from
those who had been in Egypt, and copied their accounts from that country.
There are few characters, which at first sight appear more distinct than
those of Apollo and Bacchus. Yet the department, which is generally
appropriated to Apollo, as the Sun, I mean the conduct of the year, is by
Virgil given to Bacchus, or Liber. He joins him with Ceres, and calls them
both the bright luminaries of the world.

[920]Vos, O, clarissima Mundi
Lumina, labentem Coelo qui ducitis annum,
Liber, et alma Ceres.

[921]Quidam ipsum solem, ipsum Apollinem, ipsum Dionysium eundem esse
volunt. Hence we find that Bacchus is the Sun, or Apollo; though supposed
generally to have been a very different personage. In reality they are all
three the same; each of them the Sun. He was the ruling Deity of the world:

[922][Greek: Helie pangenetor, panaiole, chruseophenges.]

He was in Thrace esteemed, and worshipped as Bacchus, or Liber. [923]In
Thracia Solem Liberum haberi, quem illi Sebadium nuncupantes magna
religione celebrant: eique Deo in colle [924]Zemisso aedes dicata est specie
rotunda. In short, all the Gods were one, as we learn from the same Orphic
Poetry:

[925][Greek: Heis Zeus, heis Aides, heis Helios, heis Dionusos,]
[Greek: Heis theos en pantessi.]

Some Deities changed with the season.

[926][Greek: Eelion de therous, metopores d' habron Iao.]

It was therefore idle in the antients to make a disquisition about the
identity of any God, as compared with another; and to adjudge him to
Jupiter rather than to Mars, to Venus rather than Diana. [927][Greek: Ton
Osirin hoi men Serapin, hoide Dionuson, hoide Ploutona, tines de Dia,
polloide Pana nenomikasi]. _Some_, says Diodorus, _think that Osiris is
Serapis; others that he is Dionusus; others still, that he is Pluto: many
take him for Zeus, or Jupiter, and not a few for Pan_. This was an
unnecessary embarrassment: for they were all titles of the same God, there
being originally by no means that diversity which is imagined, as Sir John
Marsham has very justly observed. [928]Neque enim tanta [Greek:
polutheotes] Gentium, quanta fuit Deorum [Greek: poluonumia]. It is said,
above, that Osiris was by some thought to be Jupiter, and by others to be
Pluto. But Pluto, among the best theologists, was esteemed the same as
Jupiter; and indeed the same as Proserpine, Ceres, Hermes, Apollo, and
every other Deity.

[929][Greek: Plouton, Persephone, Demeter, Kupris,