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THE
PANTHEON:
OB
ANCIENT HISTORY
OF
THE GODS
Of
GREECE AND ROME.
FOR THE USE OF SCHOOLS,
AND YOUNG PERSONS OF BOTH SEXES.
BY EDWARD BALDWIN, ESQ. v
THE FOURTH EDITION.
The purpose of this book is to place the Heathen Mytholoirv in
two points of view: first, as it would have struck a Traveller
in Greece who wished to form a just conception of the Reli
gion of the country, free from either favour or prejudice '
secondly regarding Mythology as the introduction and hand-'
niajd to the study of Poetry, the author has endeavoured to
^VfeeStootnerl6 "
P~- - - ~ice

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR M. J. GODWIN,

.IT THE JUVENILE LIBBARY, WO. 41, SKINNEB SIet,,;
AND TO BE HAB OP ALL aoOKSELLEKS.
1814.

193

tondon t Piinted by II. M*Millan, 2

i>ow Street, Covent Garden, y

TO THB
REV. MATTHEW RAINE, D.D.
MASTEIl OFTHE CHARTER-HOUSE SCHOOL.

SIR,
AS the book [commonly known by
the name of Tooke's Pantheon] the imper
fections of which it is the object of this vo
lume to remedy, was published about one
hundred years ago by one of the Masters
of the Charter-House School, nothing ap
peared to me more obvious and natural than
to address the present essay to you. But
though this consideration unavoidably sug
gested itself, I should not have proceeded
to carry it into act, were it not for the per
sonal respect I entertain for your learning,
your dispositions, and your character. I
doubt not from the equity of your mind
that, if it should appear to you upon ex-

iv

DEDICATION.

amination, that I have effected my purpose,

and produced a book well calculated to
prepare young persons for understanding
and relishing the compositions of the anci
ent poets, you will honour my pages with
your sanction and approbation.
I am, Sir,
with sincere respect,
jour most obedient servant,
EDWARD BALDWIN.

PREFACE.

IT is universally confessed that of all systems of my*

thology and religion, that of the Greeks is the most ad
mirably adapted to the purposes of poetry. The " elegant
forms and agreeable fictions," as Mr. Gibbon so justly
styles them, which this scheme of things exhibit, soothes
the imagination and feeds the curiosity of the reader with
endless variety. The multitude of the Gods of the Greeks,
however it might be calculated to shock the reasoning
faca\ty if regarded as an object of faith, suits wonderfully
the demands of the composer in verse, and from the
majestic presence of Jupiter, to the Dryad of the oak,
and the N^mph of the neighbouring fountain, supplies
him on all sides with forms and agents to be brought
forward at his convenience. They appear to have been
scarcely ever contemplated with those deep emotions
which render the mind incapable of yielding to the flights
of fancy at the same time that, as partaking of the
seriousness and magnificence of a polished religion, they
were in no danger of ranking among the unsubstantial
creations of a fairy region.
It was naturally to have been expected that a book
containing the elements of this system, would have
proved one of the most agreeable presents that could be
put into the hands of youth. This has not been the case.
The dulness of the compilers in some instances, and, still
more extraordinary, their malice in others, have com
bined to place Pantheons and Histories of the Heathen
Gods among the most repulsive articles of the juvenile
library. The book in particular, written in Latin by the
Jesuit Pomey, and known among us by the name of
Tooke, contains in every page an elaborate calumny upon
the Gods of the Greeks, and that in the coarsest thoughts

PREFACE.

and words that rancourcould furnish. The author seems

continually haunted by the fear that hispupil might prefer
the religion of Jupiter to the religion of Christ.
In writing this little volume I own I have been im
pressed with no such fear. We have a religion in which
" life and immortality are brought to light," and which
inculcates the sublime lessons of the unity of God, and
the love we should bear to " onr neighbours as our
selves." This religion fears no comparison with the my
thology of ancient Greece. It looks something like blas
phemy for a Christian to think it necessary to the cause
in which he is engaged, to inveigh against the amours of
Jupiter, and to revive all the libels of the ancient Fathers
against the religion of the government under which they
lived. I felt no apprehension, that while I vindicated the
Heathen mythology from misinterpretation, and endea
voured to conciliate the favour of young persons to the
fictions of the Greeks, 1 should risk the seducing one
votary from the cross of Christ.
But while I suffered no apprehension on this side, I
conceived I had a duty to perform to the other. The
office of the writer of such a book as this, is to prepare
his young readers to admire and to enjoy the immortal
productions of Homer, Horace and Virgil. There is no
absolute necessity that these productions should be read
at all ; and it is quite absurd to set young persons upon
the perusal of them, unless it be to improve their taste,
and unless they are to be regarded as perpetual models in
the art of fine writing. I am anxious therefore that every
one who reads this book should draw from the perusal of
it, not an aversion and contempt for the fictions of Greece
and Rome, but an eager anticipation of their beauties,
and a frame of mind prepared to receive the most agree
able emotions.
Nor could there indeed be any occasion to exaggerate
the licentiousness of the Grecian inventors. It has long
been a complaint, that books detailing the History of the
Heathen Gods abounded with ideas and pictures by no
means proper to be presented to the juvenile mind. Par

PREFACE.

vii

ticular attention has been given to thatarticle in the com

position of this volume. It is expressly written for the
use of young persons of both sexes, and I confidently
trust that nothing will be found in it, to administer liber
tinism to the fancy of the stripling, or to sully the white
ness of mind of the purest virgin.
Another circumstance equally called upon me for exer
tion and diligence. The Gods of the Greeks are rec
koned to amount to no fewer than thirty thousand. It is
not much to be wondered at, that in discussing so mul
tifarious a polytheism, the writers who have hitherto em
ployed themselves in composing manuals oh the subject
have produced nothing but disorder and confusion. No
person in reading these books could collect any distinct
and well-ordered idea of the hierarchy of Heaven; and
accordingly men in other respects no contemptible scho
lars, will often be found deficient in just notions on this
point. I have set myself with some assiduity to disem
broil this chaos; and though I have by no means done it
in all instances to my satisfaction, yet I think it will be
acknowledged that some success has attended my en
deavours.
Anxious to take away from the subject the dry and pe
dantic air which has usually characterised books of this
sort, I have further endeavoured to make my narrative as
simple and direct as possible. I have not been forward
to collate the glosses of different commentators, and to
bring together the discordant genealogies which by one
writer or another have been exhibited in so doubtful a
subject. This ambiguity has been carried the farther by
my predecessors, from the improper use they have made of
Cicero's Books on the Nature of the Gods. That great
Roman has put into the mouth of Cotta, the Sceptic in
his Dialogue, all the inconsistencies, real or specious,
that could be raked together as accusations against the es
tablished religion : no orthodox believer would ever have
talked as he does, of three Jupiters, five Mercuries, and
six Demigods of the name of Hercules ; nor is this to be
admitted as a fair and impartial statement of the Grecian

viii

PREFACE.

religion. It is not the object of this book to make its

young reader an adept in all the distinctions and contro
versies of mythology; I shall hare more effectually suc
ceeded in my design, if I leave upon his recollection a
grand picture of the system of the fabulous Gods, and a
bold outline of the properties and adventures attributed
to each.
Different writers both in France and England have un
dertaken to show, that the whole system of the Grecian my
thology is allegorical, and that, however its inventors and
teachers accommodated themselves to the vulgar appre
hension by a multiplication of their Gods, and assigning
to every province and energy of nature its separate Deity,
the true sense was not the less carefully explained to the
refined and the liberal; the real object being nothing more
than a mystical, but pure and just, representation of the
attributes of the Father of the Universe. With this dis
quisition the present work has no strict concern. Such
enquiries belong rather to philosophy, than poetry. It
was no part of my purpose (the purpose of presenting an
introduction to the study of the poets), to strip the Gre
cian religion of its beautiful forms, and present it in the
nakedness of metaphysical truth ; it was rather incum
bent upon me to draw out those forms in their utmost so
lidity and permanence, and " give to airy nothing a local
habitation" and substantial character.
The uses of the study of ancient mythology are, 1. to
enable young persons to understand the system of the
poets of former times, as well as the allusions so often to
be found interspersed in writers of a more recent date :
2. as a collection of the most agreeable fables that ever
were invented, it is admirably calculated to awaken the
imagination ; imagination, which it cannot be too often
repeated, is the great engine of morality: 3. it presents
us with an instructive lesson on the nature of the human
mind, laying before us the manners and prejudices of a
nation extremely different from our own, and showing us
to what
and fantastic notions of the invisible
world the mind, once bewildered in error, may finally
be led.

CONTENTS.

Chap. I. Introduction,
Chat. II. Genius of the Grecian Religion.Of 1
Abstraction,
J
Chap. III. Of Allegory.Historical Origin of 1
the Gods of the Greeks,
J

TAOt
1
3
y

Chap. IV. Of the Term God.Of Worship, 1

Temples, Sacrifices, Altars and Priests, .... J
Chap. V. Of the Religious Ceremonies of the \
Athenians,
X
Chap. VI. Of the more Ancient Gods,
Chap. VII. War of the Titans,

32
36

Chap. VIII. Of the Twelve Superior Gods,

40

Chap. IX. War of the Giants,

Chap. X. Of the Family of Iapetus, and the 1
Creation of Man,
J
Chap. XI. Of the Rural Deities,

69
_4

Chap. XII. Of the Domestic Deities,

98

81

Chap. XIII. Of Monsters,

105
Chap. XIV. Of the Gods of the Sea and the \
Winds,
J
Chap. XV. Of the Gods of Hell,
119

CONTENTS.
PAGE

Chap. XVI. Of the Gods Representative of the '1

Faculties and Conceptions of the Mind, .. J
Chap. XVII. Of Demigods,
Chap. XVIII. Of Bacchus, God of 'Wine,
Chap. XIX. Of Minos and the Minotaur,
Chap. XX. Of Bellerophon and Chimaera, ....

159
172
186
192

Chap.
Chap.
Ch ap.
Chap.
Chap.
Chap.

195
200
205
215
232
242

XXI. Of Perseus and Medusa,

XXII. Of the Family of Tantalus, ..
XXIII. Loves of the Gods,
XXIV. Of Hercules,
XXV. Of the Argonautic Expedition, . .
XXVI. Of the Argonauts,

Chap. XXVII. Of Theseus,

250
Chap. XXVIII. Of CEdipus King of Thebes, 1
and his Posterityj
/
Chap. XXIX. Of tlie City of Troy,
265
Chap. XXX. Of Romulus,
277

THE
PANTHEON.

CHAP, a*?

Statues of the GreekfiVVenus de Medicis, Apollo Belvidere, and Hercnle^ Farnese. Jupiter of Phidias.
Grecian Games.Beautiful Forms of the Greeks.
Pantheon at Rome.
* i
ONE reason why the Gods of the Greeks are so
interesting to us, is that the Greeks were the
finest writers in the world; and they have said
such fine things about their Gods, that nobody
who is acquainted with their writings, can recol
lect these imaginary beings without emotions of
pleasure.
The Greeks are also supposed to have been the
finest statuaries and painters that ever existed:
none of their pictures, and few of their statues,
have come down to us: but those we have, arc
the wonder and admiration of every body that
understands in what the highest excellence of the
human form, and the imitations of the human
form, consists: for all the Gods of the Greeks
were represented under the forms of men; whatE

STATUES OF THE GREEKS.

ever of majestic, or beautiful, or powerful, the

Greek artists could find in the figure of man, they
gave to the representations of their Gods.
The Venus de Medicis, the Apollo Belvidere,
and the Hercules Farnese are the finest statues
now existing: every thing that is enchanting in
the beauty of a woman, or noble and prepossess
ing in the figure of a young man, or muscular
and robust in the figure of a man who looks as if
he could put an end to a lion with a blow of his
fist, is comprehended in these three statues: the
surnames by which they are called, they have
received from the noble families or palaces of
modern Italy, by whom or in which they have
been preserved.
The Greeks admired more than all the rest the
Jupiter which was carved by Phidias: this statue
no longer exists: there was something so awful,
so venerable, so more than any thing that you
could conceive ever to have belonged to a man,
in the figure and countenance of this statue, that
you could scarcely look at it without exclaiming,
" This indeed is a God!"
One of the reasons why the Greeks excelled all
other nations in their representations of the hu
man figure, is that they were probably the finest
race of men that ever existed: this they owed in
part to a famous institution among them known
by the name of the Grecian games: these games
consisted in wrestling, running, boxing, throw
ing the quoit, and other trials of skill: in con
sequence of the fineness 'of their climate, they
practised these games for the most part naked:
they rubbed themselves with oil, that they might
render their limbs supple and pliant: they
plunged in rivers and seas, that they might brace

STATUE* OP THE GREEKS.

(heir muscles: the garments they wore had no

ligatures to compress and destroy the strength and
grace and free play of the muscles; while modern
nations, by garters, and buckles, and waisthands,
and kneebands, and wristbands, and collars, and
fifty barbarous contrivances, are continually spoiling the flowing and active forms with which
nature has endowed us: it is not a hundred years
ago, since a child, as soon as it came into the
world, was swaddled and swathed and pinched
with I know not how many yards of broad, strong
binding, so that he could scarcely move a limb
or a muscle of his whole body: it is not fifty
years ago, since women, what they called, laced
for a shape: that is, tried to be in figure as
near as possible like a wasp, the two parts of the
body of which are joined together as it were by
a thread.
It is not wonderful that the Greek artists, who
every day beheld their countrymen naked, and
whose countrymen employed such powerful
means for improving the freedom and strength of
their limbs, should have excelled much more in
the manufacture of statues than we do.
It is not wonderful, since the Greek artists
made such exquisite statues, and the Greek poets,
Homer and others, have written such fine things
about their Gods, that a learned man cannot re
collect the Greek mythology, without the most
delicious and animated emotions.
I wish I could lead you into the Pantheon at
Rome: I mean such as it was in the times of the
Grecian religion, for (he walls of the buildiug
still exist: the Gods of the Romans were the
same as of the Greeks : the Pantheon was a ro
tunda, one hundred and sixty feet in diameter,
b2

4;

STATUES OP THE GREEKS.

and the same in height; it had no light but what

it received from a circular aperture in the middle
of the vaulted roof: the rafters were brass; the
front of brass gilt : the roof of silver ; and the in
side marble: this temple was dedicated to all the
Gods, and contained in its circumference the sta
tues of them all: if you could see it as it was in
the time of the emperor Augustus, you would
then see the Grecian religion in all its glory.

CHAP. II.
GENIUS OF THE GRECIAN RELIGION.
OF ABSTRACTION.
The Religion of the Greeks gives Sense and Life to Ina
nimate Objects.Personifies Abstractions.Nature
of Abstraction explained.
Another cause of the agreeable nature of
the Grecian religion was that it gave animation
and life to all existence: it had its Naiads, Gods
of the rivers, its Tritons and Nereids, Gods of
the seas, its Satyrs, Fauns and Dryads, Gods of
the woods and the trees, and its Boreas, Eurus,
Auster and Zephyr, Gods of the winds.
The most important of the senses of the human
body are seeing and hearing : we love, as Pope
says, to " see God in clouds, and hear him in
the wind :" it is a delightful thing to take a walk
in fields, and look at the skies and the trees and
the corn-fields and the waving grass, to observe
the mountains and the lakes and the rivers and
the seas, to smell the new-mown hay, to inhale
the fresh and balmy breeze, and to hear the wild
warbling of the birds : but a man does not enjoy
these in their most perfect degree of pleasure, till
his imagination becomes a little visionary: the
human mind does not love a landscape without
life and without a soul: we arc delighted to talk
to the objects around us, and to feel as if they un
derstood and sympathised with us: we create,
by the power of fancy, a human form and a hu_ o

ABSTRACTION EXPLAINED.

man voice in those scenes, which to a man of

literal understanding appear dead and senseless.
One further source of the agreeable nature of
the Grecian /religion was, that it not only gave
sense and life to all inanimate objects; it also
personified abstractions.
Abstraction is a very curious operation of the
human mind, and well worthy of consideration:
we call the people about us by names, John Wil
liams, George Brown, David Smith, and the
animals with which we are familiar, as Pompey,
Tray, Carlo, Fidelle, Bijou: there is nothing
abstract in that.
But we have other names, not suited to a single
individual, but to all individuals of the same
nature, as man, woman, boy, girl, dog, horse,
rabbit, partridge : this is the beginning of ab
straction: when I say man, I do not mean a tall
man, or a short man, a fat man, or a thin man,
a negro, or a European: now there never was a
man, who was neither tall nor short, nor fat, nor
thin, nor black, nor white: yet a child, when
he is familiar with the word, knows very well
how to apply it to all the different sorts of men
he sees, and is in no danger of applying it to a
cow, a horse, or a bird.
There is another sort of abstraction more re
fined than this, as in the words grief, fear, war,
peace, life, death, 8fc.: these words are descrip
tive of nothing that has form or colour: yet they
are words -of very convenient use, and greatly
help us in reasoning and conversation.
Poetry affects the passions of those who read it,
much more than prose does: for this plain rea
son, that poetry deals chiefly in images drawn
from the sight, the hearing, and the other senses :

BEAUTY DF THE GREEK RELIGION'.

children love to read stories ; for when they read

of " a little girl with a Red Riding- Hood, who
carried her grand-mamma a custard, and was
then eaten up by a wolf, that put on her grand
mamma's clothes, and got into her bed," they
read what they very well understand : it is all as
clear as the day : but, if you set them down to a
book of moral philosophy or political science, to
Locke on Human Understanding, or Montes
quieu's Spirit of Laws, they can make nothing of
it; the words that occur are all abstractions.
" Men are but children of a larger growth :"
they never entirely lose the qualities that distin
guish them in early life : they have more patience
than children ; their understandings are im
proved by books of moral philosophy or poli
tical science; but their passions and feelings are
most powerfully affected by tales, histories and
poetry; it is this love of having things actually
presented before them, that leads people to plays,
processions, and galleries of pictures.
Let us see what we were talking about: " one
cause of the agreeable nature of the Grecian relifion is, that it personifies abstractions:" Fate,
(estiny, Fury, Comedy, Tragedy, History, are
abstractions to us, but were real persons with
them: in fact, not only the inferior Gods stood
for abstract qualities or events, but many of the
superior Gods also: Mars was War, Minerva
Wisdom, Venus Beauty, &c: it is in this sense
that Homer1 introduces Minerva, that is, Wis
dom or Prudence, as coming to check Achil
les, when he was on the point of drawing his
* Iliad, a. 194.
B4

BEAUTY OF THE GREEK RELIGION.

sword in a fit of rage at the council-table of the

Greeks.
The language of the Greeks was the language
of poetry : every thing with them was alive : a
man could not walk out in the fields, without
being in the presence of the Naiads, the Dryads,
and the Fauns: he could not sit by his hearth,
without feeling himself protected by his Houshold Gods : he could not be married, but Hymen
marshalled him to the ceremony with his torch
and saffron robe: he could not die, but the Fates
cut the thread of his life which themselves had
spun : a nation could not go to war, but Mars
and Bellona led them on to the fight.
The religion of the Greeks is perished and gone
away for ever : we have a religion of the sublimest
wisdom and the most elevated morality in the
room of these fables : yet it is agreeable to know
them, for they are at least full of beauty; and
without this knowledge we shall never understand
the finest writers in the world,

CHAP. III.
of allegory.Historical origin of
the gods of the greeks.
There are two things the consideration of
which is necessary to the understanding the reli
gion of the Greeks.
The first of these is allegory, that is, the per
sonifying, or giving visible forms to, abstract
ideas: a great part of the Grecian religion is of
the nature of allegory : thus, when Homer intro
duces Minerva as checking the sudden rage of
Achilles, he may very well be understood as
meaning that the Wisdom or Prudence of Achilles's own mind on second thoughts produced this
effect.
Allegory cannot be better understood than by
an example : I will therefore present you here
with one of the prettiest allegories in the world,
the Vision of Mirza, an Eastern sage, written by
Addison.
On the fifth day of the moon, which according to the
custom ofmy forefathers I always kept holy, after having
washed myself, and offered up my morning devotions, I
ascended the high hills of Bagdad, in order to pass the
rest of the day in meditation and prayer. As I was here
airing myselfon the tops of the mountains, I fell into a
profound contemplation on the vanity of human life; and
passing from one thought to another, Surely, said I,
man is but a shadow, and life a dream. Whilst I was
thus musing, I cast my eyes towards the summit of a
rock that was not far from me, where I discovered one
B .5

10

ALLEGORY.

in the habit of a shepherd, with a little musical instru

ment in his hand. As I looked upon him he applied it
to his lips and began to play upon it. The sound of it
was exceeding sweet, and wrought into a variety of tunes
that were inexpressibly melodious, and altogether diffe
rent from any thing I had ever heard: My heart melted
away in secret raptures.
I had been often told that the rock before me was the
haunt of a genius; and that several had been entertained
with music, who had passed by it, but never heard that
the musician had before made himself visible. When he
had raised my thoughts by those transporting airs which
he played, to taste the pleasures of his conversation, as
I looked upon him like one astonished, he beckoned to
me, and by the waving of his hand, directed n;e to ap
proach the place where he sat. 1 drew near with that
reverence which is due to a superior nature; and as my
heart was entirely subdued by the captivating strains I
had heard, I fell down at his feet and wept. The genius
smiled upon mc with a look of compassion and affability
that familiarized him to my imagination, and at once
dispelled all the fears and apprehensions with which I
approached him. He lifted me from the ground,, and
taking me by the hand, Mirza, said he, I have heard
thee in thy soliloquies; follow me.
He then led me to the highest pinnacle of the rock,
and placing me on the top of it, Cast thy eyes eastward,
said he, and tell me what thou seest. I see, said I, a
huge valley, and a prodigious tide of water rollingthrough
it. The valley that thou seest, said he, is the vale of
misery, and the tide of water that thou seest is part of the
great tide of eternity. What is the reason, said I, that
the tide I see rises out of a thick mist at one end, and
again loses itself in a thick mist at the other'! What thou
seest, said he, is that portion of eternity which is called
time, measured out by the sun, and reaching from the
beginning of the world to its consummation. Examine
now, said he, this sea that is thus bounded with darkness
at both ends, and tell me what thoudiscoverest in it. I see

ALLEGORY.

11

a bridge, said I, standing in the midst of the tide. The

bridge thou seest, said he, is human life, consider it atten
tively. Upon a more leisurely survey of it, I found that
it consisted of threescore and ten entire arches, with se
veral broken arches which, added to those that were en
tire, made up the number about an hundred. As I was
counting the arches, the genius told me that this bridge
consisted at first of a thousand arches: but that a great
flood swept away the rest, and left the bridge in the rui
nous condition I now beheld it: but tell me further, said
he, what thou discoverest on it. I see multitudes of
people passing over it, said I, and a black cloud hanging
on each end of it. As I looked more attentively, I saw
several of the passengers dropping through the bridge,
into the great tide that flowed underneath it; and upon
further examination, perceived there were innumerable
trap-doors that lay concealed in the bridge, which the
passengers no sooner trod upon, but they fell through
them into the tide and immediately disappeared. These
hidden pitfalls were set very thick at the entrance of the
bridge, so that throngs of people no sooner broke the
cloud but many of them fell into them. They grew
thinner towards the middle, but multiplied and lay closer
together towards the end of the arches that were entire.
There were indeed some persons, but their number
was very small, that continued a kind of hobbling march
on the broken arches, but fell through one after another, *
being quite tired and spent with so long a walk.
I passed some time in the contemplation of this won
derful structure, and the great variety of objects which
it presented. My heart was filled with a deep melan
choly to see several dropping unexpectedly in the midst
of mirth and jollity, and catching at every thing that
stood by them to save themselves. Some Were looking
p towards the heavens in a thoughtful posture, and in
the midst of a speculation stumbled and fell out of sight.
Multitudes were very busy in the pursuit of bubbles that
glittered in their eyes and danced before them; but often
when they thought themselves within the reach of them

12

ALLEGORY.

their footing failed and down they sunk. In this confu

sion of objects, I observed some with scimitars in their
hands, and others with urinals, who ran to and fro upon
the bridge, thrusting several persons on trap-doors which
did not seem to lie in their way, and which they might
have escaped had they not been thus forced upon them.
The genius seeing me indulge myself in this melan
choly prospect, told me I had dwelt long enough upon
it: Take thine eyes off the bridge, said he, and tell me
if thou yet seest any thing thou dost not comprehend.
Upon looking up, What mean, said I, those great flights
of birds that are perpetually hovering about the bridge,
and settling upon it from time to time! I see vultures,
harpies, ravens, cormorants, and among many other fea
thered creatures several little winged boys, that perch in
great numbers upon the middle arches. These, said the
genius, are envy, avarice, superstition, despair, love,
with the like cares and passions that infest human life.
At length, said I, shew me now, I beseech thee, the
secrets that lie hid under those dark clouds which cover
the ocean on the other side beyond the end of the bridge.
The genius making me no answer, I turned about to
address myself to him a second time, but I found that
he had left nie; I then turned again to the vision which
I had been so long contemplating; but instead of the
rolling tide and the arched bridge, I saw nothing but
the long hollow valley of Bagdad, with oxen, sheep,
and camels grazing upon the sides of it.
A second thing, the consideration of which is
necessary to the right understanding of the reli
gion of the Greeks, is that their theogony, or the
generations of their Gods, is partly historical.
The oldest events in the history of nations are
for the most part fabulous; that is, the further
men go back in endeavouring to trace the remote
history of their national ancestors, the nearer
they arrive at times of ignorance and obscurity,

ORIGIN OF THE GRECIAN GODS.

13

respecting which nothing certain is known, and

whatever is related that is true, is still mixed with
fiction and fable.
Thus the history of our king Arthur, though
no doubt there were such persons as Arthur and
his counsellor Merlin, is for the most part fabu
lous: not to mention the history published by
Geoffrey of Monmouth, and borrowed by that
writer from some older source, which relates the
adventures of the kings of Britain, from Brito, or
Brutus, who is supposed to have come here from
the siege of Troy, no one of which kings ever
existed.
The ancient Greek history is more fabulous
than most others: what can we think of Deu- /
calionb, who, after a dreadful deluge, restored
the population of his country by throwing stones
over his shoulder, which turned into men ? or
of Cadmus0, who raised a crop of soldiers fully/
armed for combat, by sowing the earth with
dragon's teeth ? Just so, the history of the expe
dition of the Argonauts, and of the sieges of
Thebes and Troy is filled with miraculous and
impossible circumstances.
Exactly thus the history of the Gods of the
Greeks bears every mark of being the history of
persons who once were men, and who, being re
garded as the benefactors of mankind, were wor
shipped as Gods after their death : Bacchus, for
example, we know to have been an early con- /
ueror, who made a successful expedition into
ndia.
The Gods of the Greeks were not Greeks:
their history was imported from some other
k Ov. Met. lib. i. 411.

Ov. Met. lib. iii. 102.

14

ORIGIN OF THE GRECIAN GODS.

country, from which the Greeks probably derived

the first materials of their arts, their science, and
their traditions.
The Greeks seem however to have misrepre
sented and disfigured the history which was
handed down to them : they made Saturn an in
habitant of Italy, Jupiter of Crete, &c.

15

CHAP. IV.
OF THE TERM GODOF WORSHIP, TEMPLES,
SACRIFICES, ALTARS AND PRIESTS.
By the word God I need not tell you that
we understand a powerful being, whom we can
not see, but who nevertheless is continually in
terfering with our concerns, bestowing upon us
the various blessings of life, and sometimes pu
nishing us for our faults.
When the thoughts of men are turned to invi
sible beings who have power to benefit or hurt
them, they unavoidably become anxious to ob
tain their favour.
The opinion which different nations entertain
concerning the natures and characters of their
Gods, constitutes their Speculative Religion; the
means they employ to obtain the favour of these
beings, constitute their Practical Religion, or
Worship.
To obtain the favour of the Gods the Greeks
built Temples, or edifices to which they resorted
at stated times, when they designed to recollect
with reverence the characters and power of their
Gods.
In these Temples they placed Statues of the J
Gods, that by the sight of them their fancy
might be awakened, and their minds held atten
tive.
In these Temples they also offered Sacrifices,
that is, killed some of the most beautiful of their
animals, and presented the first fruits of the

16

WORSHIP, TEMPLES, ALTARS, &c.

earth, with costly gums and odours, in honour of

their Gods.
In the Temple, and ordinarily immediately be
fore the statue of the God, was placed an Altar,
that is, for the most part a square pillar of stone
of inconsiderable height, but much greater big
ness, upon the top of which they lighted a fire,
and there burned the fruits of the earth, and cer
tain parts of the animals they sacrificed, with
costly gums and odours.
For the due performances of these Sacrifices
there was a body of men set apart called Priests,
who were clothed in white and other appropriate
vestments, and were regarded by the people with
peculiar veneration.
Common readers lie under a great disadvantage
when they come to the history of the Gods of
Greece and Rome : in poems and songs, such as
are now wrilten, Mars and Venus, and dimpling
Cupids, and jolly Bacchus make so trivial a
figure, that it is with difficulty we can be brought
to think of them seriously, as the elements of a
national religion: Gods whose worship is obso>
lete, are like kings in exile, and excite very dif
ferent emotions from what they did when they
were carried in state, and surrounded with a regi
ment of guards.
That you may have a due conception of the
seriousness and sincerity of the religion of the
Greeks and Romans, it is proper I should tell
you that Machiavel, the famous Italian political
wriler, ascribes the long course of the Roman
prosperity in the first place to their religion, and
affirms that " for several ages the fear of God
was never more conspicuous than in that repub
lic:" and Cicero, the great Roman orator, gives

WORSHIP, TEMPLES, ALTARS, Ac.

17

it as bis opinion, that* " the Spaniards in num

bers, the Gauls in bodily strength, the Cartha
ginians in subtlety, and the Greeks in genius, 1/
had exceeded his countrymen; but that there was
one thing in which the Romans went beyond all
the nations of the earth, and that was, in piety,
and religion, and a deep and habitual persuasion
that all human concerns are regulated by the dis
posal and providence ofthe immortal Gods."
That the importance which the Greeks and
Romans annexed to their religion may be belter
understood, 1 will now give an account of this
religion as it was practised at Athens, the most
refined and elegant city that eyer existed.
* De Harutpicum Resp, 9>

18

CHAP. V.
OF THE RELIGIOUS CEREMONIES OF THE
ATHENIANS.
Their Temples described.Their Priests.Their Pray
ers, Hymns, and Sacrifices.Exercises of the Sta
dium : Running, Boxing, Wrestling, and Leaping.
Competitions in Music, Singing, and Dancing.Tra
gedy.The Three Annual Festivals of Athens.
The Mysteries.The Grecian Games.Divination.
The Sibyls.Oracles.Augurs and Aruspices,
As the statues by which the Greek sculptors
represented their Gods were the most beautiful
ever beheld, so the temples, or public buildings
in which these statues were placed and these Gods
worshipped, were not less worthy of admiration.
Of all the cities of Greece, Athens was that in
which the finest specimens were to be found of
Grecian statuary and Grecian architecture.
Minerva was the patron divinity of the Athe
nians : the citadel of Athens, otherwise called the
Parthenon, was her temple : the Propylaeum, or
grand entrance of the temple, was built of marble,
under the administration of Pericles, the greatest
of the Athenian statesmen, and cost a sum of mo
ney equal to four hundred thousand pounds : the
interior was filled with pictures, statues, bas re
liefs, altars, and trophies won by the Athenians
from their enemies : the most celebrated of the
statues was that of the Goddess by Phidias, which
was only surpassed by the statue of. Jupiter
Olympius by the same artist, that 1 have already

pa. 16.

I1IE1TA

V
*
,

TEMPLES OF THE ATHENIANS.

19

mentioned, and that was the great ornament of

the temple of Jupiter at Elis.
Another temple at Athens, only inferior in
beauty and grandeur to that of Minerva, was
rected to Theseus, an ancient hero, who may be
considered in a great measure as the founder of
the state : the temple of Ceres was enriched with
three fine statues by Praxiteles: that of Cybele
had a statue of the Goddess by Phidias : that of
Jupiter Eleutherius was ornamented with fine
paintings of the twelve principal Gods, and of
other subjects, by Euphranor: that of Venus had
a painting which was the master-piece of Zeuxis:
these were the most consummate statuaries and
painters the world ever saw : such, and many
more were the noble and splendid temples that
adorned the city of Athens.
The Greeks were not contented to enrich their
temples with a multitude of statues of the Gods :
they also erected statues in the streets and in all
public places : there was one considerable street in
particular in Athens, which was interspersed
through its whole length with statues of Hermes,
or Mercury, consisting of a head of the God rising
from a square pedestal: on the pedestal were
written, sometimes inscriptions describing a me
morable fact, and sometimes moral precepts for
the instruction and improvement of the people.
The priests of these temples made a consider
able part of what would have struck your sight,
if you could have walked through the streets of
Athens: in country-places sometimes there was
but one priest to a temple: but in Athens and
other great towns there were always four at least,
besides their attendants; the priests were distin
guished by their vestments, they had often a long

20

PRAYERS AND HYMNS.

beard, and they adorned their heads with fillets

and diadems: they made a venerable appearance.
The priests had apartments to live in, within
the verge of the temples to which they belonged ;
arid the temples were kept in repair, and the
priests maintained, either by landed estates set
apart for that purpose, or by a portion assigned
them of the fines imposed upon delinquents, and
of the spoils won from an enemy in war: the
priests of the most celebrated temples were chosen
from the sacred families of Athens, the Eu^nol^
pidae, the^CerVces, the Eteobutadae, and others.
On days of solemn festival the multitude was
immense that crowded to the temple of the God
whose honours were that day to be commemo
rated : they spread themselves about the different
porticos and approaches of the building : the
high-priest stood near the altar in magnificent
robes, and commanded silence: he asked, "Who
are the persons who compose this congregation ?"
they answered with one voice, " Good men and
true." " Join then," replied the priest, " in my
prayers!"
After prayer, they sang hymns : the choir of
the temple was well instructed in music, and the
words of the poet often so well seconded their
efforls, that the whole audience dissolved into
tears : at other times the hymn was entirely in a
triumphant style, such as, " Oh, Bacchus, son
of Semele, author of our joyous vintage, great
conqueror of the Eastern world t" and the con
gregation became full of gratitude and exulta
tion.
The sacrifice -followed the hymn : the most
beautiful animals, adorned with gold and rib
bands were brought to the altar to be killed : the

EXERCISES OF THE STADIUM.

