versation by asserting that he was to be her master. Lilith replied that she had equal right to be chief. Adam insisting, Lilith uttered a certain spell called Shem-hammephorash the result of which was that she obtained wings. Lilith then flew out of Eden and out of sight. Adam then cried in distress 'Master of the world, the woman whom thou didst give me has flown away.'"

"The astrological College of Egypt gave to the Jews their strange idea of the high school maintained among the devils, already referred to in connection with Asmodeus, who was one of its leading professors. The rabbinical legend was, that two eminent angels, Asa and Asael, remonstrated with the Creator on having formed man only to give trouble. The Creator said they would have done the same as man under similar circumstances; whereupon Asa and Asael proposed that the experiment should be tried. They went to earth, and the Creator's prediction was fulfilled: they were the first sons of God' who fell in love with the daughters of men (Gen. vI. 2). They were then embodied. In heaven they had been angels of especial knowledge in divine arts, and they now used their spells to reascend. But their sin rendered the spells powerless for that, so they repaired to the Dark Mountains, and there established a great College of Sorcery. Among the distinguished graduates of this College were Job, Jethro, and Bileam. It was believed that these three instructed the soothsayers who attempted to rival the miracles of Moses before Pharaoh. Job and Jethro were subsequently converted, but Bileam continued his hostility to Israel, and remains a teacher in the College. Through knowledge of the supreme spell the Shem-hammephorash, or real name of God Solomon was able to chain Professor Asmodeus, and wrest from him the secret of the worm Schámir, by whose aid the Temple was built."

"Traditions of the learning of the Egyptians, and of the marvels learned by Solomon from Asa and Asael by which he compelled demons to serve him, and the impressive story of the Witch of Endor, powerfully influenced the inquisitive minds of Europe. The fierce denunciations of all studies of these arts of sorcery by the early Church would alone reveal how prevalent they were. The wonderful story of Apollonius of Tyana, as told by Philostratus, was really a kind of gospel to the more worldly-minded scholars. Some rabbins, following the outcry against Jesus, 'He casteth out devils by Beelzebub,' circulated at an early date the story that Jesus had derived his power to work miracles from the spell Shem-hammephorash, which he found on one of the stones of the Temple where Solomon had left it. Though Eusebius cast doubt upon them, the Christians generally do not appear to have denied the miracles of Apollonius, which precisely copy those of Jesus from the miraculous birth to the ascension, but even to have quoted them as an evidence of the possibility of miracles."

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

RIDDLES. In the "Dictionary of Phrase and Fable," by E. Cobham Brewer, 9th ed, p. 747, it says: "Plutarch states that Homer died of chagrin, because he could not solve a certain riddle." What was this riddle? Is Plutarch reliable for the assertion? What other ancient riddles or enigmas have come down to us? PHILANDER.

This question, with many others, has been on file for several months, and a first chapter is here given on riddles. Similar questions in future will be answered more at length, or perhaps in chapters or compilations, so as to have them more compact rather than scattered on many pages.

HOMER'S RIDDLE. The riddle ascribed to Homer is not properly Homer's Riddle, but should be the Iosians' Riddle. According to the "Life of Homer," attributed to Herodotus, Homer sailed from Samos for Athens with some Samians, and as they neared the coast of Ios, Homer became ill and was carried on shore some distance off from the town. While there the people came to visit Homer and the Samian sailors; also, some fishermen's children ran their boat on shore, and came and talked with the visitors, and addressed these words to them:

"Hear us, strangers; explain our riddle, if ye can. we take, and we carry with us that which we cannot take."

We leave what

None of them being able to solve it, they expounded it thus : "Having had an unproductive fishery, we sat down on the sand, and being annoyed by the vermin, we left the few fish we had taken, on the shore, taking with us the vermin we could not catch." Homer, on hearing this, is said to have made these verses: "Children, your fathers possess neither ample heritage,

Nor numerous flocks."

Homer died in Ios of the disease he had contracted on the voyage, and not from grief at not being able to solve the riddle of the fisher-boys, as some authors relate as stated in Plutarch's "Life of Homer," which is characterized by Pope as a story that "refutes itself by carrying superstition at one end, and folly at the other."

