Читать книгу The Seven Sisters of Sleep. Popular History of the Seven Prevailing Narcotics of the World онлайн

2 страница из 77

Thus much chroniclers narrate of the seven sleepers of Ephesus. All are not agreed as to the place where this extraordinary event occurred. It has been assigned also to the “mountain of the seven sleepers,” near Tersous. It may have been claimed by the citizens of twenty other ancient cities, for aught we can tell: Faith removes mountains. But the number remains intact. Mahomet wrote of seven heavens—no Mahometan takes the trouble to believe in less. The “wise men were but seven;” there were seven poets of the age of Theocritus; seven of the daughters of Pleione elevated to the back of Taurus; and

“There were seven pillars of gothic mould,

In Chillon’s dungeon, dark and old;”

and wherefore not seven sleepers at Ephesus or Tersous; or seven sisters of

“Nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep?”

Although not to be found in Livy, or Hesiod, or Ovid, or any of the fathers of history or fable, there is a legend of the latter seven, which may be considered in the light of an abstract of title of certain seven sisters, to be included in the list of immortal sevens who have honoured the earth by making it their abode.