21

sacrifice was a feast to which the Gods were in

vited, to partake with their worshippers : while
men lived upon the fruits of the earth, these com
posed the substance of their sacrifices: when they
learned to ft-ed upon animals, then victims, bulls,
oxen and sheep, were presented to the Gods:
meanwhile the whole temple was pervaded with
the smell of fragrant woods, myrtle, cedar, and
sandal- wood, together with incense, burning on
the altar.
Nothing can be gayer or more fascinating than
the religious ceremonies of the Greeks appeared
in the eyes of the worshippers: every consider
able festival was additionally solemnized by a ge
nerous contention for superiority between the dif
ferent individuals or tribes who resorted to the
temple : these cotitentions were either in what
were called the exercises of the stadium, or in
singing and dancing.
Stadium is a Greek word, signifying a raceground or area set apart for exercises : the exer
cises of the stadium were principally running,
boxing, wrestling, leaping, and throwing the
quoit or javelin: and, as the Greeks connected
these contests intimately with their religion, they
entered into them with an anxiotisness for supe
riority, and ascribed a species of glory to the
successful candidate, of which we can with diffi
culty form an idea : the Romans surrendered the
contests of the stadium, or amphitheatre, to their
slaves.
The other sort of contention which accompa
nied the Grecian festivals, was in music, singing
and dancing : infinite pains were taken to arrive
at perfection in these three articles : and when
they were joined together, and exhibited in union,

TRAGEDY.
they constituted the Greek chorus : the most ex
cellent poets were frequently applied to, to com
pose the words of the chorus, and the best musi
cians to set them to music : the names of A.ristides
and Thernistocles, two Greeks who principally
contributed to defeat Xerxes and the millions of
men he brought with him out of Asia for the
conquest of Europe, were to be read an some in
scriptions in the city of Athens in connection
with that wonderful military exploit ; and in
other inscriptions as leaders and superintendents
of the chorus of one or other of the tribes of the
city at the religious festivals : the Greek chorus
was the foundation, and as it were, the kernel of
the Greek tragedy.
The tragedy of the Greeks, as well as their
contentions in muscular exercises, and in the gen
tler and more refined arts of competition, consti
tuted a part of their religion : their theatrical
compositions were never exhibited but at the
most solemn festivals : the ceremony of the day
began with sacrifice : plays written for the occa
sion by Sophocles, Euripides, and other extra
ordinary geniuses, were then performed, and a
select number of judges pronounced upon their
comparative claims: immense sums of money
were expended upon the exhibiting these pieces
with a splendour and magnificence proportioned
to the occasion : and a question obstinately de
bated by the Athenians at different times, was
whether their revenue should be spent in prefer
ence upon the exhibitions of their theatre, or the
maintenance of their armiese: it was generally
carried for the former; the theatre belonged to
' Donosthen. lit and 3d Olyntb.

THREE ANNUAL FESTIVALS.

23

the service of the Gods, the defence of the coun

try was a merely human affair.
The three grand festivals of Athens were the
Panathenaea, sacred to Athene, or Minerva, and
the solemnities dedicated to Ceres, the Goddess of
harvests, and to Bacchus, the God of wine; the
Panathenaea, because Minerva was the patrondeity of the city, and the feasts of Ceres and
Bacchus, because corn and wine are the grand
sustenance of man, and the most iudispeusible
blessings of heaven.
The processions which took place at these so
lemnities were exquisitely beautiful: a troop of
elders, for the Panathenaea, were chosen from
the w hole city, of the most venerable appearance
and of a vigorous and green old age: these march
ed first with olive branches in their hands: next
followed a band of strong and powerful men in
the vigour of maturity, clad in complete armour:
after these came a set of youths, eighteen or twenty
years of age, singing hymns in honour of the
Goddess: these youths were succeeded by a troop
of beautiful children, crowned with flowers, wear
ing only a shirt of tine muslin, and taught to
move with a light and measured step : the pro
cession was closed by a band of handsome virgins
of the best families in Athens, clad in white, and
with baskets of flowers on their heads : the whole
escorted with the music of different instruments,
and dancing.
The entertainments of the theatre were appro
priated to the festivals of Bacchus : in the proces
sions sacred to this God the Athenians indulged
a certain licence : they imitated, sometimes with
gaiety, sometimes in a manner approaching to

THE MYSTERIES.
frenzy, the gestures and actions of drunkenness :
the triumph of Bacchus, as he returned from the
conquest of India, accompanied with satyrs and
rustic deities, was represented by his votaries
along the streets which led to his temple : the pro
cessions of Bacchus always took place by night,
amidst the splendour of innumerable torches.
The greatest of all the solemnities belonging to
the religion of Athens, was the festival of Ceres :
to this were appropriated the Mysteries, sometimes celebrated in the temple of Ceres at Athens,
but only performed in perfect ceremony at a mag
nificent temple in the little town of Eleusis, twelve
miles from Athens, and hence called the Eleusinian Mysteries : no person could be admitted to
this celebration, without having first passed
through a noviciate or probation of one or more
years : it was death for a profane person to in
trude, and death for one who had been present
to reveal what he had heard or seen ; it is col
lected however from certain hints on the subject,
that the chief subjects of exhibition were a vivid
and impressive representation of the pains of the
condemned in Tartarus, and the joys of the blessed
in the Elysian fields ; and it has been conjectured
that the doctrine revealed by the high priest, was
the fallacy of the vulgar polytheism, and the
unity of the great principle of the universe: thus
the religion of the common people was left undis
turbed ; and the enlightened were satisfied, while
they joined on ordinary occasions in the exteriors
of that religion, secretly to worship one God
under the emblems of the various manners and
forms in which he operates : it has even been
supposed that Virgil, in the sixth book of the

THE GRECIAN GAMES.

25

TEneid, where he describes Hie passage of jEneas

into the regions of departed souls, has given a
correct outline of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Sacrifices were not only performed by the
Greeks at their solemn festivals and in their pub
lic temples: it was customary also for individuals
to make a sacrifice, by way of obtaining the fa
vour of the Gods to some expedition in which
they were engaged, or some voyage or journey,
that they purposed.
Sacrifices, and libations (the latter of these con
sisted in pouring wine upon the altar or the vic
tim) were a part of the solemnities observed at
funerals: and, when the person whose obsequies
were performed was of great distinction, games,
or the exercises of the stadium, were also cele
brated in honour of the deceased!
There were four famous cities of Greece where
games were regularly exhibited once in four or
five years : the name of these games were, the
Olympic in honour of Jupiter, at the city of
Olympia in Elis; the Nemaean in honour of
Hercules, at the city of Nemsea in Argolis ; the
Isthmian in honour of Neptune, near the city of
Corinth; and the Pythian in honour of Apollo,
near the city of Delphi in Phocis.
These games had an importance of the most
wonderful sort in the eyes of the Greeks : this
celebrated people cultivated with unremitting
assiduity all kinds of athletic exercises; we are
not therefore to be surprised, if they regarded
with peculiar attachment the scenes where a per
fection in these exercises might be exhibited to
the greatest advantage : to the five combats of the
stadium they added on these occasions the cha
riot-race : kings were eager to become competitor*
C

DIVINATION.
for the prize in this : Pindar, the sublimest of the
Greek poets, wrote his celebrated odes, in honour
of the victors in the Olympic and other games :
the Athenians bestowed a pension for life on any
of their citizens who had borne off the prize in
these combats : the wall of the city was broken
down, that he might enter in his chariot at the
breach, when he returned home in triumph : it
is related of Diagoras the Rhodian, that when
be saw his three sons crowned in one day at
Olympia, he expired through excess of joy :
Herodotus, the great Grecian historian, as the
highest honour he could receive, was permitted
to recite the nine books of his immortal work,
amidst the concourse of spectators at the Olympic
games : and lastly, to give the amplest idea of
the value the Greeks annexed to these exhibitions,
all the other events and transactions of their his
tory were dated in, and referred to, such or such
an Olympiad, or repetition of the Olympic
games.
A considerable branch of the religion of the
Greeks, as of all other false religions, consisted
in Divination, or an attempt to foretel future
events. Every man is anxious to know what
will be bis own fate for the residue of his life, and
what will be the fate of his children and his
nearest connections : and in proportion as he is
superstitious, and believes in the possibility of
gratifying his curiosity in these matters, his cu
riosity increases : thus vulgar and ignorant peo
ple in the present day consult gipsies and fortune
tellers, who tell servant-maids how many hus
bands they shall have, and such like stuff : the
' Aul. GelUui, iii 15.

THE SIBYLS.

27

same people believe in omens, the spilling of salt,

and the ticking of a death-watch, and unlucky
days, and make themselves miserable about what
the course of nature forbids them to know till the
event: the imagination and taste of the Greeks
elevated the weakest follies of the human mind,
and gave the majesty and solemnity of religion to
the poorest dreams of superstition.
The divination of the ancients consisted of two
principal branches, oracles and omens : each of
these they considered as a Tcvelation from the
Gods, and reverenced it accordingly.
An oracle was where the revelation from the
Gods was reduced into words : oracles were usu
ally in verse.
ThereKvas in Rome a celebrated collection of
oracles called the Sibylline Books : the Sibylline
Books were the composition of the Sibyls.
The Sibyls were old women, whom long expe
rience had brought to the knowledge of all things,
past, present, and to come, or who were inspired
by Heaven with the gift of prophecy : there are
ten of them on record, who resided in various
quarters of the world.
The most famous of these is the Sibyl of
Cumae in Italy, spoken of in Virgil's* iEneid :
Apollo* is said to have fallen in love with her;
and that he might gain her favour, he pro
mised to grant her whatever gift she would de
mand : she requested that she might live as many
' years as she had grains of sand in her hand : the
grains proved to be a thousand : but she forgot
!o ask for perpetual youth, vigour and bloom :
so she gfew old and decrepid and shrivelled be jn. iii. 445. iEn. vi. 36. * Ovid. Met. lib. liv. 130 et seqq.
c2

28

THE SIBYLS.

yond any thing you ever saw : it was the custom

of the Sibyls to write their oracles on the leaves
of trees, and scatter them before the entrance of
the caves in which they lived.
The Sibyl of Cumae had already lived some
centuries, when iEneas came into Italy, and she
undertook to be his guide to the infernal regions :
she had reached the period of her own death,
when she came to Tarquin the Proud', seventh
king of Rome, bringing with her in nine volumes
a collection of prophecies concerning the future
fortune of the Roman state : these she offered to
sell to the king ; but the price she demanded was
three hundred gold Philippics, about three hun
dred pounds English : Tarquin havia^refused
the purchase, the Sibyl went away, ancFburned
three of the volumes, and then returned to the
king, demanding for the remaining six three
hundred Philippics : Tarquin still refused ; the
Sibyl burned three more, and then required for
the three onty which were still restraining, three
hundred Philippics : the king was astonished at
this behaviour, and somewhat awed at the extra
ordinary procedure of the old woman : he bought
the books, and the Sibyl disappeared, and was
never more seen in the world.
These books were preserved with extraordinary
care during the whole period of the Roman re
public: they were lodged in a chest underr
ground in the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus : a
college of priests was appointed to take charge of
them, which at first consisted of two persons,
but was gradually increased to fifteen : the books
i Aul. Gel. i. 19. Lactantius i. 6 : the latter enumerates the
ten Sibyl*.

OHACLES.
were never opened without a special decree of
tbe senate for that purpose, which was only
passed in times of some great defeat or other ter
rible disaster having happened to the republic.
The most usual method respecting oracles was
that, whenever the state, or an individual within
the state, desired to obtain information as to the
success which would attend them in any under
taking they meditated, they resorted to some
temple celebrated for the oracles which were there
delivered : the method of these oracles I shall
explain, when I come to describe the oracle of
Delphi under the article of Apollo : there were 1/
Ihree principal oracles in Greece ; the oracle of
Jupiter at Dodona, the oracle of Apollo at Del
phi, and the oracle of Trophonius.
The method of consulting the oracle of Trophonius was somewhat different from the rest:
in the rest there was a priest of either sex, to
whom the question was proposed, and who was
supposed to be inspired by the God with a true
prophetic answer : in the oracle of Trophonius
there was understood to be no middle person
going between the person who came to consult,
and the supernatural being by whom he was an
swered.
The oracle of Trophonius had its seat in a cave
at Lebadea in Bceotia : the votary was intro
duced into this cave with many ceremonies : he
entered it alone : he was first seized with a der p
sleep : he saw terrible things : these sights pro
duced such an effect upon his mind, that it is V
said no one was ever after seen to smile, who had
at any time visited the cave of Trophonius.
Scarcely any prince or state ever undertook an
expedition, without having first consulted, and
c3

30

AUGURS AND ARUSPICES.

obtained the sanction of, an oracle to their enter

prise : individuals, who could afford the expencc
of the journey, and of the present which was af
terward to be made to the God, observed the
same ceremony : Xenophonk, one of the most
enlightened of the Grecian philosophers at the
time when the science and arts of Greece had
reached their greatest height, applied by the ad
vice of Socrates to the oracle of Delphi, to know
how he should conduct himself respecting that
expedition of the Greeks into Persia, which led
to the famous " Retreat of the Ten Thousand."
Omens were of two sorts, and there were two
sorts of priests appointed to study and make anthentic reports concerning them,
Aruspices : the Augurs drew their predictions
principally, from the heavenly meteors, thunder,
lightning, comets, &c. ; or secondly, from the
voice and language of birds, or their flying to
the right or left hand ; or lastly, from the sacred
chickens which were kept foj that purpose, and
were supposed to afford a good or an unfavour
able augury, according as they ate greedily, or
refused to eat, the corn which was thrown to
them at certain solemn times : Cicero, the most
enlightened of the Romans, was a member of the
college of Augurs in Rome : and there is a whole
volume in his works, written upon the science of
Divination.
The Aruspices were priests who drew their sup
posed knowledge of future events from the obser
vations they made upon the sacrifices at the altar;
and they pronounced that the event would be
prosperous or otherwise, accordingly as the ani* Cic. De Div. i. 54.

AUGURS AND ARUSPICES.

31

mal to be sacrificed made resistance, or seemed to

come willingly to the altar, as the sacred fire was
lighted easily, and burned with a pure and bril
liant flame, or as the entrails, when the victim
was opened, appeared to be in a healthful and
perfect state, or the contrary
1 The substance of this chapter on the Religious Ceremonies
of the Athenians, is abridged from Abbe Barthelemy, Travels of
AnachaitM.

32

CHAP. VI.
OF THE MORE ANCIENT GODS.
Chaos, Darkness, Tellus, Tartarus, Love, Erebus, Night,
Ccelus, Saturn and Cybele. Coelus deposed by Saturn.The Golden Age.
The most ancient of the Grecian deities is
Chaos : this is not without a resemblance to what
we read of in the Bible, that, before the world
was reduced into the beautiful and harmonious
appearance we now behold, " the earth was
without form, and void, and darkness reigned
over the face of the deepm."
The consort of Chaos was Darkness, and from
, these parents were born Tellus, or the Earth,
Tartarus, or Hell, Love (or the principle of har
mony and attraction by which the elements of
the world are bound together), Erebus, and
Night: Erebus and Night becoming husband and
wife, gave birth to the Sky and the Day: all this
savours of allegorical.
Ccelus, or Uranus, that is Heaven, was the son
and the husband of Tellus, otherwise called
Terra, Tilrea, and Vesta.
Coelus, and Tellus, or Titaea, were the parents
of the Titans, who, as well as the Giants, their
half-brothers, are frequently named in reference
to their mother, the "Sons of the Earth."
Coelus, a thing you will be apt to wonder at
m Genesis, c. i. t. 2.


SATURN AND CYBELE.

33

in the most ancient of the Gods, was an unnatu

ral father, and cruelly shut up his children in /
caverns and subterraneous abodes : but it unfor
tunately happens in the history of the Gods o
the Greek, that their actions were far from being
constantly regulated by the principles of goodness
and virtue.
Tellus took the part of her children the Titans,
the chief of whom was Saturn: Tellus and Sa
turn contrived between them that C eelus should
have no more children, that he should be deprived
of tbe kingdom, and that Saturn should succeed
him t the rest of the Titans consented to this ar
rangement upon condition that Saturn should
engage never to rear any of his male offspring,
and that, whenever his reign should be at an end
his kingdom should devolve to his brothers: to
this Saturn agreed.
The wife of Saturn is variously called Ops, and
Rhea, aud Cybele,and Dindymene, and Berecyn- '
thia: she also sometimes bears the/names of her mo
ther (for she was the sister as well as the wife, of
Saturn).; like her, she seems likewise to be the
Earth, and in this character was invoked by the
appellations of Bona Dea (the Good Goddess)
for her fruitfulness, Magna Mater (the Great
Mother), and the Mother of the Gods.
Coelus and Tellus were never made subjects of
the Grecian statuary. Saturn is represented by
their sculptors under the figure of a very old
man, with a long heard, and bearing a scythe
in his hand, the instrument with which he gave
a terrible wound to his father : his appearance is
similar to that, under which you see Time painted
in Gay's Fables and other common books: they
may indeed be considered as the same deity, the

THE GOLDEN AGE.

the Greek names for each differing only in a sin
gle letter; K$wo; being Greek for Saturn, and Xgo*
for Time. It is in the sense of Time that the
circumstance in the history of Saturn has some
times been explained, that he is the " devourer
of his children."
Cybele, or Ops, the wife of Saturn, is ex
plained in the allegorical sense to signify the
Earth, though this is also the signification of the
name of her mother. Taking Saturn and Cybele
in this sense, they may properly be husband and
wife, as " Time is the producer of the fruits of
the Earth." Cybele is represented in her sta
tues as crowned with towers"; towers and cities
being placed on the Earth : she has a key in her
hand, to signify that in winter the Earth locks up
her treasures, which she brings forth and disperses
plentifully in the summer: she is placed oh a
chariot, and drawn by lions.
The reign of Saturn is commonly called the
Golden Age0, when the earth produced with
out labour the subsistence of its inhabitants,
when all the good things of the world were en
joyed in common, when Justice, or Astraea, uni
versally governed, and there were no differences,
contentions or warfare among the people of the
earth: in memory of this happy period, the Ro
mans annually celebrated a festival, called Satur
nalia, on occasion of which the slaves sat at table,
and were waited on by their masters, and were
further allowed, as long as the festival lasted, to
say whatever free or saucy thing they thought
n Virgil. JEn. vi. 786; Ov. Fasti, lib. iv. 219; lib. vi. 321.
Heuod. Op.iii.; uude Virg.G.i. 125; Ov. M. j. S9.

CYBELE.

35

proper to the persons whom they were required to

obey during the rest of the year.
Cybele, the mother of the Gods, was of so ex
traordinary a modesty, that it was said no male*
ever saw her, except her husband : her name was
scarcely ever pronounced : she was a pattern for
all matrons: men were excluded from her temple,
and she was worshipped in silence'.
This was one of the forms observed in the
worship of Cybele: another mode in which she
was worshipped, on different occasions, or in
different countries, was that her priests, who were
of the male sex, were however eunuchs', and
that her worshippers celebrated her festivals with
a confused noise of timbrels, fifes and cymbals,
expressed their emotions by howlings, and in
dulged in all the extravagant gestures of mad
men : these ceremonies bore a reference to the
circumstances which are said to have attended the
birth of Jupiter.
Another curious particular which belongs to
the history of Cybele, is the affection she is said
to have conceived for Atys', a Phrygian shep
herd-boy, which was so great, that she made him
her high-priest, on condition that he would never
allow himself to fall in love with a mortal: this
condition he broke, and the Goddess as a punish
ment, took from him the power of ever being a
father.
P Cicero De Harusp. v.; Tib. lib. i. El. vi. 22.
1 Virgil. iEn.iii. 112.
' Juv. Sat. vi. 512.
Ov. Fasti, lib. iv. 221 .

c6

36

CHAP. VII.
WAR OF THE TITANS.
Birth of Jupiter.Saturn, defeated and imprisoned by
the Titans, is rescued by his Son.Plots against the
Life of Jupiter, and is deprived of the Kingdom.
Worship of Janus.
That Saturn' might fulfil the treaty he had
made with his brothers, he constantly caused
his male children to be brought to him as soon as
they were born, and by him they were devoured :
Cybele, observing this, and feeling a mother's
kindness for her offspring, resolved when Jupiter
was born, to deceive her husband; she accord
ingly dressed a large stone in the swaddlingclothes of an infant, and presented it to Saturn,
who deceived by appearances, swallowed the
stone, and thought it had been his child : Cybele
concealed the infant Jupiter upon mount Ida in
Crete, -where according to some accounts he was
born, and caused theCuretes and Corybantes, her
priests, to make a deafening noise with their
drums and cymbals, which prevented the parent
God from hearing the baby cries of his son:
Jupiter was nursed by the nymphs, and suckled
by a goat : the born of this goat, called " AmalthaeaV horn," from the name of one of his nurses,
and " Cornucopia," because it was endowed with
the admirable privilege, that whoever possessed
' Ov. Fasti, lib.iv. 197 et seqq.

u Ov. Fasti? lib. v. 115.

WAR OP THE TITANS.

37

it, should find it containing every thing he dc^

sired, he gave when he grew up, as a present to the
nymphs : and the skin of the animal he con verled
into a shield, usually called the iTLgis of Ju
piter : Cybele, by a repetition of the same strata
gem, deceived her husband at the birth of two
other sons, Neptune and Pluto.
As they grew up, il should seem that Cybele
acquainted her husband with what she had done,
and presented to him the youths, his offspring,
and that Saturn was so struck with their beauty
and hopeful qualities, that he forgave his wife,
and took them into favour: for the Titans having
complained to Saturn of the breach of his agree
ment, the obvious remedy was for him upon
their remonstrance to have destroyed his sons:
this however he refused, and thereupon ensued a
war.
The Titans1 were enemies so formidable, that
to represent the greatness of their might, they j/
are feigned to have had fifty heads and u hundred
hands.
The names of the Titans T were Oceanus, Cceus,
Creus, Hyperion, Iapetus, Cottus, Gyges and
Briareus: they had an equal number of sisters
with whom they married, Oceanus to Tethys,
Cceus to Phcebe, Hyperion to Theia, and Iape
tus to Clymene.
The Titans were at first completely successful
against Saturn : they took him and his wife pri
soners, bound them with chains, and confined
them in Hell: a few years after however, Jupiter
overcame the Titans, and set his father and mo
ther at liberty : the Titans were then shut up in
* Heslod. The. 150.

y Hesiod. The. 133.

S8

SATURN DEPOSED.

the prison which they had previously assigned to

Saturn.
A prediction had reached the ears of Saturn
that he should be deprived of his kingdom by
his eldest son : terrified at this menace, Saturn
plotted to take away the life of Jupiter : but Ju
piter having found out the design, and being
full of resentment at the unkindness of a father
whom he had so essentially served, drove Saturn
out of his kingdom, and thus fulfilled the pre
diction : Saturn took refuge in a part of Italy,
which is said afterwards to have been called
Latium* a latendo, from- the God's having
" laid hid" there: the king of this country was
Janus, who is said to have been like Saturn, the
son of Ccelus, but by a different mother: Janus
made Saturn the partner of his throne, and the
exiled God, of whom so many ill things have
been told, did here as in his parent kingdom; re
claimed the people from their wild way of living,
and taught them arts, civilization and happiness.
Janusk was a God of some importance in the
Roman calendar: he was represented with two
faces, emblematical of his prudence, looking be
fore and behind: his temple was open in war,
and shut in time of peace0; that is, he was the
God of Peace, to be invoked where peace was
not, but whom it was no longer necessary to pro
pitiate when war had ceased : the Romans con
querors of the world were incessantly at war, and
the temple of Janus was only twice shut during
the whole period of tlte Roman republic.
Saturn being expelled from the empire of the
z Hesiod. The. 463 et seqq.
a Virgil, JEa. viii. 322. Ov.
Fasti, i. 233.
b Ov. Fasti, i. 65 et seqq.
c Id. 281 ; Virgil.
Mn. vii. 610.

REIGN OF JUPITER.

39

Gods, Jupiter, his conqueror, called his brothers

Neptune and Pluto, into partnership of his au
thority, taking to himself the government of
Heaven and earth, and assigning to Neptune the
dominion of the sea, and to Pluto the dominion
of Tartarus, or Hell : this was the last revolution
in the skies : consequently Jupiter is acknowledg
ed in the Grecian mythology for the greatest of
all the Gods, and is styled by Homer, father of
Gods and men *.
- TJovrrll eWpav ti Oiw ti.

Od, a. 28.

40

CHAP. VIII.
OF. THE TWELVE SUPERIOR GODSS
I.
JUPITER.
, -0
Residence of the Gods of the Greeks on Mount Olyni-*
pus. Statue of Jupiter. His Supreme Government
and Authority.
Jupiter, as the Greeks affirmed, held his
court regularly on the top of Olympus'", a moun
tain ofThessaly, and was there principally sur
rounded by deities who derived their birth from
him.
The most eminent of the Gods presiding on
mount Olympus, and which constituted, as it
were the cabinet-council of the skies, Dii majorum gentium, were twelve: six of these were
male, Jupiter, Apollo, Mars, Mercury, Nep
tune and Vulcan; and six were female, Juno,
Minerva, Diana, Venus, Vesta, and Ceres.
a The account given of some of the Gods in this chapter is
brief. The cause of this is, that the history of the amours of the
Gods, and of their progeny by mortal mothers and fathers, is re
served for the latter part of the work, chap. XVII, to the end.
The motive of this arrangement, as assigned in that chapter, is,
that " the amours of the Gods are in reality no part of their pro
per and original character ; the reason Jupiter is represented as fal
ling in love with a multitude of women, is not from any licentious
ness in his own disposition, but because every hero was ambitious
to be a Demigod; the teachers of this religion did not perceive till
too late, that by this means they were ascribing to the first of
their Gods an indecent and libertine disposition :" it seemed to
be but justice therefore, to remove these stories from this part
of the work, and assign them to the place to which they more
properly belong.
b Hesiod.The. 42.

JUPITER.

41

The statue of Jupiter by Phidias, the best of

the Grecian artists, has already been mentioned ;
in this the God was represented with a beard, and
seated on a throne of ivory and gold : he was
crowned with an olive wreath : in his right hand
he held the figure of a Victory, and in his left a
sceptre, on the top of which was perched an
eagle', the emblem of Jupiter, as being king of
the air; his robe was adorned with a variety of
figures of flowers and animals : this statue was
sixty feet in heightJupiter is for the most represented by the an
cients as governing the world by his providence;
though there was, they said, a power superior to
that of Jupiter, which they called Fate': by
this perhaps they signified that it was the na
ture of fire to burn, of water to drown, and of a
sword to wound, and if a man fell into the fire or
the water, and remained long enough there, or
if a sword was run through his body, it was not,
they thought, in the power of Jupiter to prevent
the consequences of dissolution, suffocation, or
a wound : they also seem to have thought that
Fate, independently of Jupiter, had decreed to
every man the hour he was to die.
Jupiter is often described as viewing from some
eminence the pursuits and contentions of man
kind, and weighing in his scales their fortunes or
their merits' : he is the moderator of the diffe
rences of the Gods, for the Gods of the Greeks
were apt to attach themselves to particular indi
viduals, and to take opposite sides when these
individuals went to war or otherwise opposed
c Pindar. Pyth. i. 10.
d iEschyli. Prorn. v. 518.
e Homer. II. 6. 69 ; IL X, 209. Virgil, JEa. lii. 735.

42

JUNO.

each other: it was the custom of Jupiter when

any of the inferior deities asked him a favour
he was disposed to grant, to nod his assent :
when Jupiter nodded, all heaven shook with
terror f, and neither men nor Gods from that
time had the boldness to oppose his wilL

II.
JUNO.
Her Figure and Appearance.Lucina the name by which
Juno or Diana was invoked in child-birth.Iris the
Messenger of Juno.
Juno was the sister and the wife of Jupiter*;
she is styled the queen of Heaven : she was
usually represented as sitting in a chariot of gold,
drawn by peacocks*, vith a sceptre in her
hand1, and wearing a crown adorned with roses
and lilies : all that is majestic in the female face
and figure was represented in her statues, as all
that was lofty in the male was given to J upiter :
the peacock is her emblem, on account of the
graceful carriage of its neck, and the magnifi
cence of its train: Juno was born at Samos, or
according to others at Argos, as Jupiter was born
in Crete.
Lucina, the Goddess who presided over the
birth of children, was according to some accounts
the daughter of Juno, but is more frequently
taken for Juno herself1, or for Diana, one or
f Horn. II. K. 528.
S Horn. II. ir. 432. Virg. Mn. i. 46.
Ov. Fasti, vi. 27.
h Ov. Met. ii. 531.
i Ov. Fasti, vi. 38.
kQv. Fasti, vi. 39.

pa At .

J IT ^ O

MINEHVA.

43

other of whom was usually invoked by mothers

under the name of Lucina on that occasion.
Iris, a Goddess sprung from the deities of the
sea1, was the favourite messenger of J unom: Iris
is understood to signify the rainbow" : it was a
beautiful image, that represented the messages
of the queen of Heaven as gliding down this
splendid arch to earth: it was natural that the
colours of the rainbow, as well as of the peacock,
should be appropriated to the majestic empress
of the skies.

III.
MINERVA.
The Goddess of Wisdom.Sprung from the Head of
Jupiter.Her Statue.She presides over Military
Fortitude and the Arts of Life.
Minerva is the Goddess of Wisdom, and is
therefore said to have no mother, but to have
sprung immediately from the head of Jupiter" :
Jupiter being grieved that his wife was bar
ren, smote his forehead with his hand, a vio
lent throbbing ensued, and presently Minerva,
or as she is otherwise called Pallas, rose to
light, not a child, but a Goddess completely
formed.
The most celebrated of the statues of Phidias,
after that of Jupiter Olympius, was the statue of
Minerva in her temple at Athens: the height of
this figure was thirty-nine feet: Minerva was
1 Hes. The.266.
m Ov. Met. xi. 585.
n Sen. (Ed. 315.
Hesiod. The. 923. Lucian. Dial. Deor. Pindar. Olymp. vii. 67.

44

MARS.

usually represented in complete armour, bearing

a shield with a head on it, which was supposed
to be so terrible that every one who beheld it was
turned into stone : her countenance was composed
and awful, and her eyes of celestial blue : her em
blems were the cock, the owl, and the basilisk.
Minerva was the most accomplished of all the
Goddesses*: she was the Goddess of war*; that is,
Minerva was the personification of fortitude; for
what is more undaunted and invincible than wis
dom ? and she was the patroness of the stratagems
of war : she was also the patroness of all the arts
of life, particularly of spinning1, needle-work,
and embroidery: hence the distaff was likewise
one of her emblems : she was always a maid ; for
what can be less fitted for subjection, and the
trivial details of housekeeping and cookery, thaji
perfect wisdom ?
IV.
MARS.
The God of War.
Juno did not always continue barren : Mars,
the God of war, was the son of Jupiter and Juno,
or according to others of Juno only, without a
father' : he was the patron of all that is furious
and cruel in war, as Minerva was of all that is
deliberate, contriving and skilful: the animals
which were sacrificed to Mars were the wolf, the
horse, the vulture, and the cock'.
P Ov. Fasti, iii. 833. Mille Dea est operurn. q Ov. Fasti, iii. 5.
' Ov. Fasti, iii. 819.
Ov. Fasti, v. 231 et seqq. ,
1 For a description of Mars and his attendants, see Virgil, ./En.
xii. 331.

APOLLO.

45

V.
APOLLO.
His Birth.His Mother Latona persecuted by the Ser
pent Python, which Apollo kills.His Figure. He
is the God of the Sunof Music and Puetry the
Author of Plagues and Contagious Diseasesand the
God of Medicineand Prophecy. Oracle of Delphi.
Parnassus, Helicon, Cithaeron, Castalia, Agauippe,
and Hippocrene.Discovery of the Oracle.The
Pythia, and her Tripod. Style and manner of the
Ancient Oracles.
\
Apollo was the son of Jupiter by Latona",
the daughter of Cceus and Phocb<
two of the
Titans: the imperious temper of Juno rendered
her always extremely jealous wheu her husband
became attached to any other female : having
discovered the amour of Jupiter and Latona, she
sent the serpent Python, a monster bred from the
slime occasioned by a deluge, to persecute her :
Latona fled from place to place to escape this
monster, overcome with weariness, and ready to
fall ill as her lying-in drew near: at length
Jupiter turned her inlo a quail, and Neptune
having struck the island of Delos with his trident
and rendered it immoveable, which before floated
about in the Egean sea, sometimes above and
sometimes below the surface of the water, Latona
flew over to it, and having there resumed her
original form, became at one birth the mother of
Apollo and Diana : one of the first actions of
Apollo, when he grew up to man's estate, was to
t He. The. 917.

w Hes. The. 404.