Buckley, in a note to Section XXXVI, of Herodotus's "Life of Homer," says that the enigma is founded on the distinction made by the ancients between having and possessing, which Plato causes Socrates to define :

"To possess, therefore, does not appear to me to be the same as to have for instance, if any one having bought a garment, and having it in his power, should not wear it, we should not say that he has it but that he possesses it." (See's Plato's Theatus, § 130, Cary's transla tion, Vol. I, p. 438).

Similarly, Shakespeare makes Iago say: "They have it very oft, that have it not."-Othello IV, 1.

Lactantius has translated the so-called Homeric enigma into Latin. Somewhat akin to it is the riddle alluded to by Plato, Republic v, 22, which he calls the children's riddle.

HOMER'S EPITAPH. Homer was buried at Ios, and on his tomb were inscribed elegiacs, by the inhabitants of Ios, which were translated by Grotius as follows:

"Ista tegit tellum sacrum caput illud Homeri,
Cantibus Heroum qui res cœlestibus æquat.'

"The earth here covers the head of Divine Homer, whose poetry has immortalized heroes."

ADAM'S RIDDLE. There is an enigma known among the ancients as Adam's Riddle, invented, it is said to prefigure the Messiah. It is found in the works of Dr. F. V. Kenealy, Apocalypse of Adam-Oannes, Vol. 1, p. 321, as follows:

O pater mou eggénesan emè, kagò eggénesa tèn metera ton paidion mou, kai tà poidía mou eggénesan tèn metéra tou patros mou.

"My Father (God) begat me, and I begat the Mother of my children, and my children begat the Mother of my Father."

SAMPSON'S RIDDLE. This Biblical riddle is familiar to nearly all, and is found in Judges XIV, 5-19: "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness."

The answer is given by the proposer: "What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?" The story is interesting in that part which gives to modern times the retort of Sampson who divined how the thirty men obtained the answer : If ye had not plowed with my heifer, ye had not found out my riddle."

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SPHINX'S Riddle. Anthon gives this riddle on page 916 of his "Classical Dictionary," Art. Edipus. The Sphinx propounds this to Edipus: "What is that which has one voice, is four-footed, twofooted, and at last three-footed?" Others give it : "What animal

is that which goes on four feet in the morning, on two at noon, and on three at evening?" Another authority rhymes it as follows:

"What goes on four feet, on two feet, and three,

But the more feet it goes on the weaker it be?"

The answer of Edipus is given: "Man-who, when an infant, creeps on all-fours; when he has attained to manhood, goes on two feet; and when old, uses a staff, a third foot." The particulars and conditions of the answers are too long for insertion here.

CLEOBULUS' Riddle. Greece, whose motto was proposed a riddle to his friends: "There are twelve mothers, each mother has thirty children, and the children are white one side and black on the other."

Cleobulus, one of the Seven Wise Men of "The Golden Mean," or "Avoid Extremes,"

This riddle has been explained to be "the twelve months of the

year, each of which had thirty days, and each day being light on one side and dark on the other."

HERMES' RIDDLE. Mecurius Trismegistus, "the thrice illustrious " is recorded by that Rosicrucian, Paschal Beverly Randolph, to have left a riddle for succeeding generations to explain. We have never seen this answered. We do not find the riddle given in the Divine Pymander of Hermes, but reproduce it from the the broadside found attached to the works of Mr. Randolph. Can any of our readers furnish information of its authenticity, or answer it?

