Jupiter Ammon

“ And for these reasons we should prefer to endure all manner of suffering rather than acknowledge Jupiter to be God. For we do not consider Jupiter and Sabaoth to be the same, nor Jupiter to be at all divine, but that some demon, unfriendly to men and to the true God, rejoices under this title. [990] And although the Egyptians were to hold Ammon before us under threat of death, we would rather die than address him as God, it being a name used in all probability in certain Egyptian incantations in which this demon is invoked. ”

“ He is sometimes represented with the upper parts of his body naked, and those below the waist carefully covered, as if to show that he is visible to the gods above, but that he is concealed from the sight of the inhabitants of the earth. Jupiter had several oracles, the most celebrated of which were at Dodona, and Ammon, in Libya. As Jupiter was the king and father of gods and men, his power was extended over the deities, and everything was subservient to his will, except the Fates. ”

“ The people in Phazania, Nasamonitis, and Garamantica, are connected with Pisces and Jupiter, and are accordingly frank and simple in manners, fond of employment, well disposed, fond of the decencies of life, and, for the most part, free and unrestrained in their actions: they worship Jupiter by the name of Ammon.
The other parts of this quadrant, which lies near the middle of the entire earth, are Cyrenaica, Marmarica, Ægypt, Thebais, Oasis, Troglodytica, Arabia, Azania, and Middle Æthiopia. ”

“ Jupiter was worshipped with great solemnity under various names by most of the heathen nations. The Africans called him Ammon; the Babylonians, Belus; and the Egyptians, Osiris (see Jove) . He was represented as a majestic personage seated on a throne, holding in his hands a sceptre and a thunderbolt ”

“ Ovid was so far from paying a blind Deference to the venerable Name of his Grecian Predecessor, in the Character of his Gods; that when Jupiter punishes Andromeda for the Crimes of her Mother, he calls him injustus Ammon, Met. B. 4. and takes commonly an honourable care of the Decorum of the Godhead, when their Actions are consistent with the Divinity of their Character. His Allegories include some Religious, or instructive Moral, wrap'd up in a peculiar Perspicuity. ”

“ This prince was so much in the admiration of all men, not only after he had done so great things, but even at his first setting out, that it was a question whether it were not more [259] reasonable to ascribe the divine original of so great a man immediately to Jupiter himself, rather than mediately to the same god by the Æacidæ and Hercules.
When he went himself to visit the temple of Ammon in Libya, nothing less would content him than to be called his son, as we shall shew in the sequel. ”

“ In mortal fear lest this terror-inspiring monster would pursue them, the gods there assumed the forms of different animals; and Jupiter became a ram, while Juno, his sister and queen, changed herself into a cow.
The king of the gods, however, soon became ashamed of his cowardly flight, and resolved to return to Mount Olympus to slay Typhœus with his terrible thunderbolts. A long and fierce struggle ensued, at the end of which, Jupiter, again victorious, viewed his fallen foe with boundless pride ”

“ Yea, I believe that he created all things which are in the earth; but I do not know the heavens.
30 And Ammon said unto him: The heavens is a place where God dwells and all his holy angels.
31 And king Lamoni said: Is it above the earth?
32 And Ammon said: Yea, and he looketh down upon all the children of men; and he knows all the thoughts and intents of the heart; for by his hand were they all created from the beginning.
33 And king Lamoni said: I believe all these things which thou hast spoken. Art thou sent from God?
34 Ammon said unto him: I am a man ”

“ Seizing heavy clubs, a number of the Lamanites rushed at Ammon to kill him; but he was too smart for them. He grasped his sword and melded it with such skill that he slew their leader and also cut an arm off every man who raised his club against him. The rest fled in terror. Then Ammon returned, and, with his companions, attended to the watering of their master's flocks.
When King Lamoni heard what Ammon had done he was greatly astonished and exclaimed, "This is the Great Spirit, and he has come down at this time to preserve your lives, that I might not slay you as I did your brethren." ”