'i

46

APOLLO.

kill with his arrow the serpent Python, that had

been the tormentor of his mother".
Apollo was represented by the Greeks under
the most beautiful figure they were able to
conceive, young, unbearded, with graceful
hair, and a countenance, fair, animated and ex
pressive.
Beside the name of Apollo, by which he is
most commonly known, this God is often called
by the poets Hyperion, and Titan; Hyperion
one of the Titans having been according to some
accounts the God of the sun, before that province
was conferred upon Apollo*.
Apollo has various offices.
He is the charioteer of the sun, or rather the
sun itself; he drives his chariot every day through
the circuit of the heavens, and at night sinks
below the waves to rest : he is drawn by four
horses of the most extraordinary beauty and
spirit, harnessed abreast: and when represented
in this office, his head is surrounded with a bril
liant circle of rays : the names of his horses are
Pyroeis, Eous, iEthon, and Phlegon*.
Apollo is also the God of music and poetry : in
this character he is represented with a lyre in his
* Ov. Met. i. 438, rt vi. 1 85, et 332. Lucian. Dial. Irid. et Nept.
y It is proper to mention that Homer, particularly in the
celebrated story of Mars and Venus, clearly makes Apollo a dis.
tinct person from Helios, Sol, the Sun. The Sun is the discoverer
of the offence, and Apollo is one of the Gods who comes in with
the rest, to see what is the matter (Odyss. 9). In Hesiod, Hyperion
(another name which by modern poets has been given to Apollo)
is one of the Titans, and marries Theia his sister [see p. 37] by
whom he becomes father of HeXio; and SeXjivh, the Sun and the
Moon, (Theog. 371). The later classics however, Virgil JEn. iv.
6. Horat, Carrn. ii. 21, 24, and Ovid. Met. i. 473, ii. 24, with out
accord ascribe the attributes of the luminary of day to Apollo.
a Ov. Met. ii. 158. Vid. ante et seqq.

APOLLO.

47

hand, and surrounded by the Nine Muses, the

daughters of Jupiter by Mnemosyne, or Memoryj
one of the Titans.
Apollo is the author of plagues and contagious
diseases : this is an allegorical conception, as
contagious diseases are most frequent anil fatal
when the heat of the sun is at the greatest : in
this character he is introduced by Homer in
the first book of the Iliad, causing a plague
amongst the Greeks : Homer describes him on
that occasion, as shrouding himself in darkness
(for the heat of the season is then most pernicious,
when the air is thick as well as sultry), and shoot
ing his arrows in various directions at the de
fenceless sons of men*.
Apollo is also the God of medicine.
Lastly, Apollo is supposed to have instructed
mankind in the art of foretelling future events :
in all this there is a close connection: it is the
sun, as he breaks forth in the spring, and pours
upon us the genial warmth of summer, that in
spires the mind with glowing conceptions and
poetry, and the same turn of mind which makes
men poetical, imbues them with sagacity beyond
their fellows, and leads them with daring pene
tration to anticipate events to come; insomuch
that in Latin the same word, votes, signifies a
It was in his character of a foreteller of future
events, that the celebrated temple of Delphi was
dedicated to Apollo : this was supposed to be the
most perfect oracle in the world : the Greeks
a II. a. 44 et seqq.
k Ov. Met. i. 517 et eqq. where
Apollo is introduced giving an account of tome of Jiis attri
bute*.

48

DELPHI, PARNASSUS, HELICON.

and Romans almost universally resorted to it

when they meditated any arduous enterprise, to
enquire whether their undertaking would succeed.
Oracles made a very essential part of the reli
gion of the Greeks: they were places supposed
to be particularly honoured with the residence of
some God, to which the curious addressed their
questions, and where the priests returned answers,
and solved their doubts: a description of the
oracle at Delphi may stand as an example of the
rest.
Delphi was the place where Apollo is' said to
have killed the serpent Python : this place there
fore, beyond all others in the world, was srfcred to
the God Apollo : near to the town of Delphi was
the mountain Parnassus, with two tops, and on .
that account often called the " biforked hill,"
sacred to Apollo and the Muses: at the foot of
the mountain, and near to the oracle, flowed the
Castalian stream, the waters of which we're sup
posed to communicate inspiration ; in the -same
region were two other mountains, Helicerii,and
Citheron, both of them, but the former especi
ally, sacred to the same divinities: along the
declivity of mount Helicon grew the> Grove of
the Muses; at the foot was the fountain Aganippe,
the waters of which had virtues similar to those
of the Castalian stream ; and higher up was the
fountain Hippocrene, on a spot which Pegasus,
the winged horse of the Muses, having struck
with his hoof, this fountain rushed outc, the
waters of which were violet-coloured, and are
represented as endowed with voice and articulate
sound : at Delphi were celebrated once in every
c Ot. Met. v. 256.

ORACLES OF DELPHI.

49

five years the Pythian games, in commemoration

of the feast of Apollo when he killed the Py thon* :
the Amphictyonic council also, a council consist
ing of deputies from the twelve principal states of
Greece, and authorised to decide in all differences
which arose between the particular slates, held its
session at Delphi.
The virtues of the oracle at Delphi are said
to have been thus discovered : a number of goats
were feeding on mount Parnassus, and happen
ed to approach a deep and long chasm which
appeared in the rock : from this chasm a vapour
issued ; and the goats ' had no sooner inhaled a
portien of this vapoury than they began to play
and frisk about with singular agility : the goat
herd, remarking this, and curious to discover the
cause, held his head over the chasm : when in a
short time, the fumes having ascended into his;
brain, he was seized with a fervour of enthusiasm ,
and^was observed to utter prophecies ; in conse
quence of this discovery, a temple was here built
to^Apollo, and soon after a city in the vicinity of
the: temple/
" TJje oracles in the temple at Delphi were always
delivered by a priestess, called the Pythia : the
apartment of the oracle was immediately over Ihe
chasm in the rock from which the vapour issued :
the cliasnt was probably artificially narrowed,
and the Pythia placed herself on a tripod, or
three-legged stool, made full of holes, directly
upon the chasm: after a time, her figure enlarged
ifself, her mouth foamed, and her eyes sparkled
as with fire : and in this state she delivered, with
the utmost earnestness, a number of wild and in* Ov. Met. i. 446.

50

ORACLE OF DELPHI.

coherent speeches, which were supposed to be

dictated by the God: the question proposed by
the persons who came to consult the God were
stated to her ; her answers were written down by
the priest, digested into order, arranged in hex
ameter verse, and delivered to the suppliant*.
The oracle of Delphi in its infancy could only
be consulted on one day in the year,- the seventh
day of the month Munychion, or March, which
was supposed to be the birth-day of Apollo: after
ward, on account of the multitude of votaries,
the time was enlarged, and the Pythia might be
consulted one day in every month.
Every one who came to propose his questions
to the oracle was obliged in the first place to
bring some considerable present, so that the
shrine of Apollo at Delphi was one of the richest
magazines of treasure in the world.
In the next place a sacrifice Avas offered to the
deity: and accordingly as the priest pronounced
that it was favourably received or rejected by
Apollo, the Pythia consented or refused to mount
the sacred tripod, and to answer the questions'
which were proposed to her : when Alexander
the Great, previously to his expedition against
Darius, consulted the oracle, the priestess re
fused to enter upon the holy ceremony ; but
Alexander, unused to contradiction, pulled and
pressed her towards the tripod: upon which the
Pythia at length exclaimed, " My son, thou art
invincible:" these words from the priestess Alex
ander accepted as the answer of the God, and
went away satisfied with his successf.
The answers of the oracle were generally deli Diodorus Siculus, xvi. 25.

f Plut. de Alexandre.

BIANA.

51

vered is obscure, sometimes in ambiguous terms':

thus when Croesus king of Lydia marched against
Cyrus the Great, the oracle informed him that
in the event of his campaign he should " overturn
a great empire ;" he did so, but the empire over
turned was not that of Cyrus, but his ownh : again,
when Pyrrhus king of Epirus engaged in a con
federacy against the Romans, the oracle thus an
swered his enquiries : Credo te, Macida, Romanos vincere posse'; which, according to the
rules of classical construction, might either
mean, " that he should conquer the Romans," or
that " the Romans should conquer him:" Pyr
rhus understood it in one sense, but the course
of events made it be finally interpreted in the
other.

VI.
DIANA.
The Goddess of the Moon and of Hunting.Her Figure
and Appearance.She is also the Goddess of Chastity
and Magic.Spartan Boys whipped at her Altar.
Diana is the twin-sister of Apollo, and like him
has various offices : in heaven she is the moon,
as Apollo is the sun : on earth she is the Goddess
of hunters ; and in Tartarus she is Hecate : it
jEschyli Prorn. 662. k Suidas. v. KpoTirof.
i This is a
Terse of Ennius, mentioned by Cicero, together with the oracle
concerning Croesus. De Div. ii. 56.
2

52

DIANA.

was also her office to watch over women on occa

sions of child-birth ; and she was worshipped in
all cross-ways, from which circumstance she ob
tained the name of Trivia (three ways).
By the painters and sculptors she was most
frequently represented in her character of a hun
ter: in this character she was attended by a bevy
of nymphs, beautiful and exquisitely formed,
herself more majestic, and taller by the head,
than any of her followers ; her legs were bare,
well shaped and strong: her feet were covered
with buskins ; she had a bow in her hand, and a
quiver full of arrows at her back*.
Diana is the Goddess of chastity, more prone
to the pursuit of wild beasts than the indulgen
ces of love : this is metaphorical : the silent
moon, with its mild and silver light, and that re
freshing coolness which always accompanies a
moon-light scene, was regarded as the very em
blem of chastity.
In her character of Hecate she is sometimes con
founded with Proserpine, the queen of Tartarus :
as Hecate however she is principally distinguished^
as the Goddess of magic and enchantments: in
reality the moon was regarded as having great
concern in all enchantments; and it was believed
by the ancients, that the magicians of Thessaly
could draw down the moon from heaven by the
force of their incantations : the eclipses of the.
moon ' were supposed to proceed from this
cause; on which account it was usual at the
time of the eclipse to beat drums and cymbals,
that the incantations might not be heard, and
k Horn. Od. . 108. Virg. J3n. i. 49S.

TENUS.
that the power of the magic might be rendered
ineffectual '.
The temple of Diana at Ephesus is mentioned
in the New Testament, and is regarded as one of
the seven wonders of the world : at Sparta, one
of the cities best beloved by Diana, an oracle had
commanded that human blood should be shed at
her altar ; in consequence of which it was at first
customary to sacrifice human victims ; bat Lyairgus, the great Spartan lawgiver, abolished
this custom, and substituted in the room of it a
law, that boys of high birth should be whipped
at the altar of Diana, till blood followed the lash ;
by this law he purposed to enure them to hard
ship, and the whipping was sometimes so severe,
that the boys expired under it without a groan"' :
in Taurica, where there was a celebrated temple
of Diana, the rules of the worship required, that
every foreigner who was found in the country,
from shipwreck or otherwise, should be immo
lated at the altar of the Goddess".

VII.
VENUS.
Her Origin.She is the Goddess of Beauty and Love.
Her Figure and Appearance.-^The Cestus, or Girdle
of Venus.Cupid her Son.
Venus, as I shall presently have occasion to
mention, is described by Hesiod and the Myco
logists0 as the offspring of Coelus, and indebted .
1 Hor. Epod. v. 45 et seqq.
Eur. Iph. Taur. 384.

m Plut in Lycurgo.
Chap. ix.
D3

54

VENUS.

for her birth to the wound inflicted upon him by

Saturn ; in that case she is elder than Jupiter : by
Homer and Virgil however she is repeatedly
brought forward addressing Jupiter as her father ;
and sbe is sometimes called Dionaea, from Dione,
a sea-nymph, supposed to be her mother* :
these differentjmethods of describing her, arise out
of the different views that are taken of her cha
racter: when the poet thinks of her in a personal
light, as the Goddess of Beauty, and the roost
beautiful of female forms, it is natural to figure
her in the bloom of youth; sbe is then the daugh
ter of Jupiter : but she is very often spoken of in
an allegorical sense: it it thus she is addressed by
Lucretius', one of the finest of the Latin poets,
in his book on the Universe : she is then the
source of activity and life throughout the world :
she is God's first command to man and animals
and the fruits of the earth, " Increase and mul
tiply," transformed from a literal precept into an
ever-moving impulse : taken in this sense, she is
of course ranked amongst the eldest of the Gods :
and, as the ancients believed that water was the
origin of things, Venus, or the principle of com
municated life, is also figured as rising out ofthe sea.
Venus was born according to some near the
island of Cythera, and according to others, of
Cyprus: her most celebrated temple was that of
Paphos, a city in the latter of these islands.
Venus is the Goddess of beauty and love : her
person is endowed with every quality that can
render it alluring and attractive : her carriage is
in the most exquisite degree graceful : in Venus
there is no haughtiness, no forbidding expression
t Virgil. iEn.iii. 19,

1 Lib. i. l.etseqq,

CUPID.

55

of majesty; her countenance is adorned with

smiles, and expressive of the sweetest gentleness,
and encouragement ; yet in her most admired sta
tues she is represented as modest, conscious and
bashful, semi-reducta, " balf-withdrawing;" like
Milton's Eve, with
virgin modesty,
And conscience of her worth,
Not obvious, not obtrusive, but retir'd,
The more desirable.
The chariot of Venus is drawn by turtle-doves,
the emblems of indissoluble affection : she is con
stantly attended by Cupid, her son though it is
uncertain by what father, and a train of little
loves, that is, of beautiful boys with cherub faces
and dimpled cheeks, who hover round her,
buoyed up on silken wings : the myrtle is parti
cularly sacred to Venus ; and she is famous for
her cestus, or girdle, which had this property,
that by whatever female it was worn, her charms
were sure to appear irresistible to the person whose
affection she desired to command '.
Cupid, the God of love, the son of Venus, is
always represented under the figure of a beauti
ful boy, with a how and arrows : these arrows
are the shafts of love, and it is affirmed by the
poets, that neither Gods nor men could resist
their power : Cupid is extremely genlle, agree
able and caressing in his manner, but in his heart
full of deception and malice : he is oflen re
presented as blind, because the lover does not
see the real qualities of his mistress, but only
those in which his own fancy attires her; and he
has wings, because there is no passion of the
mind more precarious than love, and the most
' II. 5. 214.
D4

MERCURY.
vehement regard sometimes afterward turns to the
bitterest hatred.
VIII.
MERCURY.
The Messenger of the Gods.His Figure.The Petasus.
Talariaand Caduceus.Its Virtues.He is the
God of Letters and Eloquenceof Trafficand of
Thieves.Hermes Trismegistus, an Egyptian Histo
rian.
Mercury fs the son of Jupiter, by Maia the
daughter of Atlas, and grand-daughter of Iapetus one of the Titans : his peculiar office in the
council of Olympus, is that he is the messenger
of the Gods, and particularly of Jupiter': for
this purpose he is furnished with a winged hat,
called petasus, and with wings to be worn on his
feet, called talaria .- the figure given to him by
the statuaries is that which is best adapted for
nimblcness and celerity ; and nothing is more
obvious, than that those properties of the human
figure which are best fitted for these purposes, are
closely allied to the perfection of symmetry and
beauty.
Mercury also possessed certain attributes inti
mately connected with magic and enchantment; and
jn this character he bore a wand, called caduceus:
this wand had wings at the top, and two serpents
wreathed themselves about the stalk : it was en
dowed with such virtues, that whoever it touched,
if awake, would immediately sink into a pro' Horn. Od. i. 15, et 44 et seqq.

THE'CADUCEUS.

57

found sleep, and, if asleep, would start up full

of life and alacrity: when it touched the dying,
their souls gently parted from the mortal frame :
and, when it was applied to the dead, tke dead
returned to life : it had also sovereign power in
appeasing quarrels and controversies : if the God
touched with it two mortal enemies, they in
stantly began to regard each other with eyes of
affection : one of the earliest experiments that
was made of it in this respect, happened thus :
two serpents were fighting with terrible fierce
ness ; their eyes flashed fire, their hissings were
infernal, it seemed as if the combat could end in
nothing less than the destruction of both : Mer
cury, happening to come by, touched them with
liis wand ; they were immediately at peace ; they
embraced each other ; they wreathed themselves
round the instrument of their reconciliation, and
remained ever after the ornament of the caduceus
of the God.
It is in virtue of the caduceus that Mercury
is represented not only as one of the celestial, but
also of the infernal deities : it was his office to
conduct the spirits of the departed to the boat of
Charon, of whom I shall have occasion to speak
hereafter : and again, according to the ancient
doctrine of transmigration, or the passing of the
soul after death into the bodies of other men or of
animals, it was Mercury who led the spirits back,
after having resided for some time in the nether or
lower world, to revisit the cheerful beams of the
sun.
. ,
There are many things related of this God,
which forcibly suggest to us the idea of a man,
who for his great and essential services to his
fellow-beings, was worshipped as a divinity after
, d 5

58

MERCURY.

his death. He is said to be the inventor ofletters ;

and his Greek name, Hermes, is derived from st
word in that language which signifies " to inter
pret" or " explain :" in this quality Mercury
is the God of eloquence, as Apollo is the God of
poetry : an ingenious writer of the present age
[John Home Tooke, in his Diversions of PurlcyJ
has considered the wings which this God annexes
to his feet, as emblematical of the wings which
language gives to the thoughts of men.
Mercury, or Hermes, was perhaps some glo
rious character in some remote age of the world,
who reclaimed men from their savage way of liv
ing, and taught them the arts of civilization: in
allusion to this he is styled the " Pacificator,"
and his caduceus represents the power which his
persuasions had to appease the angry passions
of the mind.
Mercury is further represented as the inventor
of traffic, and is said to have introduced the use
of weights, measures and contracts : this is one of
the fruits of civilization, and, when moderately
and fairly applied, has been of great benefit to
mankind.
Traffic however is too apt to degenerate into a
system of fraud : when men engage in buying
and selling and barfer as a profession, the more
keen and grasping among them will endeavour
to buy cheap and sell dear, and cozen and over
reach those with whom they have any dealings :
the licentiousness of Greek imagination has taken
hold of this, and has indecorously represented
Mercury as the God of thieves : when once they
had done that, they proceeded to complete the
picture, and made t!:c messenger of Jupiter one
of the light-fingered crew within the reach of

NEPTUNE.

59

whom no commodity is safe : Apollo, they say,

having on a certain occasion assumed the office
ofa shepherd, Mercury stole away part of the
flock which his brotherGod was tending: Apollo
grew angry, and took up his bow, that he might
revenge himself on the thief, but Mercury made
slight conveyance of his quiver, and all his ar
rows along with it: atdifFerent times he purloined
from Neptune his trident, from Venus her girdle,
from Mars his sword, from Jupiter his sceptre,
and from Vulcan a variety of his tools'.
We must not confound Hermes, the Grecian
God, with Hermes Trismegistus, an ancient
Egyptian author, from whom Sanction iat hon,
a Phcenician historian, drew part of the mate
rials of his work: this Hermes, who lived about
four hundred years after the date of Noah's flood,
is represented by Plato and Cicero as having in
vented letters, the art of writing, and hierogly
phics : I suspect they have taken some attributes
from the original Mercury , or Hermes, and given
them to the Egyptian.
IX.
NEPTUNE.
The God of the Sea. His Figure and Appearance.
His Extensive Authority.
Neptune is on all hands admitted to be the
son of Saturn, and the brother of Jupiter: when
the inheritance of their father was divided
by lot among his sons, the sea was the portion
i Horn. Hymn, in Merc. Hor. Od. i. 10.
1) G

60

NEPTUNE.

which fell to Neptune: if you consider how ter

rible and beautiful an element the sea is, and
what a vast portion the ocean occupies of the
globe we inhabit, .you will not wonder that Nep
tune is considered as one of the greatest of I be
Gods : he is represented with black hair and
beard, and with a mantle of blue: one of his prin
cipal attributes is the trident, or fork with three
teeth, which always serves him for a sceptre.
As the God of the sea, Neptune presided over
the storms and the tempests : Virgil" introduces
him, in the midst of a tempest which the Winds
had excited without his permission, as rising to
the surface of the ocean, driving away the
Winds with an awful rebuke, opening the quick
sands in which certain ships were locked, push
ing off other siiips from the rocks upon which
they had struck, and introducing a sudden and
universal serenity and calm.
We shall have occasion to talk of Neptune
again, when we speak of the Gods of the sea :
this was his peculiar dominion: but he was one
of the members of the council of Olympus ;
Pluto, though with Jupiter and Neptune, he
was the third of those who divided the empire of
the world among them, yet is not ranked with
the Superior Gods, because his province was the
infernal regions, and he never quitted his gloomy
dominions.
JEn. i 124.

61

VULCAN.
X.
VULCAN.

The God of Vulgar and Material Fire, and of the Me

tallic Arts.Cause of his Lameness.He is the
Artificer of Heaven.His Uncouth Figure.He is
the Husband of Venus.
Vulcan, the God of fire, or more properly the
presiding divinity of those who worked in the
metallic arts, is the son of Jupiter and Juno,
or according to others, of Juno without a father,
as Minerva was the daughter of Jupiter without
a mother : he was educated in heaven among- the
Gods, but was thrust out of the celestial abodes
by Jupiter, and thrown down to earth : afterward
he became restored to his rank, and was one of the
council of Olympus.
The occasion of his disgrace was thus : Jupiler
and Juno, the king and queen of the Gods, had
often unhappy misunderstandings : in one of these
Jupiter was so provoked with the perverseness of
his wife, that he hung her out by her arms,
suspended in a golden chain, from the threshold
of heaven, having fastened a heavy anvH to her
feet11: Vulcan was moved with pity to see his
mother in this disgraceful situation, and secretly
relieved her from it ; an act of disobedience
which so exasperated Jupiter, that he kicked
Vulcan out of heaven : Vulcan was nine days in
the fall, and at length lighted with such force on
the island of Lemnos, that he broke his leg, and
was lame ever after*.
1 Horn. II. <r. 17.

y Horn. II. . 590.

62

MARRIAGE OF VULCAN.

Vulcan is the artificer of heaven : he forged the

armour of the Gods and Demigods, and the
thunder of Jupiter: he constructed the golden
chambers in which each of the superior deities
were accustomed to reside: never was there so con
summate a workman as Vulcan : in Homer's de
scription of the shield he made for Achilles, it ap
pears that it was enamelled with metals of various
colours, and contained at least twelve historical
designs, with groups of figures, all of admirable
expressiveness and beauty: the seats which he
constructed for the Gods, were so contrived, that
they came self-moved from the sides of the apart
ment, to the place where each God seated himself
at the table when a council was to be held1.
Lemnos is supposed for this reason to have
been the earthly residence assigned to Vulcan,
because it abounded in blacksmiths, and artificers
in different metals: he was also said to have
a forge where he was busy in forming the thun
der, within the concave of mount iEtna, and in
deed wherever a volcanic mountain was to be
found.
Vulcan is usually represented, seated at his
anvil, with his fire and all his tools about him,
holding a thunderbolt with a pair of pincers in
his left hand, and in his right a hammer raised in
the act to strike: he is also supposed to be all
sooty and discoloured with the squalidness inci
dent to his employments.
What, is most extraordinary is, that this ugly
and deformed God is described to be the husband
of Venus, Goddess of beauty, and father of the
lovely, cherub-faced boy, Cupid : perhaps this
z Horn. II. cr. 369 et seqq.

pa.63.

YESTA

i
/' I

/ \

VESTA.
is in Vulcan's capacity of God of fire, as love
has always been represented under the image of a
flame burning in the breast of the lover: thus
allegorically, beauty may be said to be the mo
ther, and the fire lighted up in the breast of its
admirer* the father, of Cupid, or love, or the
perpetual adoration which the lover is repre
sented in poetry as paying fo the lady of ti is af
fections : the ancients might also conceal under
this genealogy a satirical insinuation against the
passion of love, which when it exists purely
and chastely between the respectable father and
mother of a family, producing domestic har
mony and parental care, is one of the best of
our feelings; but when it leads human beings to
trample on all that is honourable and well-regu
lated in society, as by licentious poets and other
writers it is too frequently described, it is one
of the deepest blots to which our nature is ex
posed,
k
XI.
VESTA.
The Goddess of the Refined and Celestial Fire.Her
Origin.Distinguished from Tellus, or the Elder
. Vesta, Mother of Saturn.The Vestal Virgins.
* -/^jaturn had by his wife, Rhea, or Cybele, three
Sons, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, and three
daughters, Juno, Vesta, and Ceresa; it remains
to speak of the two last.
Vesta stands for two of the four elements,
earth and fire : this is most clearly explained by
Ovid. Fasti, vi. 285. Hes.The. 454.

64

VESTA.

referring the two interpretations to two different

Veslas: the elder being Tellus, the wife of Coelus,
and, as she is often called, " the most ancient
of the Gods:" and the younger the daughter of
Saturn, and sister of J tipiter : it is this latter
deity, that makes one in the council of Ofympus.
Vesta, considered as the personification of fire,
Was a principal object of ancient worship : if we
regard Vulcan as the God of fire, the element over
which he presided was gross, vulgar, and impure,
or was of that sort by which the milder and more
genial operations of nature are impeded : it Was
the fire of the artificer, the fire of licentious love,
the fire with which the thunderbolts of Jupiter
are formed, or that in which the universe shall
perhaps one day be consumed : but the fire of
which Vesta was the divinity, was of the purest
sort, that by which all nature is pervaded, which
is the element of life, the etcmfen^yJ Which all
things grow and expand themselvas; 8(>wl in virtue
of which they are endowed with health and; vi
gour: chymists inform us that flie elenk'rrt ofVflre,
or heat, is to be found inalmost every substan'ce
in nature, particular^ in every, substance that
has life.
Jr . '-'''..
Vesta seems to have Been theiayourite sister 'of*'
Jupiter, whbhaving proposed to her to ask forany'*
privilege she pleased and it should be granted* '
to her, the favour she demanded was that she
should remain perpetually a virgin, and that th<f
first oblations in all sacrifices should be presented '
to her.
,
The worship of Vesta constituted a very emi
nent branch in the religion of the ancient Ro
mans: her rites are said to have been brought
into Italy by ./Eneas upon bis escape'from the

THE VESTAL VIRGINS.

65

siege of Troy b : Numa, the successor of Romu

lus, and second king of Rome, founded her
temple in that city, and instituted the celebrated
order of priestesses, called the Vestals, to attend
upon it : their first duty was to take care of the
sacred fire; which was not placed upon an altar
or a hearth, but was hung up in the air in
earthen vessels: it was kept perpetually burning,
and was replaced every March by a fresh fire,
lighted from the beams of the sun : if ever it were
extinguished, it was believed that the state was
threatened with the greatest calamities: the
Vestals also took a vow of virginity, which if
they broke, their punishment was to be buried
alive, being shut up in a vault under ground,
with a lamp and a small quantity of provisions,
and there left to. perish: in recompense for this
severe law, the Vestals obtained extraordinary
privileges arid/- res pect : they had the most ho
nourable sc$tV at games and festivals ; the con
suls and.^pflrtpalVmagistrates gave way to them
wherever [bey met them ; .their declarations in
trial* v?ere admittciHvitho'ut the formality of an
oath ; arid if they hsfppened to encounter in their
-path a criminal gaing to the place of execution,
, he immediately obtained his pardon.

b Ov. Futi, iii. 483.

CERES.
XII.
CERES.
The Goddess of Corn and Harvests.Proserpine, her
Daughter, carried off by Pluto, as she was gathering
Flowers.Ceres searches through the World for her.
Agreement between Pluto and Ceres.
Ceres is the Goddess of corn and harvests : and
in proportion to the importance of corn for the
subsistence of man, was the solemnity with which
the religious rites sacred to Ceres were comme
morated : 1 have told you before of the Eleusinian Mysteries, of which Ceres was the presiding
divinity.
Ceres had a favourite daughter, called Proser
pine, of whom Jupiter wag the father ; nothing
can be prettier than the story of the rape (or car
rying off, from the Latin rapio, raptus) of Pro
serpine*.
'
', '
Pluto, the God of Tartarus, or the infernal
regions, was desirous, like' his brothers; Jupiter
and Neptune, to marry : he made proposals to
several Goddesses, but all refused him: by living
in hell, his complexion contracted the colour of
the place, and his figure was otherwise so un
couth, and unlike what the ladjes are accustomed
to admire in a man, that none of the lady^jpha*
bitants of heaven would have any thing to sa^to
him.
Pluto, as he could not get a wife by fair means,
determined to try such as are foul : the favourite
residence of Ceres and her daughter was Sicily;
e Horn. Hymn, in Cer. Ov. Met. t. 359.

PKOSERPINE.

67

feigned to be so on account of the extreme ferti

lity of that island, which made it for a long time
the granary of Italy and Greece : one day Pro
serpine, thinking no harm, was gathering flowers,
amidst her* attendant nymphs, in the beauti
ful vale of Enna in the centre of the island : while
she was engaged in this innocent employment,
Pluto started up through a cleft of the earth, in
a black chariot drawn by coal-black horses : he
no sooner cast his eyes upon Proserpine, than he
resolved she should be his queen: he caught her
up to his chariot, and immediately descended into
hell : Proserpine was terribly frightened : she
cried because she did not like to be run away
with, and she cried because she lost in the strug
gle the nosegay she had been gathering.
While this was happening, the attendants of
Proserpine were scattered different ways, looking
for the finest flowers; so that, as all passed in a
moment, no one of them could tell what was be
come of their mistress: Ceres, who seldom suf
fered her daughter out of her sight, but was now
accidentally absent, presently returned: never did
mother grieve more constantly for the loss of
her child : she lighted two torches at the top of
mount Etna, and sought her night and day,
through the world : at last returning in despair
to Sicily, she chanced to spy the girdle of Pro
serpine floating on the surface of a lake, and the
nymph of a neighbouring fountain at the same
time informed her whither her daughter had been
taken.
Ceres, who had before grieved for the loss of
Proserpine, now grieved the more, when she
found that she had got so ugly a mate, and was
gone to live in so frightful a place : she com

68

PROSERPINE.

plained to Jupiter, who sympathised with her

grief, and told her that she should have her
daughter back again, if it proved that she had
eaten nothing in the infernal regions : but if she
had, the laws of fate were against her., and there
was no remedy.
Ceres was satisfied with this decision : she felt
sure that Proserpine, resenting her being run away
with, could not have been prevailed on to touch
a morsel in hell: this was nearly the fact: it hap
pened however that one day Proserpine walked
alone in the gardens of Pluto, and was tempted
with the beauty of a pomegranate : she gathered
it, and thinking nobody saw her, picked out
seveu of the seeds, put them in her mouth, and
swallowed them : this was .'ill, but this was
enough : the fact was discovered, and the hopes
of Ceres were disappointed : at length a compro
mise was made between Pluto, the husband, and
Ceres, the mother of Proserpine, that she should
spend half the year in heaven with her mother,
and half the year in Tartarus with her husband.
This has been allegorically explained : Proser
pine is said 1o represent the seed, and Ceres the
fertility of the earth: now the seed of wheat in
particular, remains during the whole winter hid
in the ground, while in the summer, it bursts its
concealment, produces the stalk and the ear, and
dilates itself in the face of the skies.

69

CHAP. IX.
WAR OF THE GIANTS.
Their Origin.Tellus excites them to make War upon
Jupiter.Their Figure.Typhon.Tityus. Othus
and Ephialtes.Enceladusand Briareus.Theii Man
ner of Fighting:The Gods betake themselves to
Flightare assisted by Hercules are finally vic
torious.Punishment of the Giants.
As under the reign of Saturn there was a re
bellion of theTitans, sounder the reign of Jupiter
happened the war of the Giants.
,
When Saturn deposed his falher Ccelus from
the government of -heaven, in the scuffle he gave
Ccelus a wound, and cut away a part of his flesh:
the part which was separated Saturn threw into
the sea, and from it, as from a seed, sprung the
Goddess Venus : the drops of blood from the
wound, fell on the earth, and were the parent
source of the Giants*.
There is some degree of puzzle and contradic
tion (as frequently happens in the Grecian my
thology), about the parentage of the Giants: if
what I have just said is to be taken literally, they
are then entitled to the appellation commonly
given them, of Sons of the Earth: but, if we
recollect that the wife of Ccelus their father was
called Tellus, Terra, or the Earth, and take the
story that way, we may then consider them as
* Hesiod. The. 174 et seqq.

70

WAR OF THE GIANTS.

full brothers to the Titans both by father and

mother, only later as to the period of their birth :
they were a sort of second brood.
Tellus did not look with a favourable eye upon
the usurpation of Jupiter: she saw him first oppressing the whole body of her sons, under pre
tence of vindicating the cause of one of them,
Saturn, and afterwards deposing Saturn himself :
at length she excited the Giants to revenge upon
Jupiter the cause of their brothers the Titans.
The Giants are described as terrible monsters:
like the former brood, they had fifty heads and a
hundred hands a piecee : their stature was enor
mous, and, instead of two feet, their lower ex
tremities were two amazing serpents' tails, that
writhed, and folded, and beat the ground as they
passed along.
Though the Giants are spoken of collectively
as Sons of the Earth, vet, when the Greeks come
to describe them separately, they ascribe to some
of them a different origin : Typhceus, or Typhon, the most terrible of them, is said by some
to be the son of Juno without a father r he was so
tall that he touched the East with his right hand,
and the West with his left, and as he stood up
right, his front knocked against the stars : a
hundred dragons' head grew from his shoulders :
his body was covered with feathers, scales, ragged
hair, and adders : the ends of his fmgers were
snakes : his eyes sparkled with fire, and his mouth
belched out flames : his voice was particularly
terrible, and when he pleased, he could make it
like the roaring of a wild bull, the angry cries of
He!. The. 670.

WEAPONS OF THE GIANTS.

