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Entry 20 of 20
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Jan. 13, 2009
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Cisco CCIE Certification Exam 350-018
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They hold great festivities when the sun enters the four cardinal
points of the heavens, that is, when he enters Cancer, Libra,
Capricorn, and Aries. On these occasions they have very learned,
splendid, and, as it were, comic
CISCO
350-001 performances. They celebrate also
every full and every new moon with a festival, as also they do the
anniversaries of the founding of the city, and of the days when they
have won victories or done any other great achievement. The
celebrations take place with the music of female voices, with the noise
of trumpets and drums, and the firing of salutations. The poets sing
the praises of the most renowned leaders and the victories.
Nevertheless, if any of them should deceive even by disparaging a
foreign hero, he is punished. No one can exercise the function of a
poet who invents that which is not true, and a license like this they
think to be a pest of our world, for the reason that it puts a premium
upon virtue and often assigns it to unworthy persons, either from fear
of flattery, or ambition, or avarice.
For the praise of no one is a statue erected until after his
death; but while he is alive, who has found out new arts and very
useful secrets, or who has rendered great service to the State either
at home or on the battle-field, his name is written in the book of
heroes. They do not bury dead bodies, but burn them, so that a plague
may not arise from them, and so that they may be converted into fire, a
very noble and powerful thing, which has its coming from the sun and
returns to it. And for the above reasons no chance is given for
idolatry. The statues and pictures of the heroes, however, are there,
and the splendid women set apart to become mothers often look at them.
Prayers are made from the State to the four horizontal corners of the
world -in the morning to the rising sun, then to the setting sun, then
to the south, and lastly to the north; and in the contrary order in the
evening, first to the setting sun, to the rising sun, to the north, and
at length to the south. They repeat but one prayer, which asks for
health of body and of mind, and happiness for themselves and all
people, and they conclude it with the petition "As it seems best to
God." The public prayer for all is long, and it is poured forth to
heaven. For this reason the altar is round and is divided crosswise by
ways at right angles to one another. By these ways Hoh enters after he
has repeated the four prayers, and he prays looking up to heaven. And
then a great mystery is seen by them. The priestly vestments are of a
beauty and meaning like to those of Aaron. They resemble nature and
they surpass Art.
They divide the seasons according to the revolution of the sun,
and not of the stars, and they observe yearly by how much time the one
precedes the other. They hold that
CISCO
350-018
the sun approaches nearer and
nearer, and therefore by ever-lessening circles reaches the tropics and
the equator every year a little sooner. They measure months by the
course of the moon, years by that of the sun. They praise Ptolemy,
admire Copernicus, but place Aristarchus and Philolaus before him. They
take great pains in endeavoring to understand the construction of the
world, and whether or not it will perish, and at what time. They
believe that the true oracle of Jesus Christ is by the signs in the
sun, in the moon, and in the stars, which signs do not thus appear to
many of us foolish ones. Therefore they wait for the renewing of the
age, and perchance for its end.
They say that it is very doubtful whether the world was made from
nothing, or from the ruins of other worlds, or from chaos, but they
certainly think that it was made, and did not exist from eternity.
Therefore they disbelieve in Aristotle, whom they consider a logican
and not a philosopher. From analogies, they can draw many arguments
against the eternity of the world. The sun and the stars they, so to
speak, regard as the living representatives and signs of God, as the
temples and holy living altars, and they honor but do not worship them.
Beyond all other things they venerate the sun, but they consider no
created thing worthy the adoration of worship. This they give to God
alone, and thus they serve Him, that they may not come into the power
of a tyrant and fall into misery by undergoing punishment by creatures
of revenge. They contemplate and know God under the image of the Sun,
and they call it the sign
CISCO
350-030
of God, His face and living image, by means
of which light, heat, life, and the making of all things good and bad
proceed. Therefore they have built an altar like to the sun in shape,
and the priests praise God in the sun and in the stars, as it were His
altars, and in the heavens, His temple as it were; and they pray to
good angels, who are, so to speak, the intercessors living in the
stars, their strong abodes. For God long since set signs of their
beauty in heaven, and of His glory in the sun. They say there is but
one heaven, and that the planets move and rise of themselves when they
approach the sun or are in conjunction with it.
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