“ Many a one under the name of a God has invaded a chaste bed. Nor yet is it enough that he is Jupiter; let him, if, indeed, he is the real one, give some pledge of his affection; and beg of him to bestow his caresses on thee, just in the greatness and form in which he is received by the stately Juno; and let him first assume his ensigns of royalty.” With such words did Juno tutor the unsuspecting daughter of Cadmus. She requested of Jupiter a favor, without naming it. ”

“ M. Bonpland and myself, during our second residence at Cumana, after having observed on the twenty-sixth of September, 1800, the immersion of the first satellite of Jupiter, succeeded in seeing the planet distinctly with the naked eye, eighteen minutes after the disk of the sun had appeared in the horizon. There was a very slight vapor in the east, but Jupiter appeared on an azure sky. These facts prove the extreme purity and transparency of the atmosphere under the torrid zone. The mass of diffused light is so much less, as the vapors are more perfectly dissolved. ”

“ Who to Ammon lifts his hands.
To the full of my endeavor,
With a willing heart forever,
I have acted unto you,
And to you, great God, I call;
For behold! now, Ammon, I,
In the midst of many peoples, all unknown,
Unnumbered as the sand,
Here I stand,
All alone;
There is no one at my side,
My warriors and chariots afeared,
Have deserted me, none heard
My voice, when to the cravens I, their king, for succor, cried. ”

“ But I find that Ammon's grace
Is better far to me
Than a million fighting men and ten thousand chariots be.
Yea, better than ten thousand, be they brother, be they son,
When with hearts that beat like one,
Together for to help me they are gathered in one place.
The might of men is nothing, it is Ammon who is lord,
What has happened here to me is according to your word,
And I will not now trangress your command;
But alone, as here I stand,
To you my cry I send,
Unto earth's extremest end,
Saying, 'Help me, father Ammon, against the Hittite horde."' ”

“ The ingots from his last hearth-heat were due to be removed from his soaking pits in a few minutes, and he could not let them over-stay their time. The life of a M.A.N., model 8M, was not an easy one. But then, he had known that when he had bequeathed his brain to the Company.
He was not sorry. Far better to build bases on the wind-torn surface of Jupiter than to lie in cold and eternal oblivion beneath the unheeding surface of Earth. And there was the longevity factor to be considered too. As a man, even if he had lived, he probably wouldn't have reached the age of ninety. ”

“ No astronomer ever seriously entertained the notion that there was such a system of attendants revolving around Jupiter until their existence had been demonstrated once and for all by the telescope of Galileo.
There can be no doubt that the moons of Jupiter are in themselves quite bright enough to be ordinarily seen by the unaided eye were it not for a single circumstance. They lie too close to the great planet. At first sight it might seem that the very fact that they are placed in the brilliant illumination which Jupiter radiates should rather tend to make them more easily discerned. ”

“ He was not mistaken in his previsions, for Semele, proud of having attracted the greatest among the gods, no longer offered any resistance, and consented to their union. Their love grew and prospered, and Jupiter came down from Olympus as often as possible to enjoy the society of his beloved. His frequent absences finally aroused Juno’s suspicions, and, as usual, she spared no pains to discover what powerful charm could draw him from her side. ”

“ But let us admit that, as is said, Jupiter has himself appointed against himself ways and means by which his own declared purposes might fittingly be opposed: are we also to believe that a deity of so great majesty was dragged down to earth, and, standing on a petty hillock with a mannikin, entered into a wrangling dispute? And what, I ask, was the charm which forced Jupiter to leave the all-important [1] direction of the universe, and appear at the bidding of mortals? ”

“ From time to time the belts themselves change in breadth, in colour, and complexity. Jupiter is emphatically the planet of change.
And such change means energy, especially energy in the form of heat. If Jupiter possessed no heat but that it derived from the Sun, it would be colder than Mars, and therefore an absolutely frozen globe. But these rushing winds and hurrying clouds are evidences of heat and activity—a native heat much above that of our Earth. While Mars is probably nearer to the Moon than to the Earth in its condition, Jupiter has probably more analogies with the Sun. ”