71

a lion, and the yell of a lion's whelp: the loftiest

mountains trembled at the sound.
Another of the Giants was Tityus, the son of
Jupiter and Elara : he was of so vast a size, that
bis mother died at his birth, and as she was
brought to bed of him in a cavern, the earth was
rent to give him way before he could see the light
of the sun: when he lay down, his bulk covered
nine acres of ground': he was guilty of some af
front to Latona, the mother of Apollo, and Ju
piter sentenced him for it to hell, where a vulture
continually feeds upon his liver, which grows
again as fast as it is devoured.
Two more of the Giants were Othus and Ephialtes* : they grew nine inches every month, and
were nine years -old when they entered into the
war against Jupiter.
Others of the Giants, were Enceladus, by some
thought the same as Typhon ; ./Egeon, sometimes
taken for Briareus: and Porphyrion: such were
the enemies that conspired against the throne of
Jnpiter.
The Greeks always transfer the geography of
the fabulous personages they received into their
creed, -to their own country ; they therefore re
present the Giants as dwelling in the peninsula of
Phlegra, or Pallene, at no great distance from
Olympus, the habitation of the Gods.
The weapons of the Giants in this war were no
less terrible than their persons: they tore up
mountains by the roots, and cast them at the
Gods : they heaped Ossa on Pelion h, that by this
means they might scale Heaven, or Olympus ;
f Horn. Od. 575.
Virg. G. i. 278,

S Horn. Od.

306.

11 Ov. Met. i. 151.

72

WEAPONS OF THE GIANT*.

they tossed about flaming forests, in the room ot

darts : and hurled massy stones and solid rocks
against Heaven, some of which fell upon the
earth, and became mountains, and others into the
sea, where they became islands.
The Gods themselves were terrified at the
strangeness of this assault, and flying before the
enemy, took refuge in Egypt, where they hid
themselves in the forms of different animals, Ju
piter as a ram, Juno as a cow. Mercury in the
form of a bird called the ibis, Apollo in the form
of a crow, Diana as a cat, Venus as a fish, and
Bacchus as a goat'.
In all this there is some allusion to the religion
of the Egyptians, who worshipped their Gods
under the figures of different animals, a bull, a
dog, a cat, a crocodile, and even of leeks,
onions, and beans: Jupiter Amman in particu
lar, who had a famous oracle in the Egypiian
province of Lybia, was worshipped under the
form of a ram .
At length the Gods resumed courage, and de
termined to renew the war : there was a rumour
in heaven, that Jupiter could not succeed itt
this war, unless he called up a mortal to his as
sistance : by the advice of Minerva therefore,
he sent for Hercules, of whom more will be said
hereafter : it was perhaps on this occasion that
the Cyclops, Brontes, Arges, and Steropes, first
forged for Jupiter his thunderbolts.
All the Gods now contributed their strength
for restoring the tranquillity of heaven, and,
male and female, each killed a Giant: Typhceus
however wounded Jupiter, and taking him prii Ov. Met. v. 327.

PEACE RESTORED.

73

<soner, hid him in a cave in Cilicia : here Mer

cury found the Father of the Gods, and set him
at liberty: in the conclusion all the Giants were
overwhelmed with the thunderbolts of heaven:
some were buried under mountains, others flayed
alive, and others subjected to various other pu
nishments: Typhosus was buried under the island
of Sicily, which being terminated in its extre
mities by three promontories, Pelorus was placed
upon his right arm, Pachynus upon bis left, and
Lilybaeum upon his feet: vEtna is his breathing
hole, and as the monster turns from side to sidc^
the mountain vomits up flames of fire".
k Ov. Met. V. 346.

74

CHAP. X.
OF THE FAMILY OF IAPETUS AND THE
CREATION OF MAN.
Atlas a great Astronomersustains the Heavens upon
his Shoulders.The Pleiades his Daughters.Ca
lypso.The Hesperidestheir Garden.Promethe
us.His affront to Jupiter.His Man of Clay.
He steals Fire from Heaven.Vulcan makes a Wo
man, Pandora.She is rejected by Prometheus.
Prometheus chained to Mount Caucasus.Immorta
lity given to Man, miscarries, because it is confided
to an Ass.
There is a longer history-annexed to the
family oflapetus, one of the brothers of Saturn,
commonly called the Titans, than to that of any
other branch of this race, except the progeny
of Saturn himself.
Iapetus, who like Saturn married one of his
sisters, by name Clymene, had by her four sons,
Atlas, Mencetius, Prometheus, and Epimetheus.
Atlas, for the part which he took in the war
of the Titans against Jupiter, was condemned
perpetually to support the weight of the heavens
on his shoulders : this fabulous relation has been
explained to mean, that he was a great astrono
mer, perhaps the first inventor of astronomy:
in this explanation then we have an example of
what was spoken of in the beginning, that the
Gods worshipped by the ancients had once been
i Hes. The. 07 et seqq.; where may be found the whole
account of this family, and of the Giants.

CHILDREN OF ATLAS.

75

men, and that they were deified after their deaths

for lheir merits acid services to mankind.
Atlas had one son, called Hesperus, and seven
daughters, the Allanlides, by name Maia, Elcctra, Taygeta, Astcropc, Merope, Halcyone, and
Celamo: the eldest of these was the mother of
Mercury: the children of Atlas imparted their
names to several of the heavenly bodies: Hesperus
is the evening star, and the seven daughters of
Atlas gave names to the sevca stars, commonly
called the Pleiades.
Mycologists ascribe to Atlas another daughter
named Calypso: she is famous for having de
tained Ulysses, king of Ithaca, on his return
from the siege of Troy, seven years in the island
of Ogygia her residence, by a sort of forcek : Ca
lypso oftered^iJlysses, .it he would always remain
with her, that* tike a God, he should never die:
but the love which ^lysses bore to his wife and
his country was so great, as to determine him to
refuse the splendid bribe.
Hesperus, the son of Atlas, had three daugh
ters, called the Hesperides: their names were
,/Egle, Arethusa, and Hesperithusa: Juno com
mitted to their care the precious trees which bore
the apples that she had presented to her hiftband
as a marriage-gift : the apples were of gold, and
the orchard in which they grew was called, from
the name of its guardians, the garden of the Hes
perides: they were assisted in the discharge of
this momentous office by a terrible dragon.
Mcncetius was one of the Titan race which
were cast down into hell.
Prometheus was, like the rest of his family, a;>
k Horn. Od. a. ?3re2

76

CREATION OF MAN.

enemy to the progeny of Saturn : a dispute is said

to have arisen, as to what part of the sacrifices
offered by the subjects of Jupiter was to be consi
dered as appropriated to the God at whose altar
it was slain: for from the first institution of sa
crifices, it was the custom for the victim to be
amicably shared, according to a fixed rule, be
tween the God and his worshipper*
Prometheus offered' himself as umpire in this
dispute: he was always regarded as the wisest,
or rather as the craftiest and most! wily, of tbe
heavenly race : he killed two bulls, and skilfully
divided the flesh, the fat, the offal and the bones:
he sewed up the flesh very neatly in the skin of
one of the bulls, and the bones, inclosed in an
envelop of fat, in the other : he then called upon
Jupiter to look on the parcels,. abd^tO say which
of them he chose for his owriifratie.: Jupiter de
ceived by the fair appearagce of tbe fat which
peeped here and there through' tne- apertures of
the skin, chose that parcel, in pfeference to the
other which contained all that was most whole
some and valuable of the two animals : this is an
ugly story ; and t he part assigned m it to Jupiter
is wholly unworthy of our idea of a God.
From this moment Jupiter became the bitter
enemy of Prometheus, and to punish him and
his race, withheld from them the use of the celes
tial element of fire : Prometheus, who surpassed
the whole universe in mechanical skill and con
trivance, formed a man of clay of such exquisite
workmanship, that he wanted nothing but a liv
ing soul to cause him to be acknowledged the
paratronof creation: Minerva, the Goddess of arts,
b( held the peiformance of Prometheus with ap
probation, and offered him any assistance iu het

CREATION OF WOMAN.

77

power to complete his work : she conducted him

to Heaven, where he watched his opportunity to
carry offat the tip of his wand a portion of celestial
fire, from the chariot of the sun : with this he ani
mated his image : and the man of Prometheus im
mediately moved, and thought, and spoke, and
became every thing that the fondest wishes of his
creator could ask.
Jupiter became still more exasperated than
ever with this new specimen of Prometheus's abi
lity and artifice: he ordered Vulcan, the great
artificer of . Heaven,yto make a woman of clay,
that should be still more consummate and beauti
ful of structure than Prometheus's man : with this
alluring present Jupiter determined to tempt Pro
metheus to' his ruin; all 1 he Gods of the Saturnian race, eager to' abet the project of their chief,
gave her each one a several gift, from which rcumstance she o.bt^jned the name of Pandora, all
gifts: Venus gary, her the power to charm ; the
Graces bestowed ifpdh her symmetry of limb and
elegance of mfions; Apollo the accomplish
ments of vocal and instrumental music ; Mercury
the art of persuasive speech ; Juno a multitude of
rich and gorgeous ornaments ; and Minerva the
management of the loom and the needle: last of
all, J upiter presented her with a sealed box, which
she was to bestow on whoever became her hus
band: thus prepared, he sent her to Prometheus
by Mercury, as if he had intended him a com
pliment upon the wonders of his own perform
ance: Prometheus however saw through the de
ceit, and rejected her: Mercury then presented
her to Epimetheus, Prometheus's brother, who
was less on h is guard, received the seemingly an
gelic creature w^h delight, and eagerly opened

78

PROMETHEUS.

the box she brought him ; the lid was no sooner

unclosed than a multitude of calamities atid evils
of all imaginable sorts flew out, which dispersed
themselves over the world, and from that fatal
moment have never ceased to afflict the human
race :. Hope only remained at the bottom, being
all that is left us to relieve our sorrows, and ren
der the labours and troubles of life capable of be
ing endured.
Jupiter thus constantly failing in every indi
rect attempt of retaliation upon his redoubtable
adversary Prometheus, at last proceeded to a
more open hostility : he sent Vulcan and Mer
cury, who seizing upon this extraordinary per
sonage, conveyed him by main force to Mount
Caucasus, where, being chained to the rock, a
vulture commissioned by Jupiter cowered upon
hisJircast, continually preying upon his liver,
which grew again as fast asitwas devoured:
how the unfortunate Prometheus was delivered
from this punishment 1 shJll 'have occasion to
mention hereafter, [p. 226.]
*
The fable of Prometheus's man, and Pandora,
the first woman, was intended to convey an alle
gorical sense: the ancients saw to how many
evils the human race is exposed, how many
years of misery many of them endure, with what
a variety of diseases they are afflicted, how the
great majority is condemned to perpetual labour
poverty and ignorance, and how many vices are
contracted by men, in consequence of which
they iifllict each other wilh a thousand additional
evils, perfidy, tyranny, cruel tortures, murder
and war: the views of the early ancients, in
times ot savage rudeness, and before the refine
ments of sociely were invented, were more me

PROMETHEUS.

'79

lancholy respecting the lot of man than ours have

been since : they could not therefore admit that
he was the creature of Jupiter: they were rather
prone to believe that Jupiter was from the first
his enemy : the same views led them to speak
evil of and revile the female sex : Hesiod, who,
unless we are to except Homer, is probably the
oldest of the Grecian poets, and who has related
this story of Prometheus at length, says " that the
men are like industrious bees who by their labours
procure all the honey, and that the women are the
idle drones who fatten upon the good things which
their more assiduous fellows have accumulated1:"
it is impossible not to remark a considerable re
semblance between the story of Pandora's box,
and that of the apple with which Eve in the
Bible tempted her husband, and he did eat.
There is a further story"' that has been told of
Prometheus, which for its strangeness it may
seem worth while to relate: some of the first race
of mankind proved ungrateful to their former,
and gave a perfidious information to Jupiter
against him : Jupiter rewarded the informers
with the gift of immortal life, for all men were
hitherto mortal: he packed the gift however
upon the back of an ass: the ass had already
travelled a long way, and was exceedingly weary,
and troubled with a tormenting thirst : he at
length came to a river, but a water-serpent
guarded the stream, and would not suffer him to
drink : the wily serpent would yield upon no
other terms, than that the ass should surrender to
him the invaluable burthen he bore, in exchange
for his draught: the ass accepted the bargain :
' Hesiod. The. 593.

m Nicander, Theriac. 349.

E 4

80

PROMETHEUS.

thus the serpent obtained the gift of immortal

life, in consequence of which every year he casts
his slough, and comes forth as young and vigo
rous as ever, while the unworthy mortals for
whom Jupiter destined it, lost the reward of their
treachery.
The story of the creation of man by the hands
of Prometheus was not however universally re
ceived in the religion of the Greeks : many deem
ing it more decent and just to ascribe this event

pa.Bl.

81

CHAP. XI.
OF THE RURAL DEITIES.
Pan the God of Inanimate Naturealso of Shepherds,
Hunters, and Fishermen.His Figure.Festival of
the Lupercalia.Curious Origin of his many-reeded
Pipe. He is the Author of Panic Fears.Pales the
Goddess of Shepherds.Flora of Flowers. Pomona,
of Fruits.Vertumnus the God of Orchards.Loves
of Vertumnus and Pomona. Priapus the God of
Gardens.Terminus, of Boundaries.Satyrs, Fauns
and Sylvans.The River Gods.Story of Alpheus
and Arethusa.The Nymphs.Naiads, Dryads,
Oreads, and Hamadryads. Story of Echo and Nar
cissus.The Celestial Nymphs.
Having now finished my account of the su
perior Gods, or inhabitants of mount Olympus,
as well as of the other branches of the family, we
come next to that beautiful part of the Grecian
mythology, which replenished all nature with
invisible beings, so that whether these ancients
walked in fields or gardens, whether the object
before them were a river or a wood, whether
they travelled by sea or by land, whether they
visited the hospitable habitations of others, or
continued under the protection of their own roofs,
they felt on all occasions surrounded with the
divine nature: and, as these Gods, whatever
was their particular province or department,
were represented in the Grecian pictures and
statues under the most graceful or picturesque

S2

FAN.

figures and attitudes, Iheir worshippers had con

tinually presold to them in fancy, linn, airy and
elegant forms, floating upon the winds, listening
to their ejaculations, diving into their thoughts,
and studious of their prosperity and happiness.
Every one must feel how superior this state of
mind is to that of the atheist : if the Greeks were
unacquainted with the Christian God, the " Fa
ther Almighty, maker of heaven and earth," the
omniscient author of the universe ; if their Gods
appear limited, fantastic, and in this tremendous
comparison contemptible;yet they had the hap
piness to regard all nature, even the most solitary
scenes, as animated and alive, to see every where
around them a kind and benevolent agency, and to
find on every side motives for contentment, re
liance and gratitude.
The most eminent of the rural deities was Pan :
he is the presiding God of inanimate nature as it
is seen on the surface of the earth, of the trees,
the fields, the mountains, and the vallies : his
name is derived from a Greek word which signi
fies " all things," and he is therefore often mys
teriously considered as the great principle of ve
getable and animal life.
Different accounts are given of his origin : the
most common represents him as the son of Mer
cury*': some Greek writers0 ridiculously make
his mother to have been Penelope, wife of IJlysscs,
one of the Grecian kings engaged in the siege of
Troy : on the other hand the Egyptians regard
him as one, of the eight deities whom they hold
entitled to a priority of worship, before the twelve
superior Gods of the Greeks*.
Horn. Hymn, ill Pan, 0 Hefod. Eut. MS. I(t 4S.

PAN.
t Pan is represented under Hie figure of a man
in his superior parts, with horns on his head, and
a long beard which covers his breast; his skin is
dark-coloured, and his form vigorous and mus
cular; he is clothed with the skin of a leopard;
and his lower parts have ihe figure of a goat:
this mixed and discordant appearance is ex
plained to have been adopted in his statues, the
better to represent that universal nature of which
he is the symbol : his upper parts arc harmonious
and maji-slic as the heavens; his horns express the
beams of the sun, or the figure of the new moon :
his rubicund face is the image of the orb of
day: the leopard's skin he wears is emblema
tical of the starry heavens: and .the shaggy ap
pearance of his lower members is expressive of
the fertility of the earth, which is usually co
vered with shrubs, corn and grass.
Pan is especially the God of shepherds, hunt
ers, and fishermen who dwell among the crags of
the ocean: as' the God of shepherds, his worship
was assiduously cultivated in Arcadia*, and in
this character he is usually furnished with a pipe
of uneven reeds, called "syrinx:" in Rome lie
was worshipped under th,e name of the " Lycaean
Pan" (from Lycams, a mountain in Arcadia, or
from xvnoi, the Greek name for a wolf); and his
festivals, in which his priests ran naked through
the streets with whips in their hands1, lashing
every one they met, were called Lupercalia: the
women in particular were eager to receive each
one her lash, believing that it portended fertility,
and that everyone who felt it would prove a
happy mother'.
Ov. Fasti, ii. 271.

' Id. ii. 287.

EG

s Id, ii, 423.

Si

PAN.

The ancients made an agreeable story of PanV

many-reeded pipe; they said that the God fell
in love with a beautiful nymph, named Syrinx :
the damsel, displeased at the appearance of his
goat-like feet, ran away from him : till, coming to
a river where her flight was stopped, she prayed
to the deities of the stream to rescue her : they
took pity on her distress, and metamorphosed
her into a bundle of reeds : Pan, who had just
overtaken his coy mistress, thought to throw his
arms about her, and drew back astonished to
embrace nothing but so many reeds : as he stood
in mournful surprise, the reeds, which waved
backward and forward with the wind, produced
a sound particularly soothing to his disappoint
ment: and struck with what he heard, he ga
thered them as they grew, and formed them into
a pipe which, from the name of the nymph he
admired, he called' Syrinx'.
All the strange, mysterious and unaccountable
sounds which were heard in solitary places, were
attributed to Pan, the God of rural scenery : one
story in particular was told of him, that when
the Gauls, under Brennus their leader*, made an
irruption into Greece, and were about to plunder
the city of Delphi, Pan in the night haunted
> them with extraordinary and appalling noises, so
that, heartily sick of their enterprise, they fled to
their own country, with as much speed and dis
order as if a powerful enemy had been close at
their heels : from this attribute of Pan, all un
accountable fears, by which t he minds of men
are turned away from a spirited enterprise
Qv. Met. i. 690 et seqq.

Y Pausanias. Phoc

PALES : FLORA.

85

without any apparent cause, are called " panic

fears."
Pales was the Goddess, as Pan was the God,
of shepherds: nothing is handed down to us of
her parentage, except that she is sometimes con
sidered as the same with Cybele, the wife of Sa
turn : the Romans celebrated her festival every
spring under the name of Palilia : on these occa
sions the peasants perfumed their sheep with the'
fumes of rosemary, laurel and sulphur : the sa
crifices were milk, and wafers made of millet :
and the ceremony concluded with leaping over
fires made of straw, and dancing round and be
tween them : the worshippers of Pales believed
that this Goddess was able to preserve their flocks
from wolves and from disease".
Flora is the Goddess of flowers : she was ori
ginally only one in the bevy of rustic nymphs :
but as the Greeks express it by a pleasing alle
gory, being married to Zephyrus, the God of
the west wind, he gave her empire over the
flowers of the field x : Flora was represented under
the figure of a beautiful female, blessed with per
petual youth, crowned with flowers, and bearing
the horn of plenty in her hand: the Romans, as
the season of flowers is the season when all nature
is jocund and gay, were accustomed to celebrate
the festivals of Flora with licentious rites : Lactantius", an ancient Christian writer, has taken
occasion from this circumstance, to vilify the
Goddess, and, out of zeal for his own religion,
to pretend that Flora was originally a beau
tiful, but dissolute woman of Rome, who by her
* Ov. Fasti, iv. 735,

* Id. v. 195.

J Lactantius, i. 20.

86

POMONA.

naughty manners accumulated a great fortune,

and bequeathed it to the stale, on condition that
they should celebrate an annual festival in her
honour for ever ; Ihe Roman senate accepted the
bequest, but to hide the disgrace, voted that
this naughty woman should now be proclaimed
Goddess of flowers ; but this is a story entirely of
Lactanlius's own making: no good cause however
requires to be supported by lies, and Christianity
is not at all obliged to Lactantius fur inventing
so foolish a tale.
Pomona is the Goddess of fruits: she is usually
represented under the figure of a rosy and health
ful female, resting herself upon a basket filled
with flowers and fruit, holding a bough in one
hand, and some of the apples she has gathered
from the bough in the other: though she were
one of the nymphs of the fields, she took no
pleasure in hunting, and the other amusements
so frequent in the country ; but devoted herself
entirely to the cultivation of fruit-trees: she had
for ever the pruning-hook in her hand ; she
taught the art of ingrafting; and she busied her
self in hollow ing lines in the turf, to conduct
along the refreshing rills which made her trees
prosper and flourish.
She was so occupied with these cares, that she
uever turned her thoughts to the passion of love :
and, though all the rural Gods admired her, and
would gladly have become her suitors, she looked
upon their addresses with impatience and dislike:
and, that the might be freed from their impor
tunities, surrounded her plantation with a high
wall, within which she directed tliat no person
of the male sex should be permitted to enter.

VERTUMNUS AND POMONA.

87

Ovid, the Roman poet1, tells a pleasing story

of the courtship of Pomona, the Goddess of
fruits, and Vcrtumnus, the God of orchards :
Vertumnus had, like Proteus, the sea God, of
whom 1 shall speak by and by [p. 115J, the fa
culty of changing himself into what form he
pleased; and he used this faculty for the promotion
of his suit ; he took in succession every different
form by which be thought he might intice the
Goddess, or win her attention : when his craft
and his wiles had grown too notorious in one
form, he assumed another, and thought by that
means to elude the vigilance of the guardians of
the plantation in which Pomona for eve' busied
herself : but it was all in vain : Pomona's servants
were loo faithful to be deceived, and V rtumnus
could never gain entrance into the inclosure.
Having tried every male form in succession,
Vertumnus bethought himself of assuming that
of a decrepid female : he had no sooner resolved
on this, than his smooth visage became furrowed
with wrinkles, his sparkling eyes grew dim, his
smooth auburn hair was white as snow, his erect
and graceful figure was bent toward the earth, his
voice grew sharp and squeaking, he tottered as
he walked, and supported his trembling steps on
a staff : the guardian of the orchard conceived no
alarm at this figure, and admitted him.
He immediately hobbled toward the place
where Pomona was standing : he began praising
her garden, and admiring its productions: he
next turned to commending her person, which,
he said, excelled that of other nymphs, as much
as her garden surpassed theirs: he then kissed
J Ovid. Met. xiv, 623 etscqq.

88

VERTUMNUS AND POMONA.

her again and again : the kisses of Verturanns

were warmer and more fervent, than from the ap
pearance he had assumed might have been ex
pected.
The seeming old beldame proceeded to read to
the nymph an ingenious lecture in favour of mar
riage: he pointed to a luxuriant vine which had
twined itself round a tall and sightly elm : " See
here," said he, " the benefits of conjunction :
the elm without the vine would produce leaves
only, and would be comparatively little valued:
the vine without the elm would lie prostrate on
the earth, and all its beautiful clusters would be
disfigured with dust : see how they prosper by
conjunction: take example, my child, by these:
you cannot guess how superior the pleasures of
love are to those you pursue : if you would only
give encouragement to your admirers, you would
have more suitors in your train, than ever Helen
or Penelope will be able to boast hereafter among
mortal men.
" If however," continued the deceitful God,
" you would take my advice (and you cannot
imagine how entirely I love you), you would
reject all the rest, and attach yourself to Verlumnus : j'onr pursuits are the same ; you are the
protector of fruits, and he of orchards : he can
change himself into all imaginable shapes, and
will take every day a new shape to amuse you :
he loves you ; for that you may take my word,
for Vertumnus does not know himself more inti
mately than I know him : other Gods are incon
stant, will follow other pleasures, and court other
ladies, when you have lost your novelty to them:
but Vertumnus, though the orchard is his pro
vince, and he loves all its productions, yet does

89

PRIAPOS.

not love apples, or strawberries, or pine-apples,

the blushing peach, or the yellow apricot, half
so much as he loves you."
Vertutnnus felt himself quite at home in his
subject, and made a fine speech : but Pomona
seemed to give no attention to what he was say
ing : this was coyness, by which a young maiden
often affects indifference to what she desires the
most : the God felt vexed at the little progress
he thojdit he made, and suddenly putting off the
old belaanie, resumed his proper shape: he deter
mined no longer to be trifled with, but to run
away at once with the idol of his heart : but this
was no longer necessary : the effect of the youth
and beauty in which he now appeared was asto*
nishing : the God, bursting from his disguise of
decrepitude, looked, says Ovid, like the ra
diant sun, when be breaks forth at once amidst
the opposition of a thousand clouds : Pomona,
half-convinced before by the arguments she had
heard, was totally subdued by the figure of her
lover : she frankly gave him her hand, and they
became husband and wife.
Priapus is the God of gardens : he is a deity
of a singular sort : he was the son of Venus, and
is said to have had Bacchus, a Demigod, who
will hereafter be spoken of, for his father1 : it
was customary to set up his image in gardens, to
frighten away birds b and thievish boys, and, as
something monstrous and aggravated in limbs and
featnres was thought best calculated for this pur
pose, Priapus was usually represented under an
unsightly figure : it was perhaps from this cir
cumstance, that the tale originated that Juno,
Diod. Sic. iv. 5.

> Tib. lib. i. 17.

90

TERMINUS.

perceiving that Venus was with child, and bear

ing a spile to that beautiful Goddess, attended
under a mask of friendship at the birth of Pria- '
pus, and gave him for a gift that he should be
the ugliest monster that ever was seen c.
Terminus was the God of boundaries: it was
the progress of civilization that gave sacredness
and importance to the worship of this deity; in
proportion as the limits between different states
and the lands of different proprietors became mat
ters ot consequence, the policy of nations and le
gislators taught them to inculcate that a violation
of boundaries was a crime against Heaven: Ter
minus was represented with a human head, but
without legs or other members, to express that he
was not to be removed ; or sometimes an unhewn
and fhapeless stone, placed to mark the limits of
different estates, was held a sufficient emblem of
this God : when Tarquin the Proud laid the foun
dation of the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus at
Rome, he applied by sacrifices to all the Gods
who had temples or shrines within the limits of
the consecrated spot, for permission to remove
them, and all by favourable omens signified their
consent, except the God Terminus'1.
There were innumerable rural deities among
the Greeks and Romans, beside those which have
already been mentioned: the males were distin
guished by the general names of Satyrs. Fauns,
and Sylvans: their figures were half-man and
half-goat, like that of Pan, and hence they were
also sometimes spoken of by the appellation of
Pans": they were a very frisky species ofdivinic Suidas. v. Hpiocvms. He makes Jupiter to be the father,
d Ov. Fasti, ii. 641 et GS7.
' Id. i. S9C et seqq.

.RIVER GODS.

91

ties, continually engaged in gambols and danc

ing: they dwelt chiefly in forests, and hid thornselves in caves or among the trees; they were
fond, like Robin Good-fellow, Will-uith-aWisp, and the fairies and goblins of our Saxon
ancestors, of playing little unlucky tricks upon
their mortal neighbours, and of frightening the
girls: yet, when the imagination of a Grecian
peasant or poet discovered them, through a visto
of glabra, dancing their airy rounds amidst the
brovvrraiadows of the woods, the view communi
cated a soothing sacred ncss to t he scene, and raised
the thoughts of the beholder to the contemplation
of invisible and celestial natures.
In addition to these wandering and ever change
ful deities there were others, who by 1 heir distin
guishing attributes were fixed to a particular spot:
these were the Gods protectors of rivers and trees :
every river was supposed to have its God, who
in statuary or painting was the emblematical re
presentative of the fountain from which the river
took its rise: he was seen reclining upon an urn
from which the water continually flowed ; he had
a long beard, was clothed in blue garments, and
had a crowir of reeds: his favourite dwelling was
in the caverns and deepest recesses of the river's
bed: this God was particularly interested in the
prosperity of the stream over which he presided :
if by a long dry season and a hot summer the river
shrunk within its banks, the God sympathised
with it, languished, and was lull of distress: if
the river was stained with blood, choked with
dead bodies, or otherwise impeded in its course
or robbed of its limpid clearness, he fell the deep
est resentment against its violators : Homer has

92

ALFHEUS AND ARETHUSA.

described at full in the latter part of the Iliad'

the resentment and contentions of the two cele
brated rivers of Troy, Scamander and Simois,
against Achilles, when he presumptuously pro
faned their waters.
Many stories are related of the adventures of
the River Gods: there is none of them more worth
repeating than the loves of Alpheus and Arethusa':
Alpheus is a beautiful river of Arcadia in Greece:
Arethusa was one of the nymphs attendant) pon
Diana: coming one day, much faligutw with
hunting, to the banks of the Alpheus, and smit
with the limpidness of the stream, she threw off
her clothes, and determined to bathe there: the
God observed her in silence; he thought he had
never seen any thing so handsome, and deter
mined to ask her to marry him: he rose, and ap
peared before her ; but Arethusa, ashamed of be
ing caught naked, and angry with the intruder,
instead of listening to his addresses, ran away
from him with the utmost swiftness: the God.
pursued, and had nearly overtaken her, when
the nymph prayed to Diana, her mistress, to de
liver her from the violence of her lover: Diana
listened to her request, and turned her into a
fountain: Alpheus immediately put off the human
figure which he had hitherto assumed in the race,
returned to his characteristic form of a river, and
sought to mix his waters with those of the foun
tain Arethusa, the natural marriage of a river
God : the nymph still in her new form shrunk
from this familiarity, and, aided by Diana, escaped
tjiider the bed of the sea, and rose again a f'ounf II. p.

i Ov. Met. y. 574 et seq<$

NYMPHS.

9S

tain in the island of Ortygia, within the Acropo

lis of the city of Syracuse: Alpheus however was
too passionate a lover to be repulsed by any ob
stacles: he took the same course as Arethusa, and
pursued her beneath the caverns of the ocean :
Arethusa, overcome by the persevering constancy
of her lover, perhaps consented to his desires:
they were married ; and the proof of the truth of
this story according to the Greeks is, that what
ever fragment of wood, or other floating sub
stance was cast into the river Alpheus in Arca
dia, was observed, after having been some time
lost, to rise again in the fountain Arethusa at
Syracuse.
The nymphs have already been several times
mentioned: Jupiter received his early nourish
ment and education from the nymphs: Diana
was always attended by a bevy of nymphs: and
Flora, Pomona, and other Goddesses who after
ward had a particular district and authority as
signed them, were originally of this class.
The nymphs were a secondary order of deities,
who had no temples, but to whom it was custo
mary to offer an inferior species of sacrifice,
chiefly milk, honey and oil: they peopled all
nature with their airy, invisible and beneficent
presence: they inhabited the woods, the moun
tains, the limpid springs, the rivers, and the
seas, and received distinctive names accordingly :
they were represented under the figure of beauti
ful virgins, in all the bloom of youth, and with
every grace of form and motion: they made
themselves grottoes, adorned with stones and
spars, of all colours and the most romantic shapes,
and hung with flowering shrubs and evergreens :
these were placed, sometimes in the caverns of

NAIADS, DRYADS,
the ocean, and sometimes in the wildest and most
luxuriant, but solitary, retreats of the forest:
the following ' is the account of the different
sorts of rural nymphs.
Beside the River Gods, there were other aqua
tic deities, whomakea very agreeable figure in an
cient poetry, called the Naiads: these Goddesses
were in an eminent degree endowed with the at
tributes of youth and beauty : they presided over
springs, wells, and fountains, and inhabited some
grove or meadow in the neighbourhood of their
charge: it was their province to preserve each
her little stream from mud and pollution, and
maintain its clearness and translucency : when the
Grecian enthusiast wandered in the fields, and ob
served the purling brook murmuring along its
pebbly bed, he felt grateful to the Naiad of the
fountain, and admired the perpetual assiduity
with which she discharged her office.
Other female rural divinities were the Dryads'"
and the Oreads': the Dryads were the God
desses of trees, especially of the oak, and had
each a particular tree committed to her charge:
these deities were immortal: there were others
called Hamadryads*, whose existence was indissolubly bound to that of the tree to which they
belonged: they lived as long as the tree, and,
when the life of the tree was gone, the nymph
also expired in the same moment: the deification
of these beings was plainly nothing more than
personifying the principle of vegetable life which
h Dryads, invoked, Virg. G. i. 1 1.
' Virg. JEn. i. 504. Oreads are mentioned as the nymphs at
tendant on Diana.
k Ov. Met. i. 690, mentions Syrinx as an Hamadryad, and at
the same time a Naiad,

DBYADS.

95

appears and flourishes so wonderfully in trees,

that principle by which they increase in stature,
and expand their vegetable bulk, and shoot forth
a thousand leaves, that principle, which, while
it operates in inviolable silence, presents to the
beholder, as the fanning west-wind rustles among
the foliage, the most perfect assemblage of life
and health and mobility and freshness that the
universe can afford.
Every man loves the tree he has been accus
tomed every day to behold : the tree that grows
at my gate, under whose shadow I have reposed
a thousand times, whose mighty stature and gi
gantic arms fill me with veneration and respect,
I feel as my friend : if one of its branches be
comes withered, 1 am struck with sorrow; if its
trunk is attacked with the daring axe, I appre
hend it like sacrilege: the ancient mythology
gave a new sanction to this irresistible notion of
sympathy, by interesting the Dryads in the life
of the grove: so that, when the audacious wood
cutter approached it, the nymphs were terrified
at the unhallowed invader : they felt themselves
rudely expelled from their customary haunt;
with every wound the tree received they groaned ;
and, as the oak threw its vast bulk along the
plain, a divinity expired.
The Oreads, called also Orestiades, were
nymphs of the mountains: they were of a more
wild, irregular, and fantastic character than those
last mentioned : the keen air and rugged paths of
their rocky situation made them hardy: they de
fied the blast with bosoms bare, while their long
hair streamed in the breeze.
Echo was one of the mountain nymphs, of
whom the ancients told several amusing stories :

96

NARCISSUS, AND ECHO.

nothing is more famous than the jealous freaksand fancies of Juno: she suspected that her hus
band had placed his affections upon some of the
nymphs, and loved iheir company better than
her own : she went down to earth to satisfy her
self: Echo engaged her in a long conversation:
this probably means nothing more, than that Juno
mistook the sound of her own voice for the voice
of some nymph of whom Jupiter perhaps was
fond, and thus vexed herself with pursuing a
shadow.
Juno believed that Echo had held her a tedious
parley by design, that while she was listening,
the wicked nymph might run away: " You
shall play no one this trick any more," said
.Juno: " henceforth never speak, but when you
are spoken to !"
Echo afterward fell in love with Narcissus, a
most beautiful youth, son of the river Cephisus
in Bosotia : Narcissus, one day as he went ahunting, lost his companions, and was left alone
in the wood: Echo hid herself among the trees,
and looked: " How I wish I could speak to
him!" thought Echo: " Who is here?" bawled
Narcissus: " Here," answered Echo: " Come,"
spid the boy ; and " Come," replied Echo :
" Let us meet," continued Narcissus: " Let us
meet," answered Echo, who thinking this sufficient
encouragement, came out from her hiding-place,
rushed to him, and threw her arms round his
neck: Narcissus, not prepared for such a meet
ing, shook her off, looked angry, and bade her
" Begone:" the poor nymph ashamed of her for
wardness, withdrew: she pined and grieved so
sadly, that at last she wasted to nothing but a
voice : in that state she still frequents the soli

CELESTIAL NYMPHS.

