this humor are perfectly useless in all respects: for whatever yields no fruit, but passes, and is no more, like the way of a ship in the sea, was by the ancients consecrated to the infernal shades and powers.
V.—THE RIVER STYX, OR LEAGUES. EXPLAINED OF NECESSITY, IN THE OATHS OR SOLEMN LEAGUES OF PRINCES.
The only solemn oath, by which the gods irrevocably obliged themselves, is a well known thing, and makes a part of many ancient fables. To this oath they did not invoke any celestial divinity, or divine attribute, but only called to witness the River Styx, which, with many meanders, surrounds the infernal court of Dis. For this form alone, and none but this, was held inviolable and obligatory; and the punishment of falsifying it, was that dreaded one of being excluded, for a certain number of years, the table of the gods.
Explanation.—This fable seems invented to show the nature of the compacts and confederacies of princes; which, though ever so solemnly and religiously sworn to, prove but little the