Forlong - Rivers of Life

Fire Worship.
and around this temple rose the first great college of priests and augurs who guarded
the destinies of Rome, and guided the brave, stalwart, but superstitious races who,
from this little mount, sent forth their legions to subdue the world and pave the way
for the civilisation of Europe. The male mount is here the very centre of a valley or
basin, which my Benares friends would doubtless prefer, and with some reason, to call
an Argha, and so make Pala, the Argha-nat; for Pallas is here at the meeting of the
waters which flow from two sacred female mounts—that of the Etruscans on the south,
and of the Sabines on the north. The base of both these mountains was washed by the
sacred Albula of old—the Tiber of these days.
If Romulus had his Nympheum lily, the Cesars had their more substantial
Nymphea, which my plan of the huge pile known as the “Palace of the Cesars”
shows as wholly occupying one side of the building. and which with the quadrangle of
the Lares and Penates and intervening gardens, fountains, &c., left only one angle for
the halls of Law and Justice—the Basilika, a name of serpent lineage. We can pretty
well guess what were the ways and manners of the inhabitants of Imperial Nymphea;
nor are we left in much doubt as to their religious predilections, for we find as a
frontispiece picture to that large and learned work on the
Kabiri by the Rev. Mr. Faber, this exquisite production,
obtained he says, frorn a Nympheum in the Barbarini Palace
at Rome. I get it by Dr Inman’s kindness from his last edition
of that excellent volume on Ancient Pagan and Modern
Christian Symbolism, and it recalls to mind hundreds of
similar Maha-Devas familiar to Indians. The Yoni which was
doubtless, as the author says, “for taking oaths on,” is not
however common, although I have seen many such, and heard
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Fig. 162.—THE GOD AND WORSHIP
OF THE ROMAN NYMPHEUM
of this mode of swearing amongst some aboriginal tribes, being the same as swearing
on “the thigh” customary with Jewish and other Arabs. This oval, the tree, and
solitary pillar, have still their counterparts in the valley gorge of Meka and on the
summit of Mount Moriah. Apertures, says Dr. Inman, were common in ancient
sepulchral monuments, alike in Hindostan and in England, and one, ancient stone is
still preserved as a relic in the precincts of an old church in modem Rome. This fonn
of Phallus with bands is also the same as in the Symbol or Tarao or Ta-Arao, the great
god of the Polynesians, see p. 444 and chapter on Aboriginal Races; his name is also
familiar to us in the Tor and Tenarus of the north and the Tor, Taurus, or Tarus—that
“Son of the water god”—of Southern Europe.
Ancient Rome diligently followed out its rôle as leader of the Phallo-Solar faiths
of Europe. On the Via Sacra, which joined its two phallic mounts, were built all
the chief public religious edifices, the dwelling of the Pontifex Maxims, the sacred
college, and. the ever-holy habitations of the Vestales; but the sacred Fire-temple
had to be built on Mother Tiber’s banks, as Hindoos still build such on holy streams.