97

tndes she formerly loved, and is often to be heard,

but never seen.
,
Narcissus afterwards fell in love with his own
image in a fountain: it was so pretty, that I be
lieve he thought it was a girl : he tried to kiss it,
but he could not: yet when he smiled, it smiled :
when he withdrew, it withdrew ; and when he
,returned, it came back again : he visited the
fountain every day : he was so- vexed and wasted
with his fruitless attempts, that at length the
Gods in pity turned him into a flower, which
still bears his name, and is called Narcissus1.
Beside the nymphs already mentioned, who are
called terrestrial, there were also other nymphs,
called celestial : thej' presided over the starry
heavens : they drove along the planets in their
orbits : and as an ancient Greek wandered out
in a calm and brilliant midnight, every star
seemed to him to have a separate life, an eye, an
ear, and a voice : he had a thousand witnesses to
his prayers and his gratitude, and a thousand
friends contributing to his happiness: they were
the monitors of his conduct, and the genii who
watched over his steps.
>. Ov. Met. iii. 340 et teqq.

98

CHAP. XII.
OF THE DOMESTIC DEITIES.
Gods Protectors of Kingdoms, Provinces and Cities.
The Penates, or Houshold Gods.Their Import
ance. Story of Heraclhus.The Lares.The Ma
nes, Gods of the Dead.Ghosts and Spirits.The
Larvae and Lemures.The Lamia?.The Genii, or
Daemons. Daemon of Socrates.Evil Genius of
Brutus.Sense of the Word Genial.
Another class of divinities of great im
portance in the Grecian mythology were* the
Penates or local divinities: of these there are
reckoned three classes, the Gods of kingdoms or
provinces, the Gods of cities and towns, and the
Gods of single houses : there is some ambiguity
as to the descent and character of these Gods:
the inhabitants of kingdoms and cities seem to
have chosen their protecting Gods as they
pleased, and therefore frequently from among
the superior Gods ; thus Minerva was the pro
tecting divinity of Athens, and Jupiter of Rome.
But besides the protecting Gods of kingdoms
and cities, each house, as 1 told you, had its
Penates or Houshold Gods : these were ihe pre
siding deities of hospitality : they spread a sacredness over domestic life : every member of a family
was placed under the guardianship of the same
friendly divinity : nothing could be done con
trary to the great duties of husband and wife,
parent and child, master and servant, without

STORY F HERACLITUS.

99

offending the Penates: every stranger who en

tered the house became sacred and secure from
violation : and no thought could be less endured,
than that the master of a family should be affronted
or assaulted under his own roof: thus Themistocles, when he fled to king Admetus", and Coriolanus to the king of the Voisci", immediately
placed themselves on the hearth, and claimed the
sanctuary of this stranger roof (the hearth was
peculiarly the altar of the Houshold Gods) : it
has become a proverb in this country, that
" Every Englishman's house is his castle
it
might have been a proverb among the ancients,
that " Every Grecian's house was his temple."
We may judge of the importance annexed to
the worship of the Houshold Gods, when we ob
serve ,tbat ,at the time when JEaeas 9 fled from
araids^-the flames of Troy, what he was careful
to carry away with him was his ancient father,
his wife, his only child, and his Houshold Gods.
There is a beautiful story of Heraclitus the
ancient philosopher, which is connected with this
toned to wear mean garments, and to show by
their habits of living, that they were disdainful
of the frivolous luxuries of society; yet they were
every where sought after, and every where ad
mired : certain strangers of rank came to Athens,
and were desirous tovisit the celebrated Heraclitus:
they enquired out where he lived: as they ap
proached his habitation, they saw a hut, ragged,
narrow and dark: they knocked at the door, and
the philosopher opened: struck with the appear
ance of things, they shrunk back, and hesitated to
Thuc. i. 136.

n Plut. in Coriolan.
f2

o Virg. jEn. ii. 70*.

100

LARES : MANES.

enter : Heraclitus observed their uncertainty, re

collected what was due to his own character, and
with a magnanimous simplicity said to them,
** Enter boldly, for here also are Gods'!"
Another class of the Houshold Gods, distinct
from the Penates, were the Lares*: these are said
to be the twin-children of the nymph Lara by
Mercury: they presided not only over single
houses, hut also over cities and streets, countryscenes and the waters of the sea: hence they
were called according to their respective func
tions, Lares Familiares, Urbani, Compitales,
Rustici and Marini: and under each of these
characters worship was paid, and sacrifices were
offered, to them: how the two sons of Mercury
and Lara could furnish distinct deities for every
street and house in Italy and Greece, is somewhat
hard to explain.
It is difficult to distinguish between the Lares
and the Manes: in many respects they seem to be
the same: the mother of the Manes is called Ma
nia, and Mercury was probably their father:
they are reckoned among the infernal deities, and
their particular province was to preside over
burial-places, and the monuments of the dead:
hence the Romans superscribed their sepulchral
inscriptions with the letters D. M. that is, Diis
Manibus, " To the Gods, of the dead," to re
mind the profane that they must not look to mo
lest with impunity the ashes of the deceased : now,
as it was the ancient custom of the Romans and
other nations to bury their dead beneath the floors
of the houses in which they had lived, hence the
* Aristot. de Part. Anim. IS.

1 Ov. Fasti, ii. 599.

lares: manes.

101

Lares and Manes came to be confounded together,

and regarded as Houshold Gods.
Among the other kinds of homage paid to the
Lares or Manes, one was that, on certain solemn
occasions, the Romans hung up on the outsides
of their houses images of wool to represent the
master and mistress of the family, smaller images
for the children, and little balls of wool for the
slaves : these packets were designed as a sort of
commutation or substitute for the persons within,
that the Dii Manes, or " Gods of the future
state," seeing these, might be pleased to spare the
lives of the members of the family.
By the Manes however were frequently under
stood the spirits of the departed : all nations have
had traditionary stories of ghosts, or the appear
ance of persons deceased lo their relations, their
friends, and others: the Romans went so far as
to separate the ghosts, which made a part of
their religious creed, into two classes: the good
and friendly were called Lares and Manes, and
the ill and wicked spirits they denominated Larvas
and Lemures*.
The Lares or Manes, taking the words in this
sense, were the spirits of a man's ancestors, ho
vering around the spot where their mortal lives
had been spent, and solicitous for the welfare of
their descendants : these were the objects of sacri
fices and other marks of religious veneration :
this circumstance gave an additional sacredness
to the houses of the Greeks and Romans: beneath
the floor the remains of their buried forefathers
were often deposited ; their spirits were not afar
off; and their virtuous and honourable descend' Apuleius de Deo Socratis.
f3

102

larva: lemures: lamue.

dants had the consolation to believe, that they

acted in the sight of their progenitors, were
guarded by their love, and sanctioned and ani
mated with their approbation.
The Larvae and Lemures were the spirits of
wicked men deceased, who, as they had brutalised themselves with sensual indulgences during
their past lives, found it difficult to detach their
thick and half-corporeal souls from their bodies
after death, and were condemned by day to re
pose among rotten carcasses and putrefaction,
and by night to wander the earth, to the no small
terror and injury of its inhabitants: they fre
quently haunted the wicked and impious without
ceasing, appeared in every frightful form that
can be imagined, and never allowed them a mo
ment of tranquillity and repose.
The Romans entertained so great awe of these
malevolent beings, that, by way of averting their
vengeance, they instituted an annual festival in
their honour in the month of May, called Lemuralia': during this solemnity, which lasted
three days, all the temples of the Gods were shut,
and marriages were prohibited; they burned
beans and other vegetable subi-iances, the smell
of which was thought to be insupportable to the
Larvae; and they repeated magical charms, and
beat upon drums and kettles, by these means
compelling the ghosts to depart, and no longer to
come and disturb the tranquillity of their relations
on earth.
Lamia; is another term we meet with in ancient
mythology, and is nearly connected with the idea
of the Larva?: the Lamia? were a species of de Ot. Fasti,

421 et 489.

GENII, OR DAMONS.

103

mons, who assumed the forms of beautiful women,

and whose favourite occupation was supposed to
be first to entice young children away by their
specious allurements, and then to devour them.
The Lares, the Larvae and Lemures were
frequently spoken of by the general name of Ge
nii ; the word Genius beside this is sometimes em
ployed by the classic writers as a general name
for the power of plastic nature by which all things
are generated, and shaped, and kept alive: in
this sense it is to be regarded as a name, sacred
to the true God who created the world, or re
presentative of his operations in the act of crea
tion.
But the most frequent use of the word Genius
in the ancient mythology, is in a sense somewhat
similar to that of Guardian Angel in Christian
writers: to every man were appointed at the hour
of his birth two supernatural attendants, a good
and an evil Genius, or, according to the Greek
word Daemon: these two spirits perpetually con
tended with each other for the chief possession of
the man to whom they were addicted: the good
Genius was incessantly urging him forward to
virtue, glory and prosperity, smoothmg the ob
stacles which occurred, and keeping up his cou
rage: while the evil Genius as constantly supplied
him with treacherous suggestions, and eagerly
pushed him on to vice, infamy and ruin': there
is a beautiful tale, written by Voltaire on this
subject, entitled the Black and the White.
Socrates', the most excellent and virtuous of
all the ancient philosophers, constantly ascribed
all that was right and honourable in his life and
' Xen. Cyrop. vi. 1.

T Plut. in Theag. et al. p.

F4

104

GENII.

actions to the suggestions of his good daemon : be

said, he felt the motions of this friendly spirit as
they rose in his mind, and affirmed that they
were so distinct from every other sensation to
which he was subject, that he was in no danger
of ever committing any mistake respecting them.
It is related of Brutus, one of the Roman sena
tors by whom Julius Caesar was killed, that, a
short time before his death, a spirit came to him
in the night in his tent, having assumed the
form of the dead Caesar, and said to him, "I
am thy evil Genius, Brutus!" to which Brutus,
being a man of great courage, rejoined, 'A Where
fore dost thou come ?" " To tell thee, said the
spirit, " that I will meet thee again at Philippi":"
at which place Brutus, having been defeated in
battle by the triends of Caesar, killed himself with
his own sword.
A variety of poetical phrases have been built
upon this idea of every man being attended by a
Genius who fostered and protected him : the day
of a man's birth is called the " genial day," the
marriage bed is styled the " genial bed," and
wine, " which maketh glad the heart of man,"
is expressed by the " genial bowl :" likewise such
persons as live merrily, and freely partake of
whatever is grateful to their appetites, are said
to " indulge their genius."
w Plut, vit. Cesar, ad in.

105

CHAP. XIII.
OF MONSTERS.
TheGorgonsdestroyed byPerseus.The Graiae.Bellona.Pegasus and Chrysaor.The Lybian Serpents.
Geryon and Echidna.Orthus, Cerberus, Hydra,
and Chimaera. Sphinx and the Nemaean Lion.
Scylla.The Cyclops.The Sirens.The Harpies.
One branch of the accounts of the Grecian
mythology is monsters : the Grecian mythology,
with its thirty thousand Gods, was complete in
the time of Homer and Hesiod, when reading
and writing were yet in their infancy : and it is
past a doubt, that the Greeks did not invent their
mythology themselves, but borrowed it from other
nations in remoter ages : to remote and dark ages
belong the tales of ghosts, and witchcraft, and
giants, and a thousand other strange and terrible
things: you need not wonder then that monsters
make one chapter in the history of the Gods of
the Greeks.
Nereus, son of Pontus, or the sea, had a brother
named Phorcys*, who according to(the custom of
the Grecian Gods, married his sister, Ceto, andby her became father of the Gorgons.
The Gorgons, according to some, were a na
tion of women, just like what we read of the
Amazons, and were conquered, as will be seen
hereafter, by Perseus : the most received account
* He. The. 233 et seqq.
H5

106

GORGONS.

of them however is, that they were three sisters,

by name Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa?: these
three, particularly Medusa, who is oftenest men
tioned, are said by some writers to have been at
first virgins of the most spotless beauty : but Me
dusa, being seduced by Neptune, and having
yielded to his will and become his mistress, was
immediately changed by Minerva, the Goddess
of wisdom and prudence, into a horrible monster:
her mouth was wide like the mouth of a lion, her
teeth were of a fearful magnitude, her great sta
ring eyes had the property of turning every one
that looked on them into stone, and a thousand
vipers writhed themselves about her brows instead
of hair : an allegory by which the ancients pro
bably intended to express how ugly vice and pro
fligacy make their votaries appear in the eyes of
the discerning and the good: the same descrip
tion that applies to Medusa, holds equally of her
two sisters.
The Gorgons made so wanton a use of their
powers, that they turned all their neighbours into
stone, and it became doubtful whether in a short
time the world would be any otherwise peopled
than by a multitude of stones in human figure;
Jupiter in pity sent his son Perseus to destroy
them : he was armed by the Gods for this danger
ous expedition, and among other things, Mer
cury gave him wings to fly, Pluto an invisible
helmet, and Minerva a mirror-shield, by looking
in which he could discover how his enemy was
disposed, without any danger of meeting her
eyes: thus accoutered he made terrible work with
the Gorgons : he attacked them before, and beJ Hes. The. 274.

GRAia:: bellona.

107

hind, and on every side, before they were aware :

though they felt the cuts and slashes of Perseus,
they could by no means discover where he was :
and as they could not see him, he took special
care never to look at them : Medusa's head seems
to have been his capital prize: he put it care
fully in a bag, that he might not hurt any body
with it unawares, and carried it as a present to
Minerva, who fastened it ever after as an orna
ment in the middle of her shield.
The Gorgons had three other sisters, called
Graiae and Lamiae : they were monsters not less
frightful than the Gorgons : they are said to have
had but one eye and one tooth among them*; and
they carefully locked up their eye in a box when
they were at home, .only using it when they went
abroad: Perseus, when he went against the Gor
gons, called on the Graiae in his way, and steal
ing upon them when they were asleep, took
away the box which contained their eye, and
refused to give it up till they had given him cer
tain instructions necessary for the conquest of the
Gorgons.
A seventh sister of this hopeful family, fully
worthy of the rest, was Enyo, or Bellona, the
Goddess of war: like the Gorgons, snakes were
the locks that adorned her head, instead of hair ;
she has a whip of iron in one hand, and a flaming
torch in the other : all her gestures were furious
and frantic, and her garments dripped with
blood : her priests expressed their devotion to
her by running about in a sort of frenzy-dance,
and gashing themselves with knives1: at Co1 -ffischyli. Rom. 792.
a Lact. de Div. Instit. L 21. Tib. i.
lib. vi. 46, Strabo. 12. Val. Flaccus, vii. 636.
F 6

108

GERYON AND ECHIDNA.

mana in Asia Minor, she had a temple with a

college of no less than three thousand priests.
bFrora the blood of Medusa, as it gushed forth
when Perseus smote off her head, sprang the
winged horse, Pegasus, and Chrysaor, his ori
ginal rider, who rose to life at first clad in
complete armour, and brandishing a sword of
gold : beside these two, the progeny of Medusa's
blood, some drops fell from the head as Perseus
flew along with it over the coasts of Africa, and
from them were engendered the serpents of Lybia,
so famed for their enormous size and deadly
venom.
Chrysaor married Callirhoe one of the Oceanides, and by her became father of two other mon
sters, Geryon and Echidna.
Geryon was a monster in human shape, but
with three heads : his residence was the island of
Gades in Spain: he kept a prodigious number
of oxen, and killed all the strangers that came
into his country, giving their flesh for food to his
oxen: as these oxen were regarded with horror,
Geryon found it necessary to plant over them as
a guard a dog with two heads, and a dragon with
seven.
Echidna, the sister of Geryon, was a beautiful
woman in the upper part of her body ; but in
stead of legs and feet, she had from the waist
downward, the form of a serpent.
Echidna became the wife of Typhon, the most
terrible of the Giants who made war upon Jupi
ter, and between them they had the most extraor
dinary progeny ever heard of : their names were
Orthus, Cerberus, Hydra and Chinuera.
k Hes. The. 280 to 332.

CERBERUS: HYDRA: CHIHJ2RA.

109

Orthus was the two-beaded dog that guarded

the herds of Geryon.
Cerberus was a dog with three heads', and in
other respects a most formidable monster: he was
placed as a guard at the gate of the infernal regions : it is related of those who in their life-time
visited the realms of Pluto, that they appeased
Cerberus with a cake prepared for that purpose4 :
hence the proverb " to give Cerberus a sop," ap
plied to persons who mitigate with a bribe some
dastardly accuser, that barks very loud in hopes
that somebody will think it worth while to pur
chase his silence.
Hydra was a furious dragon with a hundred
heads, and endowed with this peculiar property,
that if any one came against him with intent to
destroy him, and cut off one of his heads, two
others immediately sprung up in its place.
Chimera was a monster of a mixed form, part
lion, part dragon, and part goat, and had three
heads, the head of a lion, the head of a dragon,
and the head of a goat.
Chimaera became the wife of Orthus, the twoheaded dog of Geryon, and her own brother;
the fruits of this connection were Sphinx and the
Nemaean lion: these monsters will be fully de
scribed, when I come to speak of Oedipus and
Hercules by whom they were destroyed.
Scylla was a monster, who had for her father
either Phorcys, the parent of the Gorgons, or
Typhon, the father of Hydra and Chimaera :
like the Gorgons, her original figure was that
of a beautiful woman ; hut, being beloved by
c Hes. The. 312, describes him as having fifty heads.
* Virg. ^En. vi. 420.

110

scylla: the Cyclops.

GIaucusc, one of the Gods of the sea, she fell a vic

tim to the jealousy of Circe, who will hereafter
be mentioned : Circe poisoned a fountain in which
Scylla was wont to bathe, so that as soon as this
lovely creature threw herself into the water she
found the heads of dogs, barking and howling, sud
denly sprout around her waist; she had twelve feet
shaped like serpents, six heads, and in each head
three rows of teeth : made desperate by this fright
ful metamorphosis, she threw herself into the nar
row sea which divides Sicily from Italy, and ever
after became the terror of mariners, whom as
they passed near her abode in the rock, she was
accustomed by six at a time to snatch up and de
vour: opposite to the rock of Scylla, was a
whirlpool, called Charybdis, so that whoever en
deavoured to steer his vessel in safety from the
devouring jaws of Scylla, was in the most immi
nent danger of being swallowed up in the tremen
dous and rapid eddies of Charybdis.
The Cyclops may with propriety be reckoned
among the monsters of the Grecian mythology s
Hesiodf represents them as three, by name Arges,
Brontes, and Steropes, and makes them full bro
thers to the Titans, the sons of Cceltis and Terra ;
but according to Homer and Virgil, they are
much more numerous : Homer also speaks of them
as the sons of Neptune.
The office of the Cyclops was to forge the
thunderbolts of Jupiter under the direction of
Vulcan : the three abovementioned seem to have
been constantly engaged in this occupation, and
to have inhabited the bowels of mount iEtna : the
rest of the tribe wandered on the adjoining
' Ov. Met. xiv. 1 et seqq.

f The. 140.

pa.UO

YV L. CAN

SIKENS.

Ill

coast, and led the life of shepherds : they had

however a passion for feeding upon human flesh :
they were creatures of gigantic stature, beastly
and deformed in their persons, and having each
of them only one eye, which grew in the middle
of their forehead : the most celebraled of the oneeyed shepherds is called Polyphemus*.
The Sirens were Goddesses of the sea, beautiful
in person, and much celebrated for the sweetness
of their voices : they were three in number, and
their names Parthenope, Ligeia and Leucosia : they
are said to have challenged the Muses to a con
tention in singing, by whom they were defeated b:
it constantly happens in the Grecian mythology,
when any one enters the lists with the Gods for
victory and is defeated, that he is condemned to
a certain punishment for his presumption : the
Sirens were changed, as to the lower part of their
forms, into the figure of a fish, and in their dis
position into cannibals: they were confined to
a certain part of the coast of Sicily ; and there it
was decreed that they should try to enchant with
their singing every adventurer as he sailed along :
they accommodated their songs to the temper of
the stranger : to the ambitious they promised the.
gratifications of ambition, to the voluptuous end
less pleasure, and to the lovers of wisdom know
ledge and instruction inexhaustible: those who
listened to their song, and disembarked on their
coast, they devoured : but when the time should
come in which any one should be found capable
of resisting their inticements, it was fated them
6 Horn. Od. . 182 et seqq. Virg. JEn. iii. 641 et seqq.
k Pauian. Boeot. 34.

>^ /

112

HARPIES.

that they should be seized with despair, and de

stroy themselves.
The Harpies were the offspring of Thaumas son
of Pontus, by Electra one of the Oceanides':
they had the face of a woman, the body of a
vulture, and the claws of a dragon11: they were
extravagantly voracious in their appetites, and
filthy in their habits ; and when the Gods were
greatly incensed against any one of mortal race,
they could scarcely impose upon him a severer
penalty, than to send these monsters to haunt
his meals, afflicting him with the plague of an
unsated hunger, and driving him to madness.
' Hes. The. 266.

k Virg. JEn. iii. 216 et seqq.

113

CHAP. XIV.
OF THE GODS OF THE SEA AND THE
WINDS.
Pontus.Oceanus and Tethys, Parents of the Rivers
and the Oceanides.Nereus, his Figure, and the
Shapes he assumes.Doris, the Wife of Nereus, and
Mother of the Nereids.Neptune, his Figure and
Appearance. Amphitrite and Triton. The Winds.
iEolus. Aurora.
FnoM a survey of the inferior Gods, pro
tectors of the scenes of rural and domestic life,
we will proceed to the vastest and most magni
ficent object which the globe of earth contains,
the ocean : the sea, as well as the land, was ac
cording to the Grecian mythology full of Gods :
the sea, considered merely as it strikes the organs
of human sight, suggests principally ideas of
what is barren, wild and tremendous : but the
religion of the refined ancients filled it with life,
action and hilarity : and the entranced voyager,
brought up in the notions of this religion, often
saw in its most solitary scenes the magnificence
of the Gods, and heard the songs of the Nereids
and the Sirens.
Pontus (the Greek name for the sea) was the
son of Tellus without a father : he was therefore
half-brother to the Titans: Pontus and Tellus
were the parents of Nereus.
Oceanus (another name for the sea) was one of
*he Titans : Tethys was his sister and his wife":

114

NEREUS AND DORIS : NEPTUNE,

from their marriage sprang a multitude of sons,

who are the rivers, and a numerous family of
daughters, called the Oceanides : these elder
deities Pontus, Oceanus and Tethys, were never
made the subjects of the Grecian sculpture.
Nereus is represented, like most of the male
deities of the ocean and the rivers, with a long
flowing beard and sea-green hair : the chief place
of his residence was the iEgean sea: he was en
dowed with the gift of prophecy, and could as
sume whatever form he pleased: when Hercules
sought the golden apples of the Hesperides, be
applied to the nymphs who inhabit the caverns
of the Eridanus, to know in what part of the
world these apples were to be found : the nymphs
sent him to Nereus, who being surprised by the
hero, endeavoured by a variety ot metamor
phoses to elude his enquiries, and escape from his
chains1.
The consort of Nereus was Doris, one of the
Oceanides, who brought him many daughters,
called the Nereids: these beautiful deities were
accustomed to dance about the throne of their
father, and the chariot of Neptune: and thus
the term Nereids has come to be used to express
generally the female deities of the ocean : the
most celebrated of the daughters of Nereus and
Doris are Amphitrite and Thetis.
Neptune, the brother of Jupiter, became the
husband of Amphitrite: the authority of Pontus
and Oceanus and Tethys and Nereus appears
gradually to have grown antiquated : they re
tired from their original honours to a condition of
dignified ease: and Neptune is universally re*
1 Apollod. Biblioth. ii. 5. SchoL in ApoIIon. Rhod. iv. 96.

GODS OF THE WINDS.

115

ceived in the Grecian mythology as the God of

the sea.
The appearance of Neptune, as described by
the ancient poets m, is extremely beautiful : he
glides along the surface of the waves, in a chariot
formed of a large and semi-transparent sea-shell
of the colour of pearl : he is drawn by sea-horses:
Triton, his son, blows the trumpet, which is
also composed of a shell, before him ; while
other inferior deities float by his side, and guide
the reins of his chariot: the dolphins, whose
scales sparkle with azure and gold, play round
his path, and seem rejoiced with his prese^cet
Amphitrite rides along with him : the counte
nance of the God is majestic, awful and serene ;
and he bears in his hand the trident, or fork with
three teeth, with which he divides the waves, and
levels the surface of I he waters: this glorious vi
sion is a beautiful emblem of the vast element of
the sea when composed into perfect calm.
One of the Gods of the sea, introduced by Ho
mer in the Odyssey, and after him spoken of or
alluded to by many poets, ancient and modern,
is Proteus, famous tor his consummate possession
of the art of prophecy : he was consulted by Menelaus, king of Sparta, when upon his return
from the siege of Troy, Menelaus was detained,
wind-bound, for several weeks off the isle of
Pharos in Egypt : Proteus, though knowing in
future events, was seldom willing to communicate
what he knew to inquisitive mortals: Menelaus,
being secretly instructed how to deal with this
coy and uncomplying God, surprised him when
asleep, and bound him in chains: the God had the
m Horn. II. v. 23 Virg. JEn. v. 818.

116

GODS OF THE WINDS.

power of assuming any shape that he pleased,

and by these means thought to escape the impor
tunities of the Grecian king : he assumed suc
cessively the form of a lion, of a voluminous and
glittering serpent, a leopard, a boar, a river,
and a tree : he expected under one or other of
these forms to terrify Menelaus from his purpose,
or to mislead and confound his ideas: the king
however persisted with undaunted courage, and
could never be induced to relax his hold : and
Proteus, having at length exhausted all his tricks
of evasion, yielded to the urgency of Menelaus,
opened to him the knowledge of future events,
and instructed him how to surmount his difficul
ties, and reach his desired home1.
Nearly connected with the Gods of the sea, are
the Gods of the winds : these are principally Bo
reas, Auster, Eurus, and Zephyrus ; in other
words, the north wind, the south wind,, the east
wind, and the west wind : their genealogy is said
to have been this; Creus, one of the Titans, was
the father of Astraeus ; Hyperion, another of the
Titans, was the tat her of Aurora, the Goddess of
the morning; Astraeus and Aurora being wedded
to each other, became the parents of the stars and
the winds".
There are many other winds recorded by the
ancients b<side those of the four cardinal points,
particularly Caurus and Argestes, whose opera
tion was exceedingly tempestuous, and whose
attacks were mightily dreaded.
JEo\us, who according to some was a son of
Jupiter, and according to others only an ancient
king of iEolia, or the iEolian islands, to the
Horn. Od. 3. 385 ct seqq. Ovid. Met. viii. 731.
Hesiod. Theog. 378.

117

AURORA.

north of Sicily, now called the islands of Li pari,

and eminent for his skill in astronomy and navi
gation, is fabled to have had empire over the
winds: his principal residence was Stromboli, or
Strongyle, one of the /Eolian islands : there he
had a cave in which he .shut up the winds :. these
boisterous deities roared and bellowed within the
cave, and sought every cranny by which they
might escape the despotism of their inexorable
jailor, but in vain : if they could have escaped,
we are told, they would have torn up the sea and
the earth and the pillars of heaven from their
foundation, and have carried them impetuously
along through the boundless regions of space:
iEolus however only occasionally let them loose
for a very short period, which is the cause of ter
rible tempests, hurricanes and shipwrecks: and,
when they b^ve performed their destiny, Neptune
drives thenf away, or jEolus recals them, and
they are shut up again in their strong prison of
Stromboli.. - ' '
Having just spoken of Aurora, the Goddess of
the morning, 1 will here mention such particu
lars concerning her as are necessary to be known :
Hesipd assigns her a very poetical kindred : she
is according to him, sister to the sun and the
moon, and mother to the stars and the winds :
Hesiod is extremely allegorical in his mythology :
the relationship of Aurora to the sun and the moon
is sufficiently obvious : she immediately precedes
the appearance of the sun ; and when the break
of day arrives, the moon is no longer remarked :
the winds are generally observed to fall towards
evening, and to rise again when morning appears:
F Virg. JEn.i.141.

* Theog. 371.

118

AURORA.

thcy therefore own the Goddess of morning for

their mother : Lucifer, the morning star, is ever
closely connected with Aurora ; and the ancient
roytbologists were naturally led to represent all
the stars as brothers, and proceeding from the
same parent-stock.
The office of Aurora is to prepare the way for
the sun: when she rises, the Hours unbar for her
the gates of the East : she ascends in a chariot of
gold drawn by two horses, as Apollo is drawn by
four.
A glorious break of day in a fine climate, or in
the middle of summer, is one of the grandest ob
jects in creation : the veil of night is removed,
and all things assume to the human eye their pro
per figure and colour : a rosy blush suffuses one
half of the horizon, all nature is clothed with
sparkling drops of dew : all nature is rendered
fresh and alive again by the repose of the night :
the breeze is young and untainted, and the fields
never smell so sweet and balmy as at this early
hour of the morning: the Goddess Aurora there
fore was associated in the minds of the ancients
with a thousand agreeable impressions.

119

CHAP. XV.
OF THE GODS OF HELL.
Tartarus and Erebus.Site and Topography of Hell, or
the Regions of the Dead.Rivers of Hell: Acheron,
Cocytus, Styx, and Phlegethon. Swearing by the
Styx, its Solemnity, and Why.Monsters.Charon,
and his Boat.Unfortunate Condition of the Ghosts of
the Uuburied.Cerberus. Fields of Lamentation.
Palace of Pluto. Hecate and ber Worship.Mer
cury.Judges of Hell : Minos, Rhadamanthus and
iEacus.Condemned in Hell : Tityus, Ixion, Tan
talus, Sisyphus, and the Danaides.Elysium.Lethe,
the Water of Oblivion.Transmigration of Souls.
Taiitarus and Erebus, as I before told you,
were the sons of Chaos and Darkness, and the
brothers of Tellus, or the elder Vesta, usually
called the most ancient of the Gods : in this sense
they may be considered as persons, endowed with
a human figure and an intelligent mind.
But much of the Grecian mythology, and par
ticularly the remoter branches of the genealogy of
the Grecian Gods, is plainly allegorical : Chaos,
and Darkness, and Heaven, and Earth, in their
most obvious and primary sense, however the
poetical imagination of the Greeks might have
furnished them with limbs and speech and volun
tary action, clearly signify things, and not per
sons : in the same manner Tartarus and Erebus,
though on certain occasions they were spoken of
as persons, yet are more ordinarily employed as
names of situation and place.

120

TOPOGRAPHY' OF HELL.

The Greeks believed that the soul, or thinking

principle in man, survived the destruction of the
body : they asserted that the souls of men after
death became inhabitants of a region lower than
the earth, hence called the infernal region, and
Hell.
The Greeks, like all other nations who have
maintained the immortality of the soul, taught
that the pleasurable or painful state of being
upon which men entered afler death, had a con
nection with the merits or demerits of their con
duct while they lived on earth : hence they sepa
rated the infernal region into two principal divi
sions, Tartarus, or the abode of woe, and Ely
sium, or the mansions of the blessed : Erebus was
a general name for both, or according to some
was rather appropriated to the residence of the
good deceased.
The Greeks were exceedingly ignorant of astro
nomy, the figure of the earlh, and the system of
the heavens : they for the most part regarded the
earth as a flat surface, like a round table, over
which the sky stretched itself in the manner of a
grand hemispherical canopy : America not hav
ing been discovered till about three hundred
years ago, the other three quarters of the globe
presented to the eyes of men unaccustomed to
scientific and astronomical observations the ap
pearance of a plane surface, or what mathema
ticians would call the section of a cylinder made
at right angles with its diameter.
Hesiod, the oldest writer upon the Grecian my
thology whose works have been preserved, says',
that the distance between Heaven and earth is
* The. 720etseqq.

TOPOGRAPHY OF HELL.