“ Never shall spear of grass or blade of corn show above the ground, never shall blossom or fruit appear on any tree, until my beloved daughter is brought back to me from the realm of Pluto."
Then indeed there was consternation on Olympus; for Jupiter did not wish to anger his brother, and yet, how could he let the earth continue to be barren? There was much consulting of the Fates, those three dread sisters whose decrees even Jupiter could not break, and finally Jupiter called Mercury to him, and said:
"Hasten to the lower world, and lead thence Proserpina, the daughter of Ceres. ”

“ After undergoing the vengeance of Juno, who unrelentingly pursued her, she gave birth to an infant on the banks of the Nile, and was restored by Jupiter to her natural shape.
All who seemed to be favoured by, or who favoured Jupiter, she persecuted with the utmost rigour: but when it is remembered what cause Juno had for her jealousy, and that her husband metamorphosed himself into a swan for Leda, into a shepherd for Mnemosyne, into a shower of gold for Danae, and into a bull for Europa, she may easily be pardoned her restless spirit. ”

“ When he is full of the Deity, and possessed, as it were, by the Muses, if he has a mind to put winged horses {25a} to his chariot, and drive some through the waters, and others over the tops of unbending corn, there is no offence taken. Neither, if his Jupiter {25b} hangs the earth and sea at the end of a chain, are we afraid that it should break and destroy us all. If he wants to extol Agamemnon, who shall forbid his bestowing on him the head and eyes of Jupiter, the breast of his brother Neptune, and the belt of Mars? The son of Atreus and Ærope must be a composition of all the gods ”

“ The first vessel to reach Mars proved the astronomers right. Now a few crack-brained theorists are trying to convince us that Jupiter may be a solid, cool world."
Joan turned, and frowned at me. "You're letting a few clouds scare you, Richard," she said. "No man on Earth knows what's under the mist envelope of Jupiter."
"A few clouds," I retorted. "You know darned well that Jupiter's gaseous envelope is forty thousand miles thick—a seething cauldron of heavy gases and pressure drifts rotating at variance with the planet's crust."
"But Ganymede is mist-enshrouded too," scoffed Joan. ”

“ Little used to controversy, much less to direct opposition, the king was not softened by Ammon's interference. Savagely he turned upon him, but youth, strength, dexterity, and above all the protecting care of the Lord, were with Ammon, and he struck the king's sword arm so heavy a blow that it fell useless at his side. Realizing he was now in the power of the man he had so foully abused, he made abundant promises, even to half his kingdom, if his life were spared. This boon Ammon immediately granted, asking only favors for Lamoni and his own imprisoned brethren. ”

“ No other Olympian deity, but Juno, stands invested with a similar honour. We sometimes find the aerial powers of Jupiter wielded by her hand. But, with the exception of the sort of precedence accorded to her on Olympus, in virtue of which the gods rise from their seats when she enters their company, there is no one of the gifts that she exercises, which would not appear to lie within the range of the offices of Minerva, if not also of Apollo. ”

“ It may not be improper to remark, that over the rougher winds the poets have placed Æŏlus; over the milder, Juno; and the rain, thunder and lightning they have committed to Jupiter himself.
MOMUS, son of Somnus and Nox, was the god of pleasantry and wit, or rather the jester of the celestial assembly; for, like other monarchs, it was but reasonable that Jupiter too should have his fool. We have an instance of Momus's fantastic humor in the contest between Neptune, Minerva, and Vulcan, for skill. The first had made a bull, the second a house, and the third a man. ”

“ The gods themselves grieved to see the champion of the earth so brought to his end. But Jupiter took care that only his mother's part in him should perish by the flames. The immortal element, derived from Jupiter himself, was translated to heaven; and by the consent of the gods—even of reluctant Juno—Hercules was admitted as a deity to the ranks of the immortals. The white-armed queen of heaven was finally reconciled to the offspring of Alcmene. ”

“ The other Gods who were not better inclined towards the human race than Momus, did all they could to persuade the son of Saturn to extirpate mankind, alleging, that they were useless beings, for whom the Gods had no manner of occasion. Others, not so violent, thinking they gave admirable{104} advice, recommended Jupiter to reduce such as had been culpable into dust again, and create others more perfect in their place, which would be an easy matter for him to do ”