks. And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God; and the prisoners heard them." Acts, chap. xvi. ver. 19, &c. The state in which they were thus confined may be collected from a subsequent verse of the same chapter; in which it is related that afterwards the jailor "took them, and washed their stripes." Ver. 33.
* ↑ To be thrown to wild beasts in the arena of the Circus as a spectacle to the people, is well known to have been one of the early modes of Christian martyrdom. To be wrapt in vestments overspread with pitch, and thus burned, was another mode. "Pereuntibus addita ludibria; ut crucibus affixi, aut flammandi, atque, ubi defecisset dies, in usum nocturni luminis urerentur." Tacitus, Annal. lib. xv. To this barbarous spectacle Juvenal appears to allude in the following lines:——— tædâ lucebis in illâQuâ stantes ardent, qui fixo gutture fumant;Et latum mediâ sulcum deducit arenâ.Sat. i. l. 155. Which passage the Scholiast thus explains: "Nero maleficos homines tædâ & papyro & cerâ supervestiebat, & sic ad ignem admoveri jubeat." Martial also speaks of the "tunica molesta," in which the Christian was burnt, "Matutinà spectatus arenâ."
* ↑ Aurea rima micans percurrit lumine nimbos.Virg.
* ↑ In allusion to the inscription on the Cross reported to have appeared to Constantine: "Εν τουτω νικα."