121

sucb, that a brazen anvil let down from Heaven

would be nine days and nights in falling before it
reached the earth, and that Tartarus or Hell is
just as distant below, as Heaven is elevated
above, the surface of the earth : the greater part
of the Grecian poets however, as has been before
said, place the residence of the Gods on the top
of some high mountain, particularly Olympus,
and the regions of the dead at no very considera
ble distance beneath the surface of the earth.
The Greek poets and mythologists represent
several of their heroes during their lives as pay
ing a visit to the regions of the dead, particularly
Orpheus, Theseus, Pirithous, and Hercules: not
to mention Ulysses and JEneas; since the descent
into Hell by the two last may be suspected to
have been introduced by their respective poets into
their works, rather as an ornament to their ad
mirable writings, than as matter of historical re
lation.
This descent of living men into the regions of
the dead, has given rise to various accounts as to
the part of the earth from which sucb a descent
might be made: Homer' has taken up the sub
ject on the grandest scale, and describes Ulysses,
when he descended into hell, as sailing to Cimmeria, a country situated " at the utmost bounds
of the ocean, and never visited by the sun :" this
description suggests the idea of a climate, as far
remote as possible from the equator, or circle
of greatest heat, and placed in the domains of
eternal ice: Cimmeria is the name of a peninsula
in Asia, the modern appellation of which is the
Crimea, or Crim Tartary; but the Cimmerii
Od. K 13.

122

TOPOGRAPHY OF HELL.

who settled in this place, were perhaps a colony

from some region still farther north.
The more usual accounts however of the de
scent into Hell were, that it was from some dis
trict of Italy or Greece, where the hero happened
to be at the time: Theseus and Pirithous found a
passage near the river Acheron in Epirus : Her
cules descended by the mountain Taenarus in
Laconia; and iEneas near Cunite in Campania;
the waters of the Acheron were black and bitter;
near Taenarus there is a large and deep cleft of
the earth, out of which issued a smothering and
unwholesome vapour ; and the waters of the Avernus, near Cumae, sent forth a putrid and offensive
smell: in fact, to the superstitions eyes of the
first Greeks and Romans any pool or cavern of
the earth which was distinguished by a loathsome
and disgustful vapour, seemed to be an entrance
to the infernal regions.
The geography, or rather topography, of Hell
is particularly to be attended to, if we would
form a clear idea of the infernal regions according
to the Grecian mythology.
The whole region is surrounded with a wall,
constructed by Neptune, the substance and gates
of which are of brass: these gates are guarded by
certain of the Giants and by Briareus with his
hundred hands: when you had entered these gates,
there still remained the journey of a year through
a wild accumulation of the principles of things
thrown together in the utmost disorder, before
you reached the habitable domain ; such is the
description of Hesiod*.
The ancients reckoned four rivers in Hell J
9 Tbeog. 781.

STYX.

123

Acheron, Cocytus, Styx, and Phlegethon : a fifth

1 shall speak of hereafter.
The Acheron, as 1 have already mentioned,
was a river in Epirus, the waters of which were
bitter and loathsome to the palate: it is difficult
to say whether the river in Hell received its name
from, or gave it to, the river which flows upon
earth.
Cocytus was another river of the same part of
Greece: the waters, particularly in the season of
tempests and storms, were observed to flow with a
hollow and howling sound, which to a supersti
tious imagination resembled the groans of a de
parting spirit, or the lamentations of the damned.
The Styx was a small river, or rather lake, in
the province of Arcadia: its waters were said to
be of so deadly a coldness, that they proved a
mortal poison to every one who drank of them ;
they had also the power of dissolving iron : the
Styx was by these properties qualified to be a
river in Hell: Virgil says that it makes nine times
the circuit of the regions of the dead*.
The Styx is particularly famous for being the
subject of the most solemn oath which could be
sworn by the Gods themselves : whatever a God
swore by the Styx that he would perform, he
dared not afterward refuse to execute, however
he might repent of bis oath.
This river owed its peculiar privilege to the fol
lowing circumstanceT : Styx, who was a nymph,
and one of the daughters of Oceanus, had three
daughters of her own, Victory, Valour and
Strength : all three assisted Jupiter in his war
against the Giants, and were, as we might supv Hesiod. Theog. 389.

< Georg. iv. 480.

G2

124

FHLEGETHON.

Eose from their names, of the utmost service to

im on that occasion : Jupiter demanded of these
miraculous allies how he could remunerate their
aid, and they asked, as the greatest favour he
could bestow, this token of honour in behalf of
their mother.
The punishment awarded to that God who vio
lated his oath sworn by the Styx, was that in the
first place he should drink of the waters of that
tremendous stream : this draught, which was cer
tain death to a mortal, threw even a God into a
state of the most oppressive lethargy which lasted
a whole year : nor did his punishment end then :
he was doomed for nine years more to wander an
outcast from Heaven, and to seek shelter as a ba
nished God where he could in foreign regions.
The last of the four rivers of Hell is Phlegethon : so called because it swells with waves of fire,
and its streams are flames.
Virgil", who has handed down to Us the last
and most complete description of the regions of
the dead, says, that immediately on entering this
darksome abode, a stranger was encotirrered with
a thousand monstrous and terrific forms, Cares,
and Mourning, and a troop of Diseases, and Old
Age: added to these were Fear, and Hunger,
and Want, and Labour, and Sleep, and Death,
with the dishonest Joys of* the wicked, and Dis
cord, and War, and the Furies.
Mingled with these allegorical personages were
all the uncouth and horrid shapes that fancy ever
framed, Centaurs, and Scyllas, and Harpies, and
the hundred-handed Briareus, and Gorgons, and
Hydra, and Chimaera; not that this was the real
habitation of these terrible beings, but that their
w JEn. vi. 273.

CHARON.

125

forms perpetually flitted before the scared eye of

him who visited the infernal abodes.
As soon as he had passed through this formi
dable assemblage, he came to the banks of the
Acheron : for a considerable way before he reached
the water, he trod upon slime and mud, an un
comfortable and uncertain footing: here were ga
thered together an innumerable multitude of
ghosts lately departed, eagerly waiting for a pas
sage over the stream.
Charon, one of the most ancient of the Gods,
the son of Erebus and Night, was the ferryman
of Hell : his countenance was that, of an old man,
but his old age was vigorous and powerful : he
had a long flowing beard, the hair perfectly
white : but his beard and garments were deformed
with neglect and filth, and his speech was illtempered and morose: he had no vessel but a
crazy boat, which he conducted from dhe side of
the river^o the other by means of a long pole
pushed against the shores and the bottom.
AsV^owd of hovering ghosts hastened toward
the place ihe moment they saw the ferryman ap
proach, Charon Selected a few, as many as his
vessel would safely convey, and drove away the
rest with surly Speech and threatening gestures.
Every dead man paid to Charon a small brass
coin for his fare: and many of the ancients took
care to put this coin under the tongue of their
deceased relation, that he might be at no loss for
that requisite when he came to the banks of the
Acheron.
No person was admitted into the boat of Cha
ron till he had received the honours of a regular
burial : so that those unfortunate .persons who
were sunk in the caverns of the ocean, or cast out
g3

126

FIELDS OF LAMENTATION.

to the fowls of the air, were obliged to wander

for a long time in wretchedness amidst the mad
and slime of the river : after a penance of one
hundred years they became entitled to the pri
vileges of Charon's boat : it was regarded there
fore by the ancients as the highest pitch of hard
hearted ness or revenge to deny to the dead the
honours of sepulture : and if a man were drowned
at sea, or by any other means placed beyond the
reach of this ceremony, his friends still paid to
him the forms of burial, cast dust on his empty
tomb, invoked his ghost to witness their piety,
and spoke peace to his departed spirit.
The first object which saluted a stranger's eye*
after he had crossed the river, was the tremendous
three-headed Cerberus, the watch-dog of Hell,
whose office it was to prevent the living from en
tering, and the dead from escaping: Hesiod gives
him fifty heads: and Virgil describes him with a
collar (so to express it) of fierce and frightful
snakes, which grew round his neck: when the
living visited the infernal regions, they'were ac
customed to throw to Cerberus a cake strongly
impregnated with soporific drugs, which he ate,
and was silent.
The first region of Hell that presented itself,
immediately after the traveller had passed the
kennel of Cerberus, was a sort of middle district
appropriated to such as had neither merited the
punishments of Tartarus nor the joys of Elysium :
this region however was a melancholy abode, and
a part of it was known by the name of the Fields
of Lamentation: this portion of the infernal re
gions was inhabited by the souls of infants who
had died as soon as they were born, of those un
fortunate persons who had been put to death

HECATE.

12?

wrongfully upon accusation ofsome crime, of such

as bad laid violent hands upon their own lives,
of those who had been crossed in love, and lastly,
of warriors who laid claim to no other merit but
that of valour.
Next after this region presented itself the pa
lace of Pluto : the mansion of the God was built
like the heavenly habitations", under the direc
tion of Vulcan, and by the labour of the Cyclops:
it was extremely magnificent, but of a sad and
melancholy aspect *.
The persons of Pluto and Proserpine, the king
and queen of Hell, have been formerly descrihed :
they are sometimes called, in reference to the su
preme power they possessed in their own domi
nions, the infernalJnpiter and Juno.
Hecate is one of the principal deities ef Hell :
Hesiod* makes her the daughter of Asteria the
sister of Latona, and thus first cousin to Diana :
subsequent writers however have usually consi
dered her as Diana herself, and in reference to
this, Diana is frequently styled triformis*, being
the Moon in heaven, on earth the Goddess of
hunting, and in Hell presiding over incantations
and magic.
Whether or no Hecate be the same as Diana,
certain it is that as the Goddess of magic* she
was represented under a form very different from
that which was proper to Diana considered as a
member of the Olympian council : her counte
nance was of so dreadful an expression, that
scarcely any mortal could dare to look upon it:
snakes and vipers grew upon her head instead of
x Horn, a <*. 607.
y Id. 8. IS.
1 Theog. 411.
1 Hor. iii. 22.
b Euseb. Pnep. Evang. 5.
c4

128

THE INFERNAL MERCURY.

hair : her feet were two serpents of enormous size;

and her stature was one hundred yards.
The worship which was addressed to her was
performed under the shadow of a tree called the
lotus, by the side of a river, or wizard stream, at
midnight: the sacrificer wore a garment of the
colour of the midnight sky : the victim was an
ewe lamb: a deep hole was dug in the earth,
into which the blood was suffered to run: the
body of the victim was burned upon a pile of
wood: and during the whole ceremony the priest
incessantly invoked the presence of the Goddess:
he then slowly withdrew himself from the altar;
and though, if the sacrifice had been rightly per
formed, it was now succeeded by a loud trampling of feet and howling of dogs, the priest was
forbidden to look round till after a certain inter
val: then strange apparitions in various shapes
were seen, from whose gestures or speech the sa
crificer learned that which it had been theperpose of the ceremony to discover: these magical
incantations however were held to be wicked,
and therefore by no means formed a part of the
authorised Greek religion.
Mercury was also a deity of Hell : in his cha
racter of one of the council of Olympus, he was
the God of eloquence : in his character of one of
the infernal deities, his office was to conduct the
spirits of the departed to the boat of Charon, and
again to lead them back after an interval of one
thousand years, to become once more inhabitants
of this busy world: with the touch of his cadaceuse lie caused the soul of a dying person gently
to part from the mortal frame; and with the same
c Virg. JEa. iv. 243.

ME1 CTUMlf

JUDGES OF HELt.

129

talisman he called up the ghosts of the dead from

their residence in the infernal abodes.
'
Within the palace of Pluto were to be found
the three judges of Hell, Minos, Rhadamanthus,
and ^Eacus : the two first of these had once been
men, and were the authors of the famous laws of
Crete : Minos and Rhadamanthus were placed by
the Greeks as the final judges of the spirits of men
departed, in consequence of the consummate ex
cellence they had displayed as lawgivers and
judges while they lived upon earth.
Minos and Rhadamanthus were the sons of Ju
piter by a mortal, Europa, daughter of Agenor
king of Sidon :. iEacus was the son of Jupiter by
jEgina, daughter of Asopus king of the island of
iEgina:. JEacus was also the grandfather of the
celebrated Achilles.
As soon'as the visitor of the infernal regions
had passed the palace of Pluto, his road divided
into two; that on the left led to the inclosure
where those 'ytho had committed great crimes on
earth were doomed to suffer the punishments of
their. misdeeds', and that on the right to the JJlys^an fields, tWrqiidence reserved for happy souls
* m a Mure stated f
Among the condemned suffering in Tartarus,
the most' remar,kable are Tityus, Ixion, Tantalus, ,
Sisyphus and t7ie*Danaides.
I Tityuse wif|**he son of Jupiter and Elara: he
is usually .numbered among the Giants : fearless
een of the authority of the Gods, he ofFered an
affront to Latona, the mother of Apollo : for this
Jpdacity Jupiter sentenced him to Hell, where,
as he lies chained to the ground, his body.covers
Vjrg. JEa, vi. 540. .

e Horn. Od. K 575. Virg. .En, vi. 595. .

g5

130

TANTALUS.

surface of nine acres : a vulture sits upon hi*

breast, and gnaws his liver, and feasts upon his
entrails; and that his punishment maybe eter
nal, it is decreed that his intestines shall grow
again as fast as they are devoured.
Ixion' was a mortal, who is said to have been
foolish enough to pretend to fall in love with the
queen of the Gods: J upiter to baffle his silly am
bition shaped a cloud into the exact likeness of
Juno and sent it to Ixion: Ixion was deceived :
Ixion and the cloud were the parents of the Cen
taurs: but, not contented with this, Ixion went
away, and boasted that his high-minded love had
not proved fruitless, as every hody supposed it
would have done, but that he had experienced all
manner of kindness and favour from J.uno, who
assured him that she loved hijv <tio lesV&icn. fier
husband: Jupiter, more than ever tiVrit&t.ed at
this insult, sent Ixion to Hell, aiki;A9<ipd'-Mm to
be fastened to a wheel, where he AidijrU'rotf nd^ fat
ever in incessant motion.
-'-^
The punishment of Tantalus' is 'still moVe-jer
fined, as his crime was more base and arx>rnirtet>lf
he resolved, he said, to mVk* Vriol whether tne
Gods really knew as much las they pretended:*
with this view he invited thorp' to 'a'Teast! he
killed his own son Pelops, yet ajehild,^nd cut
ting him in pieces, caused theftesh.to be dressed
in various ways, and served
to table : the
Gods were not so to be imposed upon : C
however, oppressed with grief for the loss of]
serpine, did not take notice what was set be
her, and ate a piece of the shoulder of Pelc
Jupiter joined together the limbs of the cl
' Pindar. Pyth. ii. 39 et seqq. 8 Pindar. Olymp. . 38 et >eqq.

8ISYPHUS.

131

thus unnaturally and impiously murdered, and

restored him to life: in place of the shoulder
which Ceres had eaten, J upiter gave him a shoul
der of ivory: and Pelops appears in the list of the
most eminent founders of the Grecian nation.
All that remained was the punishment of Tan
talus*: Jupiter condemned him to Hell, and fur
nished him with a feast no less painful to Tan
talus than the feast of Tantalus had been to the
Gods: plagued with perpetual hunger, a bough,
loaded with fruit the most delightful to the senses
of sight and smell, hangs immediately before
him : but the moment it approaches his lips,
a blast of wind never fails to drive it to a distance
from Ji/mrtormented with the most intolerable
thirst he i#plunged up to his chin in a refresheam s^but Jufnp sooner stoops to taste, than
th wearer retires from his lips, which
i So much as a drop.
s1 .was" a famous robber, who was ac"ury .those he plundered under a
yand leave them to expire in lintoriu.ff : in Hell his sentence is to throw
* of vast welgnyfc up to the top of an imprecipice : thj^'he is never able to effect : the
almost \eaches the top, but never fails to
' ^down ^^ih : poor Sisyphus, eager to
\sk.. puffs, and strains, and sweats,
but all in vfA^ the misery to which he is con*
demned is, always to be engaged in performing
what he can never effect.
4 The punishment of the Danaides* is similar to
that of Sisyphus: Danaus king of Argos, was
b Homer. Od. X. 581.
k Hor. 1. iii.Od. ii. 15 et seqq.
g6

i Id.*. 593.

133

THE DANAIDES.

brother to .5gyptus king of Egypt : an oracle

had foretold that Danaus should be deprived of
his crown by a son of ^Egyptus : to defeat the
prediction he had recourse to the following
cruel expedient: iEgyptus had fifty sons, and
Danaus fifty daughters: Danaus married his
fifty daughters to the sons of jEgyptus, but with
this injunction, that each one should murder her
.husband on the wedding-night, as he slept s
forty-nine of the brides faithfully performed the
mandate of their father ; and for this unnatural
action they were condemned to Hell : each is fur
nished with a bucket, and thus they are com
manded to fill a large tun with water, the bot
tom of which is full of holes: theil labour is
incessant; but, however unconqueraflte are their
exertions, they never approach an atom the
nearer to the end of their task.
_
V
The scene of punishment in the liitiire world
was gloomy and horrible: Virgil1 says, it is.not
lawful for any good or innocent beings ver (o
pass the threshold, and witness the measures o
retribution which are there carried on : Phlegethon, the river of fire, flowsround it: Tisiphpne,"
the most terrible of the Furies, watches perpe
tually at the avenue; and tire adamantine walls
are of such strength that neither, men" nor Gods
are of ability to demolish them.
The very thought of this etejmal prison was
enough to inspire sadness into evdry heart : but
the mortal visitor of the infernal regions passed
on by the gates of Tartarus, and entered Ely
sium: the air of this delicious retreat was fresh
and elastic: the light gave a bright and soothing
JEn. vi. 568.

ELYSIUM.

133

purplish tint to every thing it fell upon: the

trees were forever green, the lawns for ever fresh,
and the hearts of the inhabitants for ever cheer
ful : they employed themselves in athletic exer
cises, in dancing, and in concerts of vocal and
instrumental music, or passed away their hours
in not less agreeable contemplation and repose.
The persons for whom these happy seats were
reserved, were such as during their abode on
earth had shed their blood for their country,
pious priests whose conduct throughout had not
been less exemplary than their profession was
venerable, and men who had embellished human
life by the invention of useful arts, or who had
left behind them the remembrance of actions
which were honoured by posterity.
It is clear that neither Tartarus nor Elysium
were awarded, according to the Grecian mytho
logy, but teethe atrociously criminal or to the
eminently meritorious : the bulk of ghosts wan
dered undistinguished in other tracts of the in
fernal regions, where their existence seems to
have been' joyless and uncomfortable: IIomerm
makes Achilles in the regions below declare " how
gladly he would exchange his state for that of
the poorest 'plougtiboy;" and Virgil" remarks of
the self-destroyers, who he by no means places in
Tartarus, " How greatly now do they wish that
it were permitted them to sustain poverty and
every earthly hardship, in the light of the sun !"
Beyond the regions both of Tartarus and Ely
sium is the last river of Hell, the river Lethe: the
peculiar virtue of this stream was, that whoever
drank of it forgot every thing that had ever hap Od. K 488.

n ^Ji.vi. 436.

134

LETHE : TRANSMIGRATION.

pened to him : hence another of its names was the

Water of Oblivion.
Pythagoras, Virgil, and many of the ancients
inculcated the doctrine of transmigration: that
is, that the souls of the deceased, after an in
terval of a thousand years, return once more into
the upper world and are born: the thousand
years is the tenet of Virgil0 ; Pythagoras seems
to have admitted no interval : as it is certain that
no one remembers any thing that happened to
him in any pre-existent state, it was supposed
that the souls which were under orders to revisit
the light of the sun, first drank of the waters of
Lethe, in consequence of which their minds be
came a pure blank: Pythagoras seems to have
been the only one who returned to life without
drinking of the Lethe: for he said he recollected
having once been Euphorbus at the siege of
Troy*,- and at another time a cock: he forbad
his scholars eating the flesh of animals, lest un
awares they should devour their own parents.
0 JEn. vi. 748.

P Ov. Met. xv. 160.

135

CHAP. XVI.
OF THE GODS REPRESENTATIVE OF THE
FACULTIES AND CONCEPTIONS
OF THE MIND.
Mnemosyne.The Muses.The Graces.Themis, or
Justice.The Hours, or Seasons.The Fates.
Their Distaff, Spindle and Shears.Story of Meleager and Althea.Astraca.The Golden, Silver,
Brazen, and Iron Ages.Nemesis.The Furies, the
most Terrible of all Superhuman Natures.Death.
Sleep. Dreams. Discord. Momus. Impotence
of his Censures.Prayers.Virtue.Honour.Pru
dence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude.Hope.
Tilial Duty.Story of the Roman Charity.Con
tumely, Impudence and Calumny.Fortune.Plutus.Hygeia. Hebe. Hymen. Fame. Liberty.
Next to the Gods already spoken of, it is
proper we should consider those deities which re
present the faculties and conceptions of the mind:
this is another of the great beauties of the Grecian
mythology : it not only imparted life and judg
ment and will to inanimate natures, and peopled
the very deserts with divinities : beside this it
also substantiated mere abstractions, the unreal
and fleeting ideas of the soul :
it gave to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name:
by means of this transformation, the poet talked
tohis Muse, and personified Health, and Liberty,

136

THE MUSES.

and Justice, and Prayer: and by habit contracted

a deep feeling of the reality of these things : ima
gination, the faculty by which men transport
themselves into the situations of their fellows, and
make the case of another their own, is the very
soul of moral goodness : the mythology of the
ancients therefore, which awakened the imagina
tion, must have had some favourable influence
upon the moral habits of its votaries.
The most eminent of what we may call these
abstract deities, are the Nine Muses: they were
the daughters of Jupiter, the king of the Gods,
by Mnemosyne* (or Memory), one of the Titans :
by this allegory the Greeks plainly signified, that
the greatest refinements of human intellect were
modifications only of the original faculty of Me
mory, cultivated by a devout and sedulous inter
course with invisible natures.
The Muses were, Clio, the Muse of History,.
Euterpe, of Music, Thalia, of Comedy, Melpo
mene, of Tragedy, Terpsichore, of Dancing,
Erato, of Lyric, Divine, and Amorous Poetry,
Polyhymnia, of Rhetoric, Calliope, of Epic
Poetry, and Urania, of Mathematics and Astro
nomy: their names are derived from certain
Greek words, signifying respectively the attri
butes and province of each.
The Muses were represented as beautiful vir
gins, of a majestic figure and an expressive coun
tenance, and Apollo ordinarily presided in their
assemblies: each of them bore about her certain
symbols emblematical of the art to which she was
devoted : Clio, the Muse of History, was crowned
with laurel ; she had a trumpet in her right hand,.
i Hes. The. 52 el 77.

THE GRACES.

137

and a book in her left : Euterpe, the patroness of

Music, had a tiara of flowers, and sustained a
flute: the garments of Thalia, the Muse of Co
medy, were trussed up short, for the convenience
of an unrestrained motion : she wore the sandal,
or sock, emblematical of comedy, and carried a
mask in her hand : Melpomene was distinguished
by the buskin, emblematical of tragedy, and a
gorgeous sweeping robe, splendid with purple
and gold : in one hand she bore crowns and a
sceptre, and in the other a dagger : Terpsichore,
the Muse of Dancing, was represented in a dancing
attitude, and exhibited a musical instrument:
Erato, the Lyric Muse, appeared with the lyre,
and was crowned with roses and myrtle : Poly
hymnia, the Muse of Rhetoric, wore a flowing
robe of purest white, a sceptre in her left hand,
and her right hand raised in the attitude to speak:
Calliope, the Epic Muse, was represented bear
ing books in her hands, and crowned with laurel :
and Urania, the Muse of Astronomy, was seen
with a tiara of stars, her robe of heavenly blue, a
globe in her hand, and various mathematical
instruments scattered round her.
The Graces' were the daughters of Jupiter by
Eurynome, one of the Oceanides : some of the
ancients have ascribed to them a different pa
rentage, and made them the daughters of Venus:
their Latin name is derived from gratus, " pleas
ing;" but their Greek appellation, Charites,
comes from a verb signifying " to rejoice;" thus
reminding us that whatever is to give us pleasure,
must present itself with smiles and hilarity: it
was a usual admonition among the ancients to
1 Hes.The. 906.
y

138

THE GRACES.

persons of a surly and melancholic temper, " Sa

crifice to the Graces ;" and Plato is related to
have addressed the phrase in this sense to Xenocrates, one of his scholars, who displayed a re
markably austere character*.
The names of the Graces were Aglaia, that is,
" splendid," Thalia, that is, " flourishing,"
and Euphrosyne, that is, " mirthful;" they were
represented under the most beautiful forms, naked,
and with their hands joined, the middle one turn
ing her back, and the two others their faces to
the beholder: Seneca*, the Roman philosopher,
has undertaken to give an explanation to these
circumstances : " they are naked," says he, " be
cause kindnesses ought ever to be conferred in sin
cerity and candour: they are young, for the me
mory of a benefit ought never to grow old ; they
are virgins, for kindnesses ought always to be
pure, and without thought of a requital; their
hands are joined, for there should be a perpetual
reciprocation of assistance among friends; and
lastly, two of the three turn their faces to the be
holder, to signify that every benefit received
should be twice thanked, once when we receive
it, and again when it is returned :" the worship
of the Graces was the same as that of the Muses,
with whom they had a temple in common.
Another of the wives of Jupiter was Themis',
one of the Titans : she is understood to be the
Goddess of Justice and Righteousness; she in
structed Jupiter how to come ofF victorious in the
wars of the Giants, and pointed out to Deucalion w
the means of repeopling the world after the uni
versal deluge : she was worshipped by the Ro* Diog. Laert. iii. in vit. Xenocr.
t De Benefic. i. S.
' Hes. The. 900.
w Ot. Met. i. 379.

THE HOURS.

139

mans under the name of Justitia; and in this

character has been represented in later times with
an erect figure, a bandage over her eyes, a pair
of scales in one hand, and a sword in the other.
The offspring of the marriage of Jupiter and
Themis is various: she first brought him three
daughters, called Eunomia, " Good Govern
ment," Dice, "Judgment," and Irene, "Peace:"
taken in the sense of their names, they are the ob
vious growth and attendants of civilised society:
but they had another office in the Grecian mytho
logy, and were called the Hours ; or, as perhaps
the word [fift] may be more justly translated,
the Seasons : the connection between their diffe
rent functions is this, that wherever Good Govern
ment, Judgment and Peace prevail, there the
Seasons, Spring, Summer, and Autumn, will ap
pear with all their auspicious characteristics:
their symbols were respectively, a rose, an ear of
corn, and a cluster of grapes : they were the
nurses of Venus, orTJCauty whether animate or
inanimate": they were born in the opening of the
year, and had their favourite haunts in the mea
dows*: they were the door-keepers of heaven1;
they harnessed the horses of the sun* ; and the
various temperature of the skies depended upon
their pleasure : they trod the earth with a soft
and almost imperceptible motion, and were the
appropriate bringers of intelligence of every
thing new that happened in every part of the
universe.
Jupiter and Themis had three other daughters,
called the Parcae, the " Destinies, or Fates':"
* Horn. Hymn, in Ven.
y Orph. Hymn.
z Horn,
ft (. 749.
a Ot. Met. ii. 118.
>> Theocr, Syracus. 105.

140

THE FATES.

this genealogy was assigned them, because the

fates and fortunes of men, as well as the regular
return of spring-time and harvest, grow out of
the state of society in which they are born.
The Fates however had a vague and Uncertain
character, proceeding from the metaphysical or
philosophical conceptions of men respecting the
order of the universe: one thing appears to be
for ever connected with another; if Milton's father
had not given him a learned education, Milton
would never have written Paradise Lost : if Mil
ton's mother, when she was with child, had hap
pened to have passed through a street where a
wild beast bad broken loose, she might have been
frightened, and Milton not have been born alive:
if Milton's father and mother had never met, he
would never have been bom at all: perhaps
their meeting depended upon some ball to have
been given by the lady of a manor !' Milton's mo
ther would not have gone to^ the ball, if she had
not been supplied with a*p by a French milli
ner : if a stage-coach had not been setting out for
Oxfordshire at a particular time, the French
milliner would never have come there : the French
milliner would never have passed over to Eng
land, but for the persecution set up by the Catho
lics against the Hugonotsr there never would
have been Hugonots if Hent^ VIII. had not fallen
in love with Anne Boleyn at cardinal Wolsey's
banquet : in this manner all events seem to be
linked together in an indissoluble chain: this con
nection of event with event is what some religious
writers have called Predestination.
Taken in this sense Homer, and other Greek
poets represent the power of the Fates as para

THE FATES.

141

mount to that of Jupiter': it therefore became

natural to assign them a remoter origin : Plato4
says, they are the children of Necessity, Lycophrone of the Sea or Chaos, and Hesiod in one
place that they are the offspring of Erebus and
Night', though in another he speaks of them as
sprung from Jupiter and Themis*.
The names of the Fates are Clotho, Lachesis,
and Atropos : they are generally represented under
the figures of three old women, clothed in black :
as soon as they were born, they fled to a distant
quarter far removed from Gods and men, where
they sit in a spacious, gloomy cave, scooped out
of an immensarock of marble, and are perpetu
ally busied with deciding upon the fortunes of
the universe.
* **
The better to coojey to us the- nature of their
functions, tluj Pa#ae are usually represented,
Clotho as holding a dj^taff of adamant, Lachesis
with a spindle drawing out a thread representa
tive of the life of manvand Atropos with a pair
of shears ready to cut the thread whenever her
caprice may prompt her to do so.
The Fates are always Ascribed as inexorable ;
yet the ancients were eager to erect to them temples
and statues, and deoransjhted toward them every
sentiment of respectjflHKe homage of the mass
of mankind is less regrrnued by what they hope,
than by what they fear.
The story of Meleager aptly illustrates the ideas
which the ancients entertained of the Parcae : Me
leager was the son of the king of iEtolia: and to
grace his birth, the Parcae (like what we read of
* Vid. supra., 41.
Cass. 145.

d De Repub. 10. juxtafinern.

fTheog.217.
t Id. 903.

142

MELEAGER AND ALTHEA.

fairies in fairy-tales) were present at the moment

he came into the world: Clotho gave him for
gift that he should be the most courageous of
mankind ; Lachesis that he should excel all
others in feats of activity ; and Atropos, snatch
ing a brand from the fire, said he should live as
long as that billet remained unconsumed: Althea,
the mother of Meleager, heard these predictions,
and carefully extinguishing the brand, kept it
ever after ampVig^the things she was most anxious
to preserve : thV niiost heroic of the actions of
Meleager was the destruction of tbe wild boar of
Calydon: all the heroes of Greece: attended on
this occasion, but it was Meleager wat struck the
ferocious creature to the .hear! : after the hunt
was over, the twq uncles of Meleager, brothers of
Althea, envious of his g\ot, picked a quarrel
with him, and in defending bis lifejboth of them
were killed : Althea hastened to the temple of the
Gods to return thanks tbr/har son's success against
the boar: but, as she returned, she met the
corpses of her brothers, and becoming frantic
with rage, flew home, cast the fatal brand into
the flames, and MjeleagGfexpired*.
Astraea was also the daughter of Jupiter and
Themis : her characteafe exactly similar to that
of her mother : she is intimately connected with
the beautiful fiction of the Golden Age: " In the
beginning of things," say the poets', " all men
were happy, and all were good : there were no
quarrels, and there needed no law : all men loved
and assisted each other : none wandered in search
of distant climates, or in ships cut the unknown
sea : the bowels of the earth were yet unransacked
h Ot. Met. riii. 270 et <qq.

' Id. i. 149.

THE FOUR AGES.

143

in search of the precious or the harder metals :

spring and summer succeeded each other, with
out the intervention of winter : the earth brought
forth all its fruits without the labours of the
plough : cares, wants, wars and diseases were
unheard of: and after along series of healthful
and happy existence, the lives of men subsided in
a pleasing sleep, and their spirits became wafied
to the mansions ofj^H^jiods, and regions of eter
nal joy."
^P!**;
//,'
This state iff things d%l not last forever: to
the Golden, Age, the Silver succeeded, to the Sil
ver the Brazen, and t#the Brazen the Iron Age :
" A per petifal' 'spring no longer fertilised the
ground :. cultivation was. necessary, and cullivatioiv*produced property" asteel was dug out of the
earth', and ships navigated the ocean : men con
tinually quarrelled witraach other, and laws and
punishments became cessary to repress their
quarrels : wars arose between nations : shame
and modesty were^unknowu : the most sacred
engagements were violated, and truth and since
rity were set at nought : crime succeeded to
crime : sons watched impatiently for the death of
their fathers, and step-mothers mixed poison for
the innocent orphans they should have protected:
adultery, incest, blasphemy a. murder stained
the history of every day."
In the Golden Agek the Gods did not disdain
to mix familiarly with the sons of men : the innocence, the integrity and the brotherly love they
found among us were a pleasing spectacle even to
superior natures ; but, as mankind degenerated,
one God after another deserted their late beloved
k Ot. Fasti, i. 246.

144

NEMESls.

haunts: Astraea, or Justice, lingered the last:

she was loth to leave mankind, who had so long
conformed themselves to her dictates : at length
the smell of the wholesome earth now steeped in
human gore, could no longer be endured by her :
she flew away to heaven, and took her place,
under the name of Virgo, among the signs of the
zodiac1.
.Nemesis is a deity closeUjfcoj)nected in charac
ter with Themis and 4wr oflsp^i"; : she is the
Goddess of Vengeance ^she is saicPby Hesiodm to
be the daughter of Night without ajather, but
by Pausanias", a celebrated ancient historian, to
be the child of J upiter an,d.fecessity : the con
duct of Nemesis is alwavs, regulated by the strict
est rules of justice: she ijrterrible only to offeitA^rs:
but she is severe and iifexorable in her proceed
ings : it is her province to defend^he relics and
the memory of the deadly and to pursue all sorts
of crimes with a proportioned punishment: she is
represented with a fierce countenance, wfth wild
and dishevelled hair, and a whip in her hand :
her emblems are wings and a wheel, to denote
how swiftly punishment overtakes the criminal:
yet sometimes the ancients, in allusion to many
notorious facts in the history of mankind, observed
of Nemesis, or the Vengeanc^ of Heaven, that
though sure to overtake the guilty head, her arri
val was tardy, and the deluded offender oft-times
promised himself that his sin was forgotten ; the
priest and the poet warned their votaries, that
Nemesis was indeed slow of foot, but that her
hand was heavy, and its inevitable blow crushed
the guilty into dust : one of the names of this deity
1 Arat. Phaenorn. i. 98 et seqq.
n Pausauias, i. S3.

Theog. 228.

THE FURIES.

145

was Rhamnusia0, from a celebrated statue of her

carved by Phidias, and set up in the temple of
Rhamnus near Athens.
The Furies are attendants upon Nemesis; and
are said by Virgil* to be like her the daughters
of Night ; but Hesiod' makes them the sisters of
the Giants who warred against Heaven, being, like
them, sprung from the blood of Ccelus : they are
also called Eumen^ks^aiid Dirac : they are three,
and their nam op AlecCTj Tisiphonc and Megaera:
they had anther naradf Erinnys, which was
common - t(f them all: Aese were the most de
formed a^ horrible of all the Grecian deities :
their f;u;es were em apYateti, ^hastly, and dun, as
if embrowned with smoke: instead of hair, they
haflr'Sriikes depending Jfrom their heads, which
lamed their necks
shoulders, and worked
theln up into rage : Ineir eyes were blood-shot
and flaming, and sealed ready to burst from
their sockets: they carried iron chains, and whips
with lashes of iron, or sometimes of scorpions,
in one hand, and lighted torches in the other:
their garments were of a rusty black, stained with
fresh streams of blood, and hanging loose and
tattered about their bony forms: they were the
bearers of celestial vengeance against offending
nations, and carried with jBbm war, pestilence
and famine: Terror, Rage/^aleaess and Death
followed in their train : they also struck remorse
and frenay into the hearts of enormous offenders :
the Furies constantly haunted Orestes for having
slain his mother, though that mother had first
proved unfaithful to her husband the father of
Orestes, and had afterwards treacherously killed
Pausanias, i 33.

r Ma. xii. 345.

H

1 Theog. 184.

146

THE FURIE9.

him : when they fixed upon a guilty person, they

followed him night and day; waking or sleep
ing, be saw them ; they haunted him in solitude;
they pursued him in feasts ; the gloomiest cavern
could not hide, and the most sumptuous palace
Could not defend him from their assaults'.
The Greeks regarded these deities with such
insurmountable terror, that they scarcely dared
pronounce their names; r^j^when they passed
by their temples they tulied thel* faces another
way, lest the very sigrfc of the OTtfces should
blast them'.
'
tL' :
There are several other
the ancient Gods,
which were the progenypf Sight. V ' A
:
Night, as has been seen,,^vas ope of 4fe' *
of the Gods, the daughter of Darknr
Chaos, and the sister oXTeilus., ^Tartar
Erebus : it is characterise
thology, often to ascribe tc
lities of the parent: henft Night 'U.fr^
taken as the same with Chaos; alraMn thi
she is styled by Orpheus' the pajpntof G*ds and
men, being conceived to be prioVJo bjfth in the
order of time.
Taken in the allegorical meaning, we cannot
be surprised to foud Sleep and Death ranked
among the children of iN ight. #1
Sleep and Deatfrarc said to oe brothers, ex
tremely resembling each other, and strongly
smitten with a mutual attachment.
Death however is more frequently represented
as a female, the twin-born of Sleep: her gar' .ffischyli Eumen. passirn.
In Noctern.

* Soph. (Ed. Col. 123 et seqq.

,DEATH AND SLEEP.

147

ments are Hack, speckled with small stars, and

her wings black and heavy.
Sleep, as we are told by Ovid", holds his per
petual residence in the deep cavern of a mountain
in the country of the Cimmerii, into which the
rays of the sun, either morning, noon, or night,
never pcuetrate: the whole space is filled with a
thick and nagging vapour: no cock, or dog, or
any animal accustomed to rouse men from their
-*shimbeTs, comes near the place: no voice is
heard : the very leaves are never moved with the
rustling of the wind : only the river Lethe creeps
through the cave, and with a dull, murmuring
sound . invites and prolongs the slumbers of the
God : 'the cavern is" without a door, lest the
creakVigj>f a hinge might disturb the deep silence,
and wKjhouf a centinel,*for in that region it is
impossible^ thai wakefulness should ever be main
tained: jileep hinyjelfreposes upon a downy couch,
the coveting of which is black : a heavy weight
seems 4o press down'Tiis eyelids, and his head,
nodding and oppressed, alternately falls on one
side and the other r he is surrounded with my
riads of I>reams, his offspring, whose task it is
to protect and prolong the repose of their father :
the chief of these is Mornhaus. who has the
faculty of assuming the aira^Bn of every mortal
that lives, or that ever hlBWved, Icelus, who
presents to monarchs in their sleep the shape of
beast, or bird, or any living thing, and Phantasus, who takes the appearance of inanimate sub
stances, a rock, a palace, a forest, or a sea.
Discord is another of the children of Night ;
to whom Homerw ascribes this peculiarity, that
T Mm. *i. 552.
. h2

a 2, 440.

148

DISCORD.

though at first she is but a dwarf, yet being

nourished, she so improves in bigness, that
while she walks along on the earth, her head
touches the very heavens: it was the Goddess
Discord* that, at the nuptials of Thetis, ho
noured the festival, at which all the deities at
tended, with the gift of a golden apple, on which
was written, " Let it be presented to the fairest :"
Juno, Minerva and Venus immediately advanced
their pretensions ; and as the Gods were un
willing to interfere in their contention, Paris, the
shepherd-son of king Priam, was appointed um
pire: the Goddesses appeared naked before him,
that the beauty of their proportions might be fully
displayed: each of them offered a bribe: Juno
promised to reward his favour with emgifef Mi
nerva engaged to make him the grcateskfftf mi
litary heroes, and Venus to bestow upon him in
marriage the most beautiful woman on earth :
Paris decided in favour of Ventfs, and from that
moment the two other Goddesses became' his in
exorable foes*.
Among the children of {fight are also fre
quently numbered Care, Fraud, Concupiscence,
Misery, Old Age, and many the like unsubstan
tial beings*.
Lastly, by a v^^^pt metaphor, Momus1, the
God of Scoffing^^T Censoriousness, is univer
sally stated to be the progeny of Night: by this
fiction the generous ancients fastened the utmost
degree of scorn upon a critical and carping dis
position : they insinuated to all their disciples this
glorious lesson, that nothing is more difficult than
* Lucian Dialog. Mar. Panopes et Galenes.
z Hei. Theog. 224
Id. 214.

T Ov. Her. 16.

MOMUS.

149

to produce a great and admirable work, in which

shall be at once displayed the skill and compre
hensive mind of its author, and a most excellent
and important use for those for whom it was in
tended ; while nothing is more easy than to raise
quibbling objections to parts of such a work, to
view every member of it with a squint and dis
torted eye, and to hold up each in turn to the
laughter of the empty, the frivolous and the
brutish.
It is in this sense Milton says, " Methinks I
see in my mind a noble and puissant nation rous
ing herself like the strong man [Samson] after
sleep, and shaking her invincible locks: me
thinks I see her as an eagle mewing her mighty
youth, and kindling her undazzleu eyes at the
full mid-day beam: purging and unsealing her
long abused sight [this alludes to the story of
St. Paul's conversion] at the fountain itself of
heavenly radiance: while the whole noise of ti
morous and flocking birds, with those also that
love the twilight* flutter about amazed at what
she means, and in their envious gabble would
prognosticate a year of sects and schisms."
Momus is the satirist of heaven: though all
the conceptions of the Gods were noble, and
all their works were admirablAhc with the most
impudent fool-hardiness dil^Bd against them the
shafts of his ridicule : NeptuW, Minerva and Vul
can, three Gods of the highest class, seeing the
incorrigible folly with which he laboured, once
entered into a confederacy to put him to shame:
and all, producing the most admirable efforts of
their power, begged him with a grave air of hu
mility to point out to them the censures to which
they were liable: Neptune's work was a proud

150

CRITICISMS OF MOMUS.

and stately bull : Minerva's a spacious and splen

did mansion, replete with every grace of art,
and every accommodation that convenience could
suggest : Vulcan's was a man, of erect front, the
most perfect proportions, and a mien alike expres
sive of wisdom and benevolence: this must be sup
posed to have passed before the creation of the
.world, and these three productions to have been
respectively the first specimens in their kind.
Momus for an instant stood iibashed : he forgot
his nature, and was speechless with wonder and
delight: presently he reccollected himself, and
thought he should be for ever disgraced, if he
did not adhere to his character of the " satirist of
the Gods."
He looked at the bull : " All this is vastly well,
vastly well indeed, brother Neptune," said he,
" this animal is strong and awful and terrible :jn
many respects nothing can be better: but look at
those eyes: come, confess, my friend, you were
out there : why are they so far from each other ?
do not you see that, if they were close under his
horns, every blow that he struck in his rage,
would go so much the surer to its aim?"
He then looked at Minerva's palace : he strained
hard for a fault, and was almost in despair ;
every thing was#o complete: at last he said,
" What a clumalte cumbrous affair we have
here! Why, MineWa, you should have clapped
wings to your house, and made it as light as a
feather: a house can never be without a situation,
and a neighbourhood: and, if your house should
be in a bad neighbourhood, what-a-devil is its in
habitant to do ? you do not expect him to take it
up upon his back, and run away with it?"
Momus next turned to Vulcan's man : "Why,

151

PRAYERS.

this is worst of all," said be (he knew in his heart

that Vulcan had surpassed both his competitors):
" a man is nothing without a woman, nor a wo
man without children, nor a family without a
tribe or a nation: and then, what hypocrisy and
duplicity and treachery there will be in the
world! now, if you had gone about your job
with the least of the eye of a workman, would
not you have made a window in your man's bor
som, that every body might see without any
trouble the very thoughts that were working in
his heart" ?"
Prayers are reckoned by Homer' among the
daughters of Jupiter: this is perhaps to be re
garded rather as a poetical allegory, than a sec
tion of Grecian mythology : it is however so
beautiful, that it is worth your remembrance :
w Though thus highly born, they are," says Ho
mer, " lame of their feet, and wrinkled in their
Tisages : their eyes are dim, and their behaviour
is dejected: they are the constant attendants upon
Injury: where Injury goes before, depressing the
weak, and breaking the hearts of mankind,
Prayers follow after, solicitous to heal the wounds
that he has inflicted: injury is strong and sound
of feet, while Prayers are feeble, tottering and in
firm: yet are they never far behind: they apply
themselves to soften the hejht of the injurious
man, that he may repent^Hb evil he has done:
happy is he that listens to their suit: for, if any
reject their modest, interceding voice, Jupiter
visits that man, for the sake of his daughters,
with exemplary punishment : an Injury heavier
than that which he has committed falls upon the
b Lucian. Hrrmotim.

U. . 5Q2.
li 4

152

VIRTUE AND HONOUR.

hard-hearted : his requests to the Father of the

Gods are laughed to scorn : as he would listen to
rto intercession, so Jupiter pursues him with sor
row upon sorrow, till the pride of his heart is
humbled in the dust."
All the Virtues, which can inhabit the breast
of man, and prompt his tongue to speak, or his
hand to act, were esteemed Gods, and had tem
ples or altars erected to them in some parts of
Greece or Italy: as these however were plainly
allegorical, they had not a particular ancestry
and descent ascribed to them like the other Gods,
but stood alone, and were regarded as self-cen
tered and independent: it was a beautiful fiction,
by which all the great and admirable qualities of
the human mind were represented with certain at
tributes and under a certain form, were elevated
to the rank of things living and divine, and were
deemed capable of actuating the hearts of their
votaries and hearing their prayers.
Virtus, or Arete, was the general name for
them all: Marcus Marcellus*, a celebrated Ro
man consul, built a temple to Virtue, and another
to Honour, and by a contrivance full of moral
and meaning, so disposed the relative situations
of the two, that the temple of Honour could not
be entered but through the temple of Virtue.
The ancient moralists in their reasonings on
Virtue, considered Mfk good qualities of a free
agent as resting UPoi1 our principal points5,
Prudence, Justice, Temperance, and Fortitude,
which they called the four cardinal or principal
Virtues.
All the abstract qualities of the mind were re* Liv, xxix. 11.

Cicero de Off.

CARDINAL VIRTUES.

15S

presented under female figures : the Virtues were

necessarily tall, graceful, comely and majestic :
Prudence was distinguished by a carpenter's
square in her hand to denote precision, and a
globe at her feet expressing the largeness of her
observation : Temperance carried a bridle ; J ustice a balance ; and Fortitude stood in a firm at
titude leaning upon a sword, the point of which
rested upon the ground.
There were many other Goddesses of the same
class, beside these four : and from their rank and
circumstances in the Grecian mythology, and the
statues of them which have been preserved, we
are at this day perfectly familiar with their sym
bols and attributes : who, for instance, has not
seen Hope leaning on her anchor?
There are various qualities of human actions,
which are ordinarily regarded as the links by
which the machine of human society is held to
gether, and its order and sound constitution pre
served : these were particularly venerated among
the ancients: such are Fides, Faith: Veritas,
Truth ; Concordia, Concord ; Honestas, Noble
or Liberal Conduct; Pudicilia, Chastity; and
Pietas, Filial Duty.
A temple was dedicated to Filial Duty in Rome
on a very memorable occasion, and the story f is
strongly illustrative of the ideas the Romans en
tertained of the moral virtfl^: a Roman matron
of distinguished birth was by the laws condemned
to die : we are not told what was her crime l the
jailor however received a warrant commanding
him to put her death in prison : meanwhile he
bad conceived a respect for his prisoner, and by
Plin. Hitt. Nat. vli. 36.
a.5.

154

THK ROMAN CHARITY.

a singular kind of compassion could not prevail

upon himself to put her to death, but resolved
that he would leave her to perish by want of
food : this unhappy matron had a daughter, that
was newly married, and that had an infant to
whom she was accustomed to give suck : the
daughter came every day to the prison, requesting
that she might be permitted to visit her mother:
the jailor granted her desire, only on condition
that she would allow herself to be searched, that
she might convey no sustenance to her wretched
parent: still the jailor expected when the un
happy matron would die: he was responsible for
her existence: she was dead in law : be was dis
appointed : day after day, and week after week
she continued to live: the keeper was at length
convinced that there was some mystery in this,
which he determined to penetrate: be hid him
self in a convenient place to observe the next in
terview : when to his astonishment he discovered
the head of the mother reclined upon the arm of
the daughter, who presented her nipple to her
parent to suck : she had invented this extraordi
nary way of administering nourishment to her
mother, not being able to bear to see her expire
before her eyes.
The jailor, brought up in the Roman notions
of the superlative merits of Filial Duty, did not
hesitate to disclose fllfat he had seen to the judges;
who on their part were struck with so profound
an admiration at the fact, that they not only ac
quitted the daughter of all offence of what she
had done, but gave her the life of her mother:
this mother, who had lately been under sentence
of death for some capital crime, was now decreed
by a vote of the senate to be maintained for the

CONTUMELY, CALUMNY, IMPUDENCE. 155

rest of her life at the public charge, together with
her daughter: the prison itself in which this
lovely scene had passed, was by the same vote
ordered to be pulled down, and a temple to Filial
Duty erected on its ruins.
It may at first appear surprising that the an
cients not only erected temples and altars to the
principal virtues which are the ornaments of hu
man nature: they also paid a similar homage
to the vices of man: such were Contumely, Ca
lumny, and Impudence, each of which were ho
noured with religious worship by the Athenians :
you may be sure it was not that they really held
these qualities in respect and esteem.
To explain the riddle, it should be recollected
that fear is a main principle of religion : " The
fear of the Lord," says the Wise Man in the
Bible, " is the beginning of wisdom :" pious
persons full as often pray to God that he would
not afflict them with certain evils, as that he
would confer on them certain benefits : this sort of
prayer is technically called " deprecation."
The Athenians therefore deprecated the power
and malice of these vices: they prayed that they
might escape the Contumely and Calumny of
wicked men, and that Impudence might never
become an inmate of their own breasts: thus ex
plained, it appears that it was a noble bashfulness
and pudency of soul that first led men to erect
altars to Impudence.
Let it suffice for me to name a few other deities
of this abstract species ; for to make a complete
catalogue of them would be tedious: the figure
of Fortune, as spoken of by iEsop and others, is
familiar to everyone: she has a bandage over
her eyes, to. denote that she bestows her favours

156

FORTUNE, PLUTUSj HYGEIA.

indiscriminately upon thedeserving and the worth

less; and she stands upon a wheel, an emblem
expressing the inconstancy of her temper, and the
vicissitudes which her followers must look to ex
perience.
Plutus* was the God of Wealth : like Fortune
he was blind : for nothing can be more indiscri
minately distributed than the good things of this
world: he was painted lame; for wealth is usu
ally very slow of acquisition: at the same time
that he had wings; for " Riches," as the wise
man says," make themselves wings, and fly away."
Hygeia, or Health, was a Goddess always re
presented under the most engaging forms; for
health is that blessing, without which all other
blessings are worthless and insipid, and which
gives a zest to them all: her smiles were irresisti
ble: the colours in her cheek were softer than
those of the peach, and the brightness of her eye
inspired gaiety into every beholder: the texture
of her flesh was firm, and her light and cheerful
motions were grace itself, for they flowed from the
hilarity of her heart.'
Hebe, the Goddess of Youth, was the daugh
ter of Jupiter and Juno: Jupiter was so delighted
with herextreme beauty, that he made her his cup
bearer: her cheeks were fresh as the new-blown
roses, and her flesh was enchantingly dappled,
white and red: she wore a crown of flowers of the
most exquisite richness and luxuriance : once on
a time however, Hebe happening to fall in an
aukward manner so as to excite a smile at the
celestial banquet, the king of the Gods, like an
earthly monarch, offended with what he ought
l Lucian. in Timon.

'*

HYMEN.

15T

to have deemed accident, dismissed her from her

employment, and took Ganymed in her stead, as
will be seen hereafter*.
It was the prerogative of Hebe to restore Gods
and men to perpetual youth at her pleasure : Ju
piter, when he took Hercules, his favourite son
by an earthly mother, up into Heaven, gave him
as a mark of his peculiar grace the Goddess Hebe
to wife '.
Hymen, the God of Marriage, was the son of
Bacchubk, and Venus : according to other ac
counts, Hymen was originally the name of a
young Athenian of extraordinary beauty, but ig
noble origin, who fell in love with one of the
most illustrious maidens of that city : in pursuit
of the object of his passion, he disguised himself
in female attire and joined a procession of Athe
nian virgins to Eleusis : a pirate-ship touched at
Eleusis, and carried off many of the virgins, and
among, them Hymen and his mistress: Hymen
laid a plan in concert with his fellow-captives,
to destroy the pirates, and deliver the prisoners :
he brought the vessel in triumph into the port of
Athens: his citizens called upon him to name
the reward they should give him for having per
formed so signal a public service : he asked their
consent to marry one of the maidens he had deli
vered : thus he obtained his mistress's hand ; and
their wedlock was so fortunate, that it grew afterward
into a custom to invoke his name on all occasions
of marriage, and to pray that the couple now
united might be as happy as Hymen and his bride'.
h Serv. in Virg. JEn.. i. 28.
i Horn. Od. 601.
k Sen. Med. 110.
1 Serv. in Virg. JEn. i. 651. Schol. Horn. II. <r. 493, represent*
Hymen at an Argive.

158

fame: liberty.

The attributes of Hymen were a garland of

roses and marjoram, a saffron-coloured robe, and
a torch m.
Fame is a Goddess beautifully describe^ by
Virgil": she is one of the Titans: she is in per
petual motion, and though of small stature at
first, grows and enlarges by going, till her. head
touches the skies: her body is clothed with fea
thers, and under every feather she has an eye to
observe, an ear to bear, and a tongue to repeat
all things: she never sleeps: by day you may
often see her perched upon some high tower, that
she may enjoy the more extensive prospect ; and
by night you may be startled with the whizzing
of her wings, as she goes from town to town and
from country to country, spreading rumours, some
true, and many false.
Liberty, "the mountain nymph, sweet Li
berty," as Milton calls her,you may think whe
ther she was worshipped by the ancient Greeks
and Romans, who owed every thing to her,, their
courage, their virtues, their arts, and their glory,
and who prized her more than life : the .figure
under which she was represented expressed every
<hing frank, ingenuous, and superior to fear:
there was nothing about her wild, turbulent and
restless : she seemed to know her own powers, and
to repose in them a sober and enlightened confi
dence : her emblems were, the wand with which
the magistrate touched a slave, and the pileus,
or cap, so often spoken of by the name of the
" cap of liberty," which he put on his head,
when he was admitted to his freedom.
Sen. Med. 67. Catull, Ix. 7.

.ffin.iv. 17S.

159

CHAP. XVII.
OF DEMIGODS.

Recapitulation. Origin of the Demigods.Inachus.

Io changed into a Heiferand watched by Argus
with a Hundred Eyes.Phaetonfalls from the
Chariot of the Sun, and is drowned.Ogyges's Flood.
Cecrops, Half-Man and Half-Serpent.Erichtho' uius, with Dragon's Feet.Cruel Treatment of Phi
lomela by Tereus.Jealousies of Cephalus and Procris.The Flood of Deucalion.
Having finished the history of the Gods of
the Greeks', strictly so called, I will now give you
an account of an inferior order of personages,
but what make a conspicuous figure in the ancient
mythology, and are sometimes called Demigods,
and sometimes Heroes: these personages are un
derstood to have had for their parents on one side
a God,* and on the other side a mortal.
The undisputed Gods of the highest order, or
the remotest antiquity, that we read of in the
Grecian mythology, may be divided info two
classes, the allegorical and the personal.
It is not to be supposed that the more ancient
Gods, as they are called, such as Chaos, Tellus,
Ccelus, Tartarus, Erebus, Darkness and Night,
ever were men and women : they seem to be
merely names for the conceptions of the mind,
and an explanation, partly poetical, and partly
philosophical, of the origin of things: it is to
be remembered that the ancients were all of ppi

160

DEMIGODS EXPLAINED.

nion, unlike to that which we are taught in the

Holy Scriptures, that the matter of which the
world is framed was eternal.
After the allegorical beings of the Grecian my
thology, we come to those that I was calling per
sonal : the accounts handed down to us of the fa
mily of Sal urn, and the family of Atlas, have
strongly the air, however disfigured by fables, of
having a foundation in real history: Jupiter,. and
Mercury, and Prometheus, and the rest, in all
probability' once were men.
These personages however were the foundation .
of the Grecian mythology ; and, though the
Greeks made Jupiter a native of Crete, and so of
the rest, this seems to have been the fruit of a
national vanity: there is every reason to believe
that they received t heir notions of the history and
attributes of these Gods, together with their ci
vilisation, by tradition from some more ancient
people: the family of Saturn and the family of
Atlas once were men, but it is not possible for
us to discover in what age or what quarter of the
world they lived.
Of the Demigods the accounts we have re
ceived is somewhat less obscure: the notion of this
rank of personages originated in the flattery ad
dressed by the Greeks to the powerful and pros
perous, or the gratitude they felt for certain emi
nent benefactors of mankind : having already
fixed their ideas of the family of Heaven, per
sons who were the proper objects of worship pub
lic and private, they pretended that the human
creature whom they chiefly loved or feared, had
a God, one of the heavenly habitants, for his
father or his mother.
In ancient times, when science was least per-

ACTIONS OF JUPITER.

161

fected, the human mind was most open to delu

sion : it is in such times that men believe in ap
paritions, and prodigies, and enchantments, and
sorcery, and witchcraft: it was as common for a
Greek of the earlier times to think he saw a God
as a ghost: and the compliment that a God came
down from Heaven to give commencement to his
being, was perfectly acceptable to a great man
of antiquity.
One of the latest, and therefore one of the most
notorious examples of this is in Alexander the
Great", who lived only about three hundred
years before Christ : he gave out that he was be
gotten by Jupiter in the form of a serpent: no
courtier had any chance of preferment with him
who did not profess to believe this: he led his
army many hundred miles across burning sands
to the temple of Jupiter Amnion in Lybia, that
he might obtain from the oracle a confession
that this account of his birth was true: Alexan
der the Great lived in a time of too much refine
ment and knowledge to admit so foolish a story :
be did not succeed in imposing it upon his coun
trymen. *
One observation it is reasonable to make here :
an improper representation has sometimes been
given by satirists of the moral character of Ju
piter: they have described him as for ever think
ing of falling in love with women, and playing a
thousand unlucky pranks: it is plain however
that this is no part of his proper and original cha
racter: the history of the Demigods is the ap
pendix or supplement of the Grecian mythology,
by which the first gravity and sobriety ofitscha0 Plut. in Alexand.

162

INACHUS AND 10.

racter were corrupted : the reason that Jupiter is

represented as falling in love with a multitude of
women, is not from any licentiousness in his own
disposition, but because every hero was ambitious
to be a Demigod : the teachers of this religion
did not perceive till too late, that by this means
they were ascribing to the first of their Gods an
indecent and libertine disposition : though this
circumstance however has been much misunder
stood, it is a strong argument of the imperfection
and weakness of the religion of the Greeks, that
it was susceptible of so unseemly a corruption.
The oldest personage in the annals of Greece btv
longing to the history of the Demigods is Inachus',
who founded the city of Argos in Peloponnesus
according to the most received chronology in the
year before Christ 1856 : he is said to have been
the spn of Oceanus and Tethys, and consequently
the brother of the rivers, of Doris the wife of
Nereus, and of the other nymphs the Occanides :
Inachns was in fact the name of the river which
flowed by the city of Argos, and this is probably
the origin of the fabulous parentage assigned to
the founder of the city.
The beauty of Io, the daughter of Inachus,
was so great as to inspire the bosom of Jupiter
with love: Juno did not like that the king of
Gods and men should think any female handsome
but herself: finding that he was absent from his
usual abode of Olympus, she suspected that
beauty was the cause of his wandering : she
looked down through the transparent sky of a
summer's day, and saw a thick cloud over-hang
ing a meadow near Argos: Jupiter was undcrt Apollo4. ii. 1.

% Ov. Met. i. 583 et seqq.

MERCURY AND ARGUS.

163

neath the cloud, paying compliments to the

bright eyes of Io: Juno hastened to the spot, and
Jupiter had just time to change his mistress into
a beautiful heifer: " Whose heifer is that?" said
the queen of Heaven : " I know not," answered
Jupiter: " Give it to me," replied Juno: Jupi
ter could not refuse her a gift apparently of so
little value.
Juno knew well enough the nature of the pre
sent she had obtained, and determined to prevent
any future private conversations between Io and
her husband : she accordingly committed the
care of her beautiful heifer to Argus, a very ex
traordinary sort of person, who had no less than
a hundred eyes ; and as he never slept with more
than two at a time, Juno thought she could not
consign her prisoner to a more trust-worthy
keeper : Argus chained her up every night, and
fed her in sight along the banks of the Inachus by
day, where her father, admiring the beauty of
the heifer, would often pat her fair sides, and
feed^her with flowers out of his hand, without
suspecting that it was his daughter : at length
Jupiter, pitying her misfortune, sent Mercury to
her relief: Mercury disguised himself like a shep
herd, and first played Argus a tune, then laid
him asleep with his wand, and at last cut off his
bead: Juno took the hundred eyes of Argus, and
stuck them in the tail of her favourite bird, which
is now called the peacock.
Yet not for this did Juno remit her vengeance
against Io : she drove the heifer mad, and in her
madness Io fled into Egypt : Jupiter at last inter
ceded with Juuo, and promised never to speak to
Io again: she was then permitted to resume her

164

PHAETON.

former shape: Epaphus was the son of Jupiter

and Io: in Egypt lo and Epaphus assumed the
names of Isis and Orus.
There was a famous dispute', or contention for
superiorly, between Epaphus, the son of Jupiter,
and Phaeton, the son of .A polio; and the cata
strophe that ensued on this dispute is of a very
extraordinary nature.
The parentage of Phaeton is somewhat obscure :
Ovid' says that his mother was Clymene, one of
the Oceanides : if Phaeton was a God both by
father and mother, it does not seem quite regular
that he should be subject to death, as we shall
find that he was: his reputed father was Merops,
kin<r of the island of Cos.
Phaeton and Epaphus engaged together in the
same sports : Phaeton did something Epaphus did
not like: " That is not fair play," said Epaphus,
" and I will have nothing more to do with you :"
** I insist upon it, it is," replied Phaeton ; " and
I will not give it up: I would have you to know
I am the son of Apollo, and as good as you at
any time:" " You the son of Apollo!" cried
Epaphus : " your mother may have told you so :
but to my knowledge it is all a lie."
Phaeton went away in great dudgeon to bear
his mother called a liar: " Tell me," said Phae
ton to her, " the truth, and give me proof of
my high birth :" " By this light," answered Cly
mene, " you are the son of Apollo ; and, if I say
an untruth, I wish 1 may die, and never see his
beams again: bul, if you do not believe mc, go
and ask your father; 1 will point out to you the
road."
Ov. Met, i. 747 et seqq.
5 Id. i. 756.

PHAETON.

1G5

Phaeton set out, and soon arrived at the palace

of the sun: Apollo saw him coming, advanced
toward, and embraced him : " My dear son,"
said the God, " child of promise, son that I shall
never need to be ashamed of!" " Alas," said
Phaeton, fixing his eyes upon ihe ground, " I am
insulted by my play-mates, and told that my re
lation to you is all an invention of my mother:
now, oh, father, light of the world! if you are
indeed my father, give me demonstration of it,
and grant my request!" Apollo called Styx to
witness that he would.
" All I ask," said Phaeton, " is that for a single
day, I may drive the chariot of the sun, and thus
make the circuit of the world :" " Alas," replied
Apollo, extremely disturbed, " you know not
wha^ you ask : are your stripling powers equal to
gliding the chariot up the steep ascent at break
of day, and down prone into the ocean again in
the evening?" the further to dissuade him, Apollo
described the ungovernableness of his horses, whose
breath was fire; and the monsters, the bull, the
crab, the lion, and the scorpion (signs of the zo
diac) that would beset his way : all was vain.
Phaeton leaped lightly into the chariot, and
seized the reins: the chariot carried no weight;
it no longer contained the great author of the day:
it jolted from side to side : Phaeton could scarcely
keep his seat.
At length the chariot climbed the highest hea
vens: it was noon: Phaeton saw the scorpion
with claws extended, and black venom pouring
from his mouth : he was frightened : he looked to
the east and the west: he was equally remote
-from the place he had set out from, and the goal
to which he was travelling : he looked to the

166

fall of phaeton: cecrops.

earth : it was at a frightful distance beneath his

feet: the reins dropt from his hand.
The horses felt they had no master, and they
ran away : they approached the earth J they set
fire to the mountains, with the forests upon them;
they dried up the rivers: they almost dried up the
sea: Earth, the eldest of the Gods, complained
to Jupiter of the universal destruction that was at
hand: Jupiter seized a thunderbolt, and struck
Phaeton from the chariot: he fell to the ground,
and was drowned in the river Po'.
Phaeton had three sisters, Lampetie, Phacthnsa,
and Lampethusa : these grieved so incessantly for
his tragical fate, that Jupiter at length in pity
turned them into poplars by the river-side, and
their tears into amber, a beautiful, transparent
and fragrant gum, exuding from the trees, -and
dropping into the stream".
t
Ogyges was a Demigod who is supposed to have
lived 1764 years before Christ : he was (Tie son of
Tellus, or according to others of Neptifne,' and
reigned in Bceotia : in his time happened a de
luge, which so overflowed the neighbouring coun
try of Attica, that it remained under water two
hundred years".
After a lapse of two hundred years Cecrops
came from Egypt, and settled in Attica : he was
the founder of the immortal city of Athens: we
have no particular account who were his parents,
but in his form he is said to have been half a man
and half a serpent*.
Cecrops had only three daughters, Aglauros,
Pandrosos and Herse, and was succeeded in the
throne of Athens, after two short and troublesome
* Ov. Met. ii. I et seqq.
T Id. ii. 340 et se<jq.
w Paus. ix. 5.
* Apollodoru5,iii. 14.

feRICTHONIUS: PHILOMELA.

167

Usurpations, by Ericthonius the son of Vulcan :

Ericthonius had in other respects the form of a
man, but his feet were the claws of a dragon : to
hide this defect he is said first to have invented
the use of chariots : when he was born, he was
shut up in a basket by Minerva, and delivered in
charge to the daughters of Cecrops, with a spe
cial injunction that they were on no account to
examine the contents of the basket : Pandrosos and
Herse faithfully obeyed the Goddess ; but Aglauros laughed at their timidity, and impiously un
covered the secrets of Minerva".
Herse was beloved by the God Mercury, and
Aglauros was the confident of their amour : but
Minerva to punish her disobedience, inspired her
with envy of her happy sister's fortune; and
Meroury, for her envy and ill behaviour turned
her -into a stone1: Cephalus was the son of Mer
cury and Herse: he was beloved by Aurora, and
taken up into heaven* : his history has heen con
founded with that of another Cephalus, the son
of Deioneus king of Thessaly, of whom I shall
speak presently.
The son and successor of Ericthonius was Pandion, the father of Progne and Philomela: Progne
became the wife ot Tereus, son of Mars, and king
of Thrace: after five years* mariage, Progne
said one day to her husband, " I am very happy,
a happy wife, a happy mother : yet one thing
is wanting to complete my satisfaction: 1 have
an only sister : we lived together from child
hood : not a word of unkindness ever passed be
tween us: I have not seen her these five years:
1 Ov. Met. ii. 552 et eqq.
' Apollodorus, iii. 14.

z Id. ii. 722 et teqtj.

168 CRUEL TREATMENT OF PHILOMELA.

either send me on a visit to Philomela, or fetch
Philomela that she may spend a few months
with me.
Tereus, who wished nothing more earnestly
than lo give pleasure to his wife, set out for the
court of Pandion, to solicit him to spare his re
maining daughter for a short time on a visit to
her married sister: this was an unfortunate ex
pedition : Tereus no sooner saw Philomela, than
struck with her beauty, he preferred her a thou
sand times to his wile: he made a resolution that
he would put away Progne, and marry her sister.
As Philomela travelled with Tereus from Athens
to Thrace, thinking no harm, her brother-in-law,
when (hey came under the shadow of a thick
wood, judged that a fit opportunity to open all
his wicked thoughts to his fair fellow-traveller:
Philomela was rilled with astonishment andanger
at every word he uttered : she told hijn ne*was
her abhorrence and aversion: she madg, a solemn
Oath that she would discover the wljple to hej
sister and her father: Tereus humbled himself to
her, but in vain: if he promised to desist from
his project, Philomela thought he only designed
to take a more secret and dangerous way to ac
complish it: Tereus in despair cut out the poor
maiden's tongue, and shut her up in a tower, that
she might not betray him : he came home to his
wife, and told her a dismal story how her sister
had died on the road.
Despair is often fertile in resources : Philomela
endeavoured to amuse her sad and solitary hours
with curious works in embroidery : at length she
made an embroidery of her own story (this she
could do, though she could not speak), and
bribed one of her jailors to deliver it to the queen

CEPHALUS AND PROCRIS.

169

of Thrace: Progne became acquainted with the

horrible tale, how Tereus had at once abused
her poor sister, and deceived her with abominable
lies: she loved Philomela so much, she thought
she could not live without seeing her: you may
think then what a shock this story gave her: she
killed her only son with her own hand, becausi;
he was the son of Tereus: she did a thousand
mad things: at length Progne was changed by
the Gods into a swallow, Philomela into a night
ingale, and Tereus into a lapwing : in this form
each of them still sings of their past woes, and
repeats a pathetic or melancholy noteb.
Ereclheus was the son and successor of Pandion in the throne of Athens: he had a daughter
named Procris, married to Cephalus king of
Thojbajy : they loved each other much, and
raignt have been very happy, had they not been
subject to the mutual vice of jealousy : Cephalus,
that he might try his wife's fidelity, came to her
in disguis*, and obtained from the Gods <hat he
might pass upon her for a stranger: as a foreign
merchant he tried upon his wife every allurement
and art he could invent, to persuade her to leave
her husband, and go and live with him: all was
fruitless ; till at last he proffered to her accept
ance a casket of jewels of the most dazzling bril
liancy : the courage of Procris was shaken, and
she began to yield: Cephalus then threw off his
disguise, and told her who he was.
Procris , ashamed, would no longer live with a
husband, who had discovered her weakness: she
went to the woods, and professed herself a fol
lower of Diana : Diana took pity upon her, as her
b Ov. Met. vi. 424 et seqq.

170

CEPHALUS AND FOCRIS.

offence had proceeded no further than thoughts,

and contrived a scheme for Procris to make her
self even with her husband: the Goddess pre
sented her with a dog that was always sure of his
prey, and an arrow that was never known to miss
its aim: with these she sent her in the disguise
of a stranger to Cephalus : Cephalus was very
fond of hunting: he was exceedingly sorry for
the loss of his wife, but he did not believe she
would ever come back again: he was tempted
with these extraordinary gifts, and at length
consented to divorce Procris, and live with the
stranger.
Cephalus and Procris, having seen and for
given their mutual frailty, now dwelt for some
time in harmony together : by and by somebody
brought Procris word that Cephalus had _g,#nistress: they were sure of it, they said, forfhey
could tell her name, which was Aura, And wiiere
their daily meetings were held : thctrutji was that
Cephalus, fatigued with hunting, wen^very day
to a particular shady walk, and called Aura
(which is Greek for the refreshing breeze) to come
and cool him.
Procris went where she was directed, and
waited, eager and motionless, for her 'husband's
coming: sure enough she saw him at the ap
pointed time, though she could notHee his mis
tress : he approached the spot : Procris was all
expectation: at length he cried in a soft and lan
guishing voice, " Come, gentle Aura, how I
pine to meet you I" Procris could bear this no
longer: she made a rustling behind the bushes
that concealed her: Cephalus thought it was a
stag : he caught up his arrow that never missed
its aim, and struck his wife to the heart: thus

DEUCALION AND PYRRHA.

171

Procris paid a very severe penalty for her cu

riosity c.
Deucalion was a prince who reigned in Thessaly, about fifty years later than the reign of
Cecrops in Athens : both he and his wife Pyrrha
owed their birth immediately to the Gods, he
being the son of Prometheus, and she the daugh
ter of Epimetheus, first cousins to Jupiter: the
mother of Pyrrha was Pandora : in the time of
Deucalion, Jupiter, exasperated with the crimes
and enormities of mankind, sent a flood which
destroyed the whole world : Deucalion and Pyrrha,
the only pious and innocent persons then living,
embarkecVin.a small vessel, and alone survived
the destruction of the human race: when the flood
Mibsiti 1, they landed upon mount Parnassus;
andRtaJck k with their forlorn and desolate sittuSion, they resorted to the oracle of Themis
whfl|h happened to be near, humbly enquiring
how tty.e destruction that had taken place might
be repairtd, and .the ungodly generation which
had pierished replaced by one more virtuous: the
oracle commanded them to cast the bones of their
" Great Mother" over their shoulders: they were
at first puzzled with this direction, and shud.
dered at the thought of violating the remains
of their earthly or imputed parents: at length
they discovered that by their mother the oracle
designed the earth, and that the bones of their
mother were the pebbles scattered upon the sur
face: they obeyed the will of the Goddess; and
the stones cast by Deucalion were turned into men ;
and those thrown by Pyrrha into women4.
c Ov. Met. vii. 690 et eeqq.
i 2

i Id. i. 240 et seqq.

CHAP. XVIII.
OF BACCHUS, GOD OF WINE.
Jupiter assumes the Form of a Bull, and carries off Europa.Cadmus, the Founder of Thebes.Semele
consumed by Fire from Heaven.Education of Bac
chus.Solemnity of his Worship.His Figure.
His Adventure with Pirates.Perplexity of the His
tory of Bacchus.He is the same with Osiris.^His
Pacific Conquests in Ethiopia., India, aBdf'1tries.He is attended by Satyrs.Suenl
God, his Preceptor.Story ofMidas, who tii
thing he touched into Gold.rMiJinto those ofan Ass.Story oftri
oftripfc
ment of Lycurgus, King ofThrace,- foi
to Bacchus.Punishment of Peutheus.and Palaemon.Actaeon turned, into a I
. *
#
Cadmus is one of the most c:n^int perso
nages in the early Grecian history :'he passed
over from Phcenicia into that part of Greece called
Bceotia, ten years after Deucalion's .flood : we
are not to expect consistency in the fat
tory of the ancients: accordingly it
space of time from the universal d
mankind, we rend of Cadmus' transj
self from one civilised country, to tench the arts
of life to the savage inhabitants of another: Cad
mus is said to have first imported letters into
Greece, which afterwards surpassed all countries
of mankind in the use of letters.
e Herod, ii. 49, et iv. 147.

JUPITER AND EUROPA.

173

We may well expect that the Greeks, who

excelled so much in fable and the brilliancy of
imagination, would adorn with a variety of fic
tions the history of so memorable a person as
Cadmus: and in this expectation we are not dis
appointed.
The following is said to be the occasion of
Cadnius's passing over from Phoenicia: Agenor
king of Sidon, his father, had also a daughter,
called Europa: Jupiter fell in love with this
princess, and determined 1o run away with her:
to effect this purpose he turned himself into a
most beautiful milk-white bull, with horns of the
finest pearl, and in this disguise mixed with the
herds of king Agenor: Europa exceedingly ad
mired the noble animal, who carried himself to
ward her with the utmost tamcness, ate the flow
ers pii'l of h hand, and kissed the lingers of the
givei^ I'tiropa., charmed with his gentleness,
patted, his- sidesV and at length ventured to leap
uponaiM)'ack : Jupiter watched his opportunity:
be stood upon the sea-shore; and he no sooner
felt himself pressed with the desired burthen, than
he plunged into the waves, and swam away with
the affrighted maiden to the island of Crete'.
Agenor, afflicted beyond measure by the loss
of his daughter, ordered his son Cadmus to set
out in search of her, and added to his commands
this severe injunction, that his son should never
venture to return till he had found her: Cadmus
sought his sister through the world in vain; who
can expect to find what Jupiter desires to conceal? at length, in Phocis, near the oracle of
Delphi, he ceased from his wanderings ; and, not
f Or. Met. ii. 847 et leqq.
i 3

174

CADMUS, FOUNDER OF THEBES.

daring to go back to his father, asked the direc

tion of Apollo, where he should fix his abode:
the oracle told him that, at going out of the
temple, he would see a young heifer, and that he
was to follow this animal till it lay down of its
own accord ; there he was to fix with his follow
ers, and to call the country Bceoti;i, from Bos,
the Greek name for an ox.
Cadmus accepted the omen, and on his arrival
kissed the earth which he was henceforth to in
habit: the next thing he thought of was to make
a sacrifice to Jupiter: he sent his followers to seek
water for his sacrifice : he waited their return
from morning till evening, but not one of them
came back: he then hastened himself to search
the cause: they had found a spring, but it was de
fended by an enormous dragon vtilh a triple row
of teeth in either jaw, which, the moment an urn
was let down into the fountain, sprang forth>aiid
destroyed them : Cadmus killed the1 serpent :
Minerva appeared to him, and directed him to
repair the loss of his companions by sowing the
earth with the teeth of the dragon : from this ex
traordinary seed immediately sprang up a crop
of armed men, who, retaining the venomous cha
racter of the source of their existence, fell to in*
stant blows, and were all, except five, killed on
the spot: these five, warned by the fate of their
fellows, struck up a league of amity, and became
the coadjutors of Cadmus in building the city of
Thebes *.
The wife of Cadmus was Hermione, or Harmonia, who was according to some the daughter of
Mars and Venus: and according to others sister
S Ov. Met. iii. 1 ct seqq.

JUPITER AND SEMELE.

175

to Dardanus, the founder of Troy: by her he had

one son Polydorus, and four daughters, Ino,
Agave, Autonoe and Semele: Polydorus was the
second king of Thebes h.
Semele, the youngest of the daughters of Cad
mus, was the mother of Bacchus: Jupiter, they
said, became enamoured of the maiden: this was
the usual fiction by which the Greeks sought to
do honour to their favourite heroes: by an obvi
ous consequence they represented Juno as irritated
at the infidelities of her husband, full of rage
against the favourite sultana of the day, and
nourishing a furious animosity against the strip
ling Demigod.
Jupiter assumed the figure of a man, and in
that disguise paid his visits to Semele : the better
to secure her affections, he however confessed to
her in private who he was: upon this circum
stance Juno built her project of revenge : she ap
peared before the young lady in the form of Beroe,
nernurse, and pretended to be her friend.
" How are you sure," said this treacherous foe,
" that the person who visits you is actually Jupi
ter? any audacious adventurer might say that he
was a God ; and tricks and delusions are abroad
every where : were 1 in your place, I would re
quire him to give me proof of his pretensions:
nay, if he be Jupiter, the thing I am going to re
commend will afford the most certain pledge that
he really loves you: say to him the next time he
comes, that you are tired of being always visited
thus in masquerade, and beg that at least for once
he would enter your chamber in the same majesty
and state, with which he presents himself to Juno
his wife."
k Paus. ix. 5.
i 4

176

WORSHIP OF BACCHUS.

Semele adopted the suggestion of her specious

adviser : she said to J upiter, " Grant me a boon :
tell me that you will, before I inform you what
it is :" the enamoured God felt that every thing
that Semele said was a law to him : he swore by
Styx that he would comply with her demand:
she then disclosed her petition: Jupiter at hear
ing it was struck with despair: he would have
stopped her mouth, but it was too late: he could
not retract his oath.
Jupiter went away, and presently returned in
his proper form: the whole apartment was illu
mined with the God : lightnings played around
him, and the roofs roared with thunder: the
countenance of Jupiter was too bright and terri
ble for any mortal to look upon: Semele was re
duced to ashes in a moment.
,
Though Semele died, Bacchus was preserved:
the infant was found unhurt amidst the ashes of
his mother,: he was first taken care of by Ino,
his mother's sister, and afterward committed to
the tuition of certain nymphs, called the nymphs
of Nysa: the place of his education was Naxos,
one of the islands of the iEgean sea'.
Bacchus, in the Grecian mythology, was the
God of wine: and, though in strictness he was
only a Demigod, one of his parents being a mor
tal, yet the importance of the province which
was consigned to him, bread and wine being re
garded as the two great sustainers of human life,
gave him a high rank in the religious system of
the ancients: persons employed in husbandry,
and who depend for their all upon the mercy of
the seasons, are usually found to be among the
' Ov. Mt. m. 259 et teqq.
-

BACCHUS AND THE PIRATES.

177

most pious of mankind: every nation has its

prayers for a plentiful harvest, and its thanksgiv
ings when the fruits of the earth have been ga
thered in well: it was therefore impossible that
the Greeks, amidst the cares ofthe vintage, should
not often call upon Bacchus, or should not cele
brate his praise in pompous festivals when those
cares were concluded: the Dionysia, or festivals
of Bacchus, as they were solemnised at Athens,
have already been described in an early chapter
of this book.
Bacchus was ordinarily represented under the
naked figure of a beautiful young man, but con
siderably plump in his face and limbs, as might
seem best to befit the generous living of the pa
tron of the vine, and his countenance expressed
the merry and jovial cast of thought which wine
inspires:' he was crowned with ivy and vineleaves, and bore in his hand the thyrsus, a dart
twined round with the leaves of the ivy and the
vinek.
There is a pleasing story related of the early
youth of Bacchus: he had already spent several
years in the island of Naxos, when certain Tyr
rhenian pirates happening to touch there, found
him asleep on the sea-shore, and being struck
with his extreme beauty, determined to carry him
off, and sell him for a slave: they had already
proceeded a considerable way in their ship, when
Bacchus awoke.
Bacchus, who was now a blooming and lovely
boy, was conscious, it seems, of his divine ori
gin and power, and resolved to make himself
k Ipse, racemiferis frontem circumdatus uv's,
Fampineis agitat velatam frondibus hastarn.
Ov. Metiii. 666..
i5

178

BACCHUS AND THE PIRATES.

sport of these audacious robbers : he asked them

in great apparent terror, how he came there, and
what they purposed to do with bim ? one of the
most artful of the crew replied, " Be under no
terror, sir: you shall suffer no harm from us:
tell us where you wish to be, and thither we will
conduct you." " Naxos," replied the God,
** Naxos is my home, and there I wish to be:"
Naxos lay to the right hand of the ship: the pi
rates pushed with all their might for the left, and
at length made for shore.

The seeming boy then burst into tears: " This

is not my country," said he : " these woods and
hills and towers are not the woods and hills and
towers of Naxos!" the brutal sailors laughed at
his distress, and only rowed the more eagerly for
the bay: what was their surprise when they
found their vessel as immoveable as if it had been
on dry land! they plied their oars incessantly:
suddenly vines which seemed to spring out of
the sides of the ship, twined their branches round
the oars, and they became immoveable too: the
Tines climbed the masts, and hung their luxuri
ant clusters over the sails : Bacchus waved a
spear he held in his hand, and tigers, lynxes and
panthers appeared to swim round the ship, and
play with the waves : the pirates, seized with
astonishment and frenzy at what they beheld,
leaped overboard into the sea, and by the power
of the God were changed into dolphins : this
done, Bacchus caused the vessel once more to
float upon the water, and presently arrived, ac
companied with bis train of tigers, panthers and
dolphins, at the place of his residencei.
i Ov. Met. iii. 597 et seqq.

CONQUESTS OF BACCHUS.

179

There is no instance in the history of the hea

then Gods, where the Greeks have more conspi
cuously done what I have formerly mentioned,
transplanted the Gods of some foreign nation to
their own soil, and mixed up his adventures with
fictions of their own, than this of Bacchus.
Of the real history of the Grecian Bacchus, the
son of Semele, we know nothing : it may even be
doubted whether there ever was such a person :
though it is perhaps more probable that he had
an existence, and did patronise and encourage
the cultivation of the vine : but the Greeks found
the history of an Asiatic conqueror, who extended
his triumphant progress over Egypt, Ethiopia,
Arabia and many other countries, who planted a
colony on the banks of the Indus, and who intro
duced civilisation and husbandry wherever he
came ; and this history they blended after their
manner with the obscure tale of the son of Semele.
This conqueror is the most ancient in the re
cords of mankind, and his real transactions are
so disguised with marvellous narration, that we
do not even know what countryman he was, and
whence he set out : the Egyptians have done the
same thing as the Greeks, claimed him for their
own, and perhaps with as little reason: there is
an intimate connection between this primitive con
queror and the geographical name of Nysa:
wherever such a town as Nysa is found in ancient
story, it is supposed that it owed its commence
ment to this mighty conqueror, the Asiatic Bac
chus : be is said to have set out from Nysa, a
town of Arabia nearly on the situation of the pre
sent Medina, and to have built Nysa on the Indus
at the farthest extremity of his eastern conquests.
The Egyptians relate his history under the
1 6

180 EFFECTED 'WITHOUT BLOODSHED.

name of Osiris'": his conquests are said not to
have been the fruit of arms and hostility, like the
conquests of those who have trod in his steps, but
of benefits: his army consisted, not of soldiers,
but of men and women in great multitudes emi
nently accomplished in the arts of rural industry :
wherever he came, he taught men the science of
husbandry and the cultivation of the vine: wberecver he came, he was received with festivity and
rejoicings: when he entered Ethiopia, which was
one of his first expeditions, he was joined by a
band of Satyrs, who forever after accompanied
him with songs, with music and dancing: he
rode in an open chariot drawn by lions: Pan
and Silenus, two of the rural deities, were among
his principal officers: Silenus was the guardian
and preceptor of Bacchus, and, while the con*
queror rode magnificently and in triumph, Silenus
attended him mounted on an ass".
The Greeks having adopted the history of this
Eastern conqueror, have added to it several ad
ventures supposed to have happened to him on
or near their native soil: while Bacchus was on
his march along the Grecian coast of Asia Minor,
Silenus, they say, at one time wandered so far
from the host that he could not find his way back:
in this distress he was encountered by some pea
sants, who conducted him to the court of Midas,
king of Phrygia : Midas received him with the
utmost kindness and hospitality, and Bacchus
was so grateful to the king for this courtesy to his
preceptor, that he bade the Phrygian ask what
he would as a boon, and it should be granted :
Midas, in a grasping and foolish spirit, intreated
m Herod, ii. 144.

1 Or. Met. iv. 17 et eqq.

MIDAS's EARS.

181

the God that whatever he touched should be

turned into gold: Bacchus granted his request:
if Midas put a bit of meat to his mouth, it be
came gold: if he attempted to drink, the liquor
was cbanged to solid gold : so that Midas was in
danger of being starved to death: he prayed
Bacchus to revoke his gift, who ordered him to
bathe in the river Pactolus, and he should be
immediately cured of the horrible ill he had de
sired: Midas did so, and from that time the Pac
tolus became distinguished from all other rivers
by rolling over sands of gold0.
King Midas has become celebrated for another
adventure nearly connected with this : while Pan
fesided at the court of Midas, he frequently enter
tained the king with the music of his pipe: Mi
das was so ravished witli the performance that he
frankly told his guest, he was convinced that his
skill in that art surpassed the skill of Apollo: this
came to the ears of the God of music, who being
not at all pleased with the comparison, con
descended to come down from Heaven to con
vince Midas of his mistake: Pan played a volun
tary before his majesty, and Apollo followed with
another: the whole court were convinced of the
incomparable superiority of Apollo; but Midas
persisted in his opinion.
Apollo saw that it was to no purpose to exhi
bit the wonders of his art to one who would never
acknowledge he had been in the wrong: to punish
Midas for his obstinacy, he took his leave, but
in parting caused two ass's ears to grow upon the
sides of his majesty's head : Midas was ashamed
oi Ihis ornament, and contrived to have his locks
Ov. Met. xi. 85 et teqq.

182

TRIPTOLEMUS.

arranged, and his crown put on so, as to conceal

his misfortune : he could not however conceal it
from his barber, whom he enjoined under the
most dreadful penalty 1o keep his secret : the bar
ber was in the greatest distress: he did not like to
be hanged, and he could not hold his tongue:
he went out in the marshes, and when he saw
that no mortal was near him, he stooped his head
to the ground, and whispered to the reeds, " King
Midas has the ears of an ass:" in this he thought
he was safe; but strange to tell, the reeds ever
after, when moved by the least wind, were found
to repeat the intelligence of the barber, " King
Midas has the ears of an ass?."
By the story of the competition between Apollo
and Pan, the Greeks may be supposed to express
their ideas of the superiority of elegant and po
lished art, as it is to be found in the most culti
vated state of society, over those rude beginnings
and " incondite lays," which nevertheless derive
a certain power of affording pleasure, from their
wildness, and the artless simplicity with which
they are conceived.
Another of the companions of Bacchus in his
marches was Triptolemus, son of Celeus king of
Eleusis near Athens : Triptolemus was a ward of
the Goddess Ceres : in her travels in search of
Proserpine, she was received with peculiar hos
pitality by Celeus, and she rewarded the virtue
of the father by her kindness to the son : she saw,
while she relieved her fatigue under the roof of
Celeus, a fine boy, the only child of her host,
laid in a cradle, and labouring under a fatal dis
temper: the Goddess resolved, first to restore him
to health, and then to endow him with her
f Ov. Met. , 146 et seqg.

LYCURGUS, KINO OF THRACE.

183

choicest gifts: she fed him with milk from her

own breast, and at night covered him all over
with coals of fire: under this extraordinary treat
ment he not only speedily recovered his strength,
but shot up miraculously towards manhood, so
that what in other men is the effect of years, was
accomplished in Triptolemus as in many hoars:
Meganira, his mother, astonished at what she saw,
could not subdue the curiosity she felt to know
how all this was effected: she discovered a small
Chink, by applying her eye to which she could
observe what passed in the apartment of the God
dess: she remained in breathless admiration, till
the last part of the process came to be performed ;
but when she saw her darling son extended on the
hearth, and the glowing embers heaped upon him,
she screamed with terror: the operation was dis
turbed : it was no longer in the power of Ceres to
make Triptolemus immortal : what she could,
she performed : she enriched him with the know
ledge of all the arts of husbandry, and sent him
in her own chariot drawn by dragons through the
world: it was to this affection borne by Ceres to
the young prince of Eleusis, that the Greek re
ferred the origin of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Though Bacchus marked his passage from
country to country by the benefits and instruc
tions he bestowed, and was in almost all places
received with eager welcome, this was not always
the case: when he passed over from Asia into
Europe, Lycnrgusi king of Thrace distinguished
himself by his opposition to the conqueror : the
Thracians having planted vines agreeably to the
methods communicated by Bacchus, Lycurgus
seized a scythe for the pnrpose of destroying
1 Apollodor. iii. 5. Schol.in Horn. II. . 130.

184

PENTHEUS.

them : the God, offended at this instance of con

tempt, struck Lycurgus with madness: in his
frenzy he could not distinguish objects, and with
the scythe in his hand he wounded himself and
destroyed his only son : an oracle had assured his
subjects that they should not taste of the fruit of
the vine as long as Lycurgus lived : they cast
him into prison, and afterward caused him to be
torn to pieces by wild horses.
It seems to have been on his return from his
victorious expedition, that Bacchus found the
government of Thebes in the hands of Pentheus,
the son of bis aunt Agave: Pentheus was viceroy
of Bceotia under Polydorus his uncle : the young
governor set himself in opposition to those im
provements which Bacchus had been spreading
all over the world : he even sent out his officers,
and commanded them to lead the God to prison l
Bacchus submitted; but he was no sooner lodged
there, than his chains fell off, and the prisondoors burst open : Pentheus next hastened to the
spot where the Bacchanalian ceremonies were to
be celebrated, and determined to interrupt them ;
in reality it may be suspected that it was the ex
travagance of the Bacchanals that excited the vir
tuous displeasure both of Lycurgus and Pentheus:
Bacchus, irritated at his cousin's obstinate resist
ance, struck his relatives with a sudden delusion :
they no longer knew Pentheus: they thought
they saw a wild boar which had broken into their
vineyards, and was destroying their vines: under
the influence of this infatuation, the mother and
aunts of Petheus made a furious assault upon him :
they slew him, and tore him limb from limb'.
lno, the eldest of the aunts of Bacchus, and.
' Ov. Met. iii. 51 2 et tcqq.

DIANA AND ACTION.

185

who had also been his nurse, had by that means

excited the displeasure of Juno: to wreak her
vengeance upon this' unfortunate female, Juno
struck her husband Athamas with madness:
Athamas met his wife and her two little sons, and
thought them a lioness and her whelps: believing
this, he caught up the eldest, and dashed out
his brains: Ino, terrified with the shocking spec
tacle, fled with the youngest, and plunged into
the sea, where they were turned into marine deities
by the names of Leucothoe and Palaemon'.
Another misfortune is related of the children of
Cadmus : Autonoe, the youngest of Bacchus'*
aunts, had a son named Actaaon, who was ex
tremely fond of hunting : one day as he pursued
the pleasures of the chase, he came to a beautiful
fountain, environed with trees, and in the most
solitary situation imaginable: this fountain was a
peculiar favourite with Diana, the Goddess of
hunting, who^iappened to be bathing in it naked,
surrounded with her nymphs, just as Actaeon came
up: the youth imprudently gazed upon the God
dess : Diana felt all the indignation natural to the
Goddess of Chastity : her quiver was not at hand,
being left on the shore: she used such arms as
were within her reach, and filling her joined
hands with the waters of the fountain, cast them
in the face of the hunter: they no sooner touched
the face of Actaeon than he was changed into a
stag: his own hounds came up, and pursued him,
and after a long chase, miserably tore him to
pieces, while his companions made the woods
resound with the name of Actaeon, complaining
that their leader was absent, and did not enjoy
the glorious sport'.
. s Ov. Met. iv. 416 et seqq.
* Id. iii. 138 et seq<^.

\8ti

CHAP. XIX.
OF MINOS AND THE MINOTAUR.
Minos, the Son of Jupiter and Europa, is chosen King
of Crete marries Pasiphae, Daughter of the Sun.
Birth of the Minotaur.Idaei Dactyli.
Daedalus,
the Athenian Artificermurders his Nephewflies to
Cretebuilds the Labyrinth as a Prison for the Mi
notaur.Athenians thrown to the Minotaur to be de
voured.Nisus and Scylla.Daedalus shut up in the
Labyrinthflies away with Wings of Wax.Icarus,
his Son, falls into the Sea, and is Drowned. '
I have already spoken of the manner in
which Europa was carried off by nJupiter, flhd
conducted to the island of Crete: here sh^oecame
the mother of Minos and Rhadamantlms, princes
celebrated for their justice, and who were sup
posed after their deaths to be appointed judges of
the spirits of the departed in the infernal regions:
Asterius, king of Crete, afterward married Eu
ropa, and, as she brought him no children, he
adopted the sons she had borne to Jupiter.
Minos v, king of Crete, after the death of Aste, rius, married Pasiphae, daughter of the sun, or
Apollo, and was the father of Androgeus, Ari
adne and Phaadra : Minos, among his other royal
v Apollod. iii I. It is supposed by many mycologists, that
there were two kings of Crete, of the name of Minos, he of
whom the following adventures are related, being in that case
grandson to the Minos, who was the lawgiver of Crete and the
son of Jupiter and Europa. The statement adopted in the text is
according to the chronology of Sir Isaac Newton.

DAEDALUS.

187

possessions, had a very beautiful white bull, and

Pasiphae is said to have ridiculously taken it into
her head to fall in love with this bull : she thought,
I suppose, of the bull whose form Jupiter had
assumed when he ran away with her husband's
mother : but what is more extraordinary, the fabu
lous history goes on to relate, that in consequence
of this absurd passion Pasiphae became mother to
a strange monster, half man and half bull, called
the Minotaur w.
The age of Bacchus and Minos is beyond all
others the age of theDemigods, and that for this rea
son : it was in this age principally that the refine
ments of civilisation were introduced into Greece:
Bacchus taught the cultivation of the vine; the
Idae -Dactyli, a colony which Minos introduced
Vfto Europe, and who are said to have taken their
name from the Greek word Dactylus, a " fin^ger," because, like the fingers of a man, they
^jwere exactly ten in number, invented the manu
facture of iron and brass: Minos taught the art*
of ploughing and sowing, and introduced a sys
tem of legislation into Crete, which has ever since
been the wonder of the world : the Greeks, in
gratitude to these admirable benefactors of the
human species, represented them as descended
immediately from the-race of the Gods.
In the period which produced all these inge
nious characters, lived a man called Daedalus":
he was a native of Athens : to him we are said to
be indebted for the use of the nxe, the wedge,
the plummet, and of glue: he first contrived
masts and yards for ships: beside this he carved
statues so admirably, that they not only looked
w Apollod. iii. 15.

188

LABYRINTH OF CRETE.

as if they were alive, but had actually the power

of self-motion, and would even fly away from the
custody of their possessor if they were not chained
to the wall.
Admirable artists are accused of feeling keen
jealousy against a rival ; and accordingly it is
said of Daedalus, that having a nephew called
Talus, who invented the compasses, the saw, and
other instruments of manufacture, and promised
to be ns excellent an artificer as his uncle, Daeda
lus conceived an ungenerous hatred against him,
and privately murdered bim : tor this crime he
was obliged to fly from Athens.
From Athens Daedalus passed into Crete, and
was employed by Minos to build the famous la
byrinth of Crete : Minos was ashamed, as well he
might, of having such a monster as the Mino
taur born into his family, and intended- the raderful structure: it covered several acres off*
ground: it contained a multitude of apartments,
and the passages met and crossed each other with
such intricacy, that a stranger who had once
entered the building, would have been starved to
death before he could find his way out.
Androgeus *, the son of Minos, being arrived
at man's estate, determined to travel into foreign
countries for his improvement : among other
cities which he visited, he came to Athens ; and
there, either by accident, or the treachery of
jEgeus king of Athens, met with his death :
Minos, who was much more powerful than
iEgeus, made war upon th# Athenians, nor
would he be prevailed on to consent to any treaty
x Apollod.

MISUS AND SCYLLA.

189

nf peace, but upon condition that the Athenians

should send every year seven noble youths and
as many virgins to Crete, to be devoured by the
Minotaur: we shall see by and by how this mon
ster was destroyed by Theseus the son of iEgeus.
A. memorable circumstance which occurred in
Minos's invasion of Attica was this: Megara, one
of the most considerable towns dependent on
Athens, was held by Nisus, the brother of iEgeus,
with the title of king : Minos thought it neces
sary
his success to take this town, and accord
ingly sat down with his army nnder the walls:
Megara however held out for a long time : the
hair of king Nisus was as white as snow, all but
one lock which was of a bright purple colour :
an oracle had predicted that Megara should never
be taken, as long as the purple lock of the king
remained inviolate; in its safety both that of
Nisus and o^bis people were involved*.
Scylla, the daughter of Nisus, spent much of
her lime during the siege in an apartment near
the top of a tower, which overlooked the walls :
in this apartment Apollo, having visited it on
some occasion, once laid down his lute; and from
that time every sound uttered there acquired
a tone of celestial melody: from the window,
Scylla employed herself at intervals, in surveying
the disposition of the field, the camp, the army,
the sea that almost dashed up against the walls, and
the Cretan fleet : the oftener she looked, the more
was she struck with the person of Minos, more
beautiful and noble than that of his captains:
whether he appearefl in complete armour, or laid
aside his helmet, whether he drew the bow, or.
y Or. Met. viii. 7 et seqq.

190

NISUS AND SCYLLA.

hurled the javelin, hcwas still the object of Scylla's

admiration : most of all, when slightly attired,
he mounted his war-horse, splendid with capari
sons of scarlet and gold, and subdued to his pur
poses die temper of his foaming steed, Scylla
thought him the most lovely of mankind : Minos
must be her husband, or she could not endure to
live.
As she revolved these thoughts in her mind, she
saw a thousand obstacles between her and the ac
complishment of her wish : she gazed on Minos
every day, but she had never been seen by him : how
should she contrive to speak to him ? to be loved
by him? walls of stone, and watchful centinels
barred the path between them : he was her coun
try's enemy : at last she thought of one expedient;
but from that, when it first suggested itfeelf, She
shrunk with horror: this was to cut off the purple
lock of her father, and lay it at the tpyaders ft^t,
thus purchasing his gratitude by a sacrifice of 'sm
the affections of nature : the more she reflected,
the more she became divided in mind :. on one
side she saw despair, and on the other .impiety
and sacrilege : in evil hour, she did the horrid
deed : she went to her father's chamber* as he
slept, and cut off the sacred hair.
With this pledge of the city's safety, she pre
sented herself confidently before Minos: but he
drove her from his presence with horror, as the
disgrace of her sex and her species : he sacked
Megara, and then sailed with his fleet for Athens:
Scylla saw his departure witkemotions of frenzy :
she leaped into the sea, avmni after the Cretan
fleet, and seized the stern of the royal vessel :
Nisus by the pity of the Gods was changed into a
hawk ; he pursued the flight of his daughter, and

WINGS OF ICARUS.

191

with the hard blows of his beak forced her to

leave hold of Minos's ship: Scylla became a lark;
and the hawk, feeling for ever new the resentment
of her crime, continues unceasingly to pursue her
through the world.
Daedalus was so unfortunate as by some means
to incur the displeasure of king Mmos, who shut
him up with his son Icarus, I suppose after the
death of the Minotaur, a prisoner in his own
labyrinth : Daedalus was however too skilful an
artificer, for there to be any danger that he should
be long confined any where: he got feathers and
Wax, and made a pair of wings for himself, and
another for his son, and thus equipped, under
took to fly over the walls of the labyrinth, and
escape