My joints are four. They compose my whole body and contain my entire soul; and all other souls were nonentities without my joints. I have fifteen limbs, and could not exist were one lopped off; and by that one I am the supreme bliss of Heaven, and the most poignant anguish of Hell. Angels bless me, and devils bitterly curse and revile me; the one as the summum bonum, the other as the King of curses; and what is still more strange, men are divided by millions about me, as a thing of dread, as a thing of joy, and as the thing to be desired and avoided. Virtuous millions would avoid me. Virtuous millions shrink in unutterable horror of me. Without my first joint very few things, even Deity, could not exist; in fact nothing could; and yet thousand of things are without me. I fill all space, yet occupy no room; albeit there is not an inch, nor a moment without I am there. Utter me, and lo! all the activity and labor-worth of worlds are straightway marshalled before the seeing soul, and out thereof teeming civililizations have sprung; and when I am gone, empires topple into vast graves; but breathe into my nostrils once again and all is changed. Thus I am the bringer of two hundred and ninety-seven sorts of joy. Yet strange, whomsoever pursues me well, will triumph; and whomsoever pursues me well, comes to grief, and defeat, and pangs unutterable. My second joint is the foundation, crown, and sides of all that

IS.

Without it, God is not, the universe a dream, man a shadow, eternity a fantasy, time a nonentity, experience a falsehood, and destiny a figment. I am all men, but all men are not me. I am the soul of mathematics, the spirit of history; the loftiest flight of genius, and the lowest note in music. I am in a tree, the crowing of a cock; and under the tongue of flame; I am the spirit of the fire, and the skeleton in the closet of Kings. My third element points to the one above all others worshipped by mankind in all ages since the worship of the Titakas. Everybody sees that one-that I-and yet that one never saw me; though I have often been felt, and never was smelled nor tasted. Hundreds will vouch to having touched me, yet I am invisibility's self; although animals and men leave the path when I approach, for they behold me afar off. Aye, even ye who read this riddle of Hermes have known and loved, hated, blamed, and caressd me thrice, within eighty-four risings and settings of the sun; and I am an ænigma wholly insoluble, yet easily solved. My first is what people seldom care for till a crisis come and choice is next in order.

My two first joints are what would surprise us to find mankind, either blonde, ruddy, or black, and yet all white people are me, but I am not all white people. Fasten these joints to my last one, and you behold the master-key and main-spring of every genuine civilization, in men or States. My all is what I, Melchizedek, Hermes Trismegistus, declare to be "the Elixer of Life," "the Philosopher's Stone," "the Water of Perpetual Youth ;" and what all philosophers who come after me will proclaim as the diamond of diamonds, because when and where I am, murder cannot be. Dissect my body, and lo! three of my limbs embody the strangest and most pleasant fiction of poesy, which all refined people are familiar with; yet no one ever beheld, yet which thousands have plainly, and clearly seen. Three of my limbs symbolize the necessity of all intelligence beneath the stars. Three more what wrong-doers undergo, and also what many do meddle with that I just have named. Take other three of my limbs and thou beholdest the cause of enormous power, wealth, and fame; and which yet is the reason of sorrow, weakness, poverty, disgrace, and dismay; but without which, no fair road of life and human experience can be travelled; and yet which life is best traveled without." Again, other three are what no genuine men ever do, but which is daily done by thousands who are false or shams. Other three, marshalled before my second joint is the only one thing needful, because therein only, can the deepest joy be found, especially by females, actors, children, and generally such as try to make things balance and off-set each other in the experience of lives, not less than fifty and three years in duration. When my last joint prevails, the times are unjointed; wars follow, carnage reddens earth's fair fields, love dies out, hatred reigns, discord rules and myriad of ills affect the world, and Chaos comes again. And yet, when I do prevail, war ends, discord ceases, concord rules, peace comes to man, and the glad age of golden thought and silver purity begins.

SOLOMON'S RIDDLES. Flavius Josephus says, in his "Antiquities of the Jews," Bk. vII, Chap. 5, that Abdemon, a very youth in age, always conquered the difficult problems which Solomon, Kink of Jerusalem, caused him to explain. Josephus also says that Dius states :

"Solomon, who was then King of Jerusalem, sent riddles to Hiram, and desired to receive the like from him, but that he who could not solve them should pay money to him that did solve them, and that Hiram accepted the conditions, and when he was not able to solve the riddles [proposed by Solomon] he paid a great deal of money for his fine; but afterwards he did solve the proposed riddles by means of Abdemon, a man of Tyre; and that Hiram proposed other riddles, which, when Solomon could not solve, he paid back a great deal of money to Hiram."