"The priests," says Bryant, referring both to Pliny and Strabo as his authorities, "with their feet naked, walked over a large quantity of live coals and cinders." To this same practice we find Aruns in Virgil referring, when addressing Apollo, the sun-god, who had his shrine at Soracte, where Feronia was worshipped, and who therefore must have been the same as Jupiter Anxur, her contemplar divinity, who was regarded as a "youthful Jupiter," even as Apollo was often called the "young Apollo":
"O patron of Soracte's high abodes,
Phoebus, the ruling power among the gods,
Whom first we serve; whole woods of unctuous pine
Are felled for thee, and to thy glory shine. By thee protected, with our naked soles,
Through flames unsinged we march and tread the kindled coals." *
* DRYDEN'S Virgil Aeneid. "The young Apollo," when "born to introduce law and order among the Greeks," was said to have made his appearance at Delphi "exactly in the middle of summer." (MULLER'S Dorians)
Thus the St. John's fires, over whose cinders old and young are made to pass, are traced up to "the first of mortals that reigned."
It is remarkable, that a festival attended with all the essential rites of the fire-worship of Baal, is found among Pagan nations, in regions most remote from one another, about the very period of the month of Tammuz, when the Babylonian god was anciently celebrated. Among the Turks, the fast of Ramazan, which, says Hurd, begins on the 12th of June, is attended by an illumination of burning lamps. *
* HURD'S Rites and Ceremonies. The time here given by Hurd would not in itself be decisive as a proof of agreement with the period of the original festival of Tammuz; for a friend who has lived for three years in Constantinople informs me that, in consequence of the disagreement between the Turkish and the solar year, the fast of Ramazan ranges in succession through all the different months in the year. The fact of a yearly illumination in connection with religious observances, however, is undoubted. In China where the Dragon-boat festival is celebrated in such a way as vividly to recall to those who have witnessed it, the weeping for Adonis, the solemnity begins at Midsummer. In Peru, during the reign of the Incas, the feast of Raymi, the most magnificent feast of the Peruvians, when the sacred fire every year used to be kindled anew from the sun, by means of a concave mirror of polished metal, took place at the very same period. Regularly as Midsummer came round, there was first, in token of mourning, "for three days, a general fast, and no fire was allowed to be lighted in their dwellings," and then, on the fourth day, the mourning was turned into joy, when the Inca, and his court, followed by the whole population of Cuzco, assembled at early dawn in the great square to greet the rising of the sun.