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Show NoTE XXII. PORTLAND VASE. 59 myt1eries, I mean thJt it is the head of..'\ TIS. Lucian fays that Atis was a young man of Phrygia, of uncommon beauty, that he dedicated a temple in Syria to Rhea 1 or Cybele, and firfl: t:lllght her myt1eries to the Lydians, Phrygians, and Samothracians, ·which myfl:eries he brought from India. He was afterwards made an eunuch by Rhe3, and li ved like a woman, and affumed a feminine habit, and in that garb went over the world teaching her ce remon ies and myt1eries. DiCl:. par M. Danet, art. Atis. As this figure is covered with clothes, while thofe on the fides of the vafc are naked, and has a Phrygia.1 cap on the head, and as the form and features are fo fo ft, that it is difficult to fay whether it be a male or fem:.~le figure, there is reafon to conclude, r. th:lt it has reference to fome particular perfon of fome particular country; 2. that 1his perfon is Atis, the firt1 great hieroph:mt, or teacher of myt1eries, to whom M. De Ia Chauffe fays the figure itfelf bears a rdemblance. Mufeo. Capitol. Tom. IV. p. 402. In the Mufcum Etrufcum, Vol. I. plate 96, there is the head of Atis with feminine fc:.~tures, clothed with a Phrygian cap, and rifing from very broad foliage, placed on a k ind of term ftrpported by the paw of a lion. Goreus in his explanation of the fi gure f.1ys th :.~t it is placed on a lion's foot becaufe that animal was facred to Cybele, and that it rifes from very broad leaves becaufe after he became an eunuch he determined to dwell in the groves. Thus the foliage, as well as the cap and fem'inine features, confirm the idea of 1 his fi gure at the bottom of the rafe rep refent!ng the head of A tis the firll great hierophant, and that the fig ures on the fides of the vafe are emblems from the antient myfteries. I beg l e:.~vc to adJ that it does not appear to have been uncommon amongll the anticnts to put :.~llegorical figures on fun~ral \'ales. In the Pamphili palace at Rome there is an elaborate reprefentation of. Life and Death, on an antient farcophagus. In the firt1 Prometheus is reprefented making man, and Minerva is ·placing a butterfly, or the lou!, upon his head. In the other compartment Love extingui{hes his torch in the bofom of the dying figure, and is receiving the butterfly, or Pfyche, from him, with a great number of complicatedemblematic figures groupeod in very bad ta{le. Admir. Ruman. Antiq. H~ • |