Godfrey Of Viterbo Speaks Of Them In His Rhyming Verses:
-
"Finibus Indorum species fuit una virorum;
Goth erat atque Magoth dictum cognomen eorum
* * * * *
Narrat Esias, Isidorus et Apocalypsis,
Tangit et in titulis Magna Sibylla suis.
Patribus ipsorum tumulus fuit venter eorum," etc.
Among the questions that the Jews are said to have put, in order to test
Mahommed's prophetic character, was one series: "Who are Gog and Magog?
Where do they dwell? What sort of rampart did Zu'lkarnain build between
them and men?" And in the Koran we find (ch. xviii. The Cavern): "They
will question thee, O Mahommed, regarding Zu'lkarnain. Reply: I will tell
you his history" - and then follows the story of the erection of the
Rampart of Yajuj and Majuj. In ch. xxi. again there is an allusion to
their expected issue at the latter day. This last expectation was one of
very old date. Thus the Cosmography of Aethicus, a work long believed
(though erroneously) to have been abridged by St. Jerome, and therefore to
be as old at least as the 4th century, says that the Turks of the race of
Gog and Magog, a polluted nation, eating human flesh and feeding on all
abominations, never washing, and never using wine, salt, nor wheat, shall
come forth in the Day of Antichrist from where they lie shut up behind the
Caspian Gates, and make horrid devastation. No wonder that the irruption
of the Tartars into Europe, heard of at first with almost as much
astonishment as such an event would produce now, was connected with this
prophetic legend![1] The Emperor Frederic II., writing to Henry III.
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