(in Greek): and the letters are NEQK, a contraction of vεwxopov, signifying curatores of the sacred rites and temples. The Neocori appear on many medals of the time; and their functions have been copiously illustrated by antiquarians of the last century. There can be no reasonable doubt that this representation of Deucalion, drawn in a peculiar manner to gratify the vanity of the Apameans, is the real model from which all the bas-reliefs of Noah have been imitated. The readiness with which the Pagan version of the story was adopted by the Christians, and the servile copyism by which the type thus obtained was perpetuated, exemplify in a striking manner the condition of nascent Christian art. The first sculptor who attempted the subject deviated widely from the inspired history; reduced the family of the patriarch to a single person, and the ark containing beasts and birds innumerable, to a box; yet, rather than hazard an original idea, his successor must repeat, and hand down unchanged, the type so strangely consecrated. The philosopher Celsus condescends to notice the Christians' account of the deluge, "with the ridiculous ark that held every thing inside it "t, as * There are on this subject three essays in the Archæologia, vol. 4. Also an excellent notice by Raoul Rochette, Mémoires de l'Academie de Belles Lettres, t. xiii. † Origen in Celsum, lib. iv. a piece of his mythology amplified by them. It speaks strongly for the power of education over the mind, that Celsus, brought up to believe the enormous follies of heathenism, should be stumbled by the rational and just interposition of Almighty power in the case of righteous Noah. The preservation of God's people through difficulties, more especially if effected by a miracle, generally formed the subject of those sculptures which were not executed for the sake of their allegorical meaning. The perils of Daniel and the three youths, from their resemblance to the circumstances in which the Roman Christians were placed, enjoyed a preference. The genius of their religion was conspicuously displayed in this choice of subjects. Surrounded by real dangers and persecutions, they did not seek to celebrate their own sufferings, still less to immortalise individual heroism but passing by the ungulæ and stakes with which they were most conversant in daily life, they drew their humble measure of inspiration from the bloodless confessions of Shadrach and A Daniel. A people revelling in luxurious ease may find gratification in applying the resources of art to the illustration of martyr-suffering. Parmegiano, himself safe from the rack and the flames, had leisure to elaborate the well-proportioned figure of his heroine, to embody in a dark and rugged executioner all that could contrast with the fair and undraped form of the victim, and to array in the terrors of chiaroscuro the instruments of torture and death: till the world, worked up to frenzy by the sight, fancied itself ready to die in the cause, and by acclamation voted itself Christian. But the ancient Church never represented scenes of a painful character: the deliverance of a Jew from the lions of Babylon was preferred to the destruction of a Christian by those of the Colosseum; and the three Hebrews preserved from the rage of Nebuchadnezzar were a more consolatory subject than the victims of Neronian cruelty, wrapped in pitch cloth, and used as torches to illuminate the circus. In this fragment of a sarcophagus, the usual licence of early art is perceived: the mighty furnace of the plains of Dura is reduced to a mere oven in three compartments: and the fourth figure, "like unto the Son of God," is omitted. The figures of Daniel appear in every degree of rudeness; although the subject, requiring, as it was thought, a knowledge of the nude, presented difficulties equal to that of Adam and Eve. The specimen annexed is from a Catacomb painting. The Good Shepherd, a character appropriated by our Saviour, was an emblem not unknown to Paganism. The sylvan deity Pan was anciently represented by sculptors with a goat thrown across his shoulders, and a Pan's pipe, or syrinx, in his hand. According to Pausanias, the people of Tanagra worshipped Mercury under the name of Criophorus, or the Ram-bearer; and Calamis executed a statue of Mercury with the ram borne on his shoulders. The yearly feast in his honour was kept by one of the youths bearing a lamb round. the walls of the city.* The Roman poets also make allusion to the custom of carrying a stray or neglected lamb on the shoulders of the shepherd. Calpurnius thus addresses a friend employed in * Pausanias, lib. ix. farming: "Think it not beneath you, when visiting the sheepfolds at night, to bear on your shoulders the exhausted sheep, and to carry in your bosom the trembling young. Tibullus also: "Be not too indolent to carry home in your bosom the lamb or kid deserted by its forgetful mother." Almost the same expressions are applied by Isaiah to God's care of his people. Our Lord therefore only adapted to his purpose a figure well known both to Jews and Greeks, and ennobled it for ever by application to Himself. The Good Shepherd was a type much valued by the early Church, and the character in which they most delighted to represent our Lord. It was in this form that the exalted imagination of Perpetua figured Him to herself: in her dream she ascended the ladder that reached to heaven, and saw there a man with white hair, in the dress of a shepherd, milking his sheep. Tertullian also refers to the Good Shepherd painted on the sacramental cups: "Pastor quem in calice depingis." ‡ In the tomb of the Nasones, a heathen family of eminence in Rome, may be seen, among many mythological paintings, the figure of a shepherd with a sheep on his shoulders, and a crook in his hand, surrounded by the Four Seasons.§ What was intended by this heathen painting is not clear; but, by a slight alteration, the same composition was † Eleg. ii. 11-12. * Calpurn. Eclog. v. 39. § Bellori, Tomb of the Nasones, plate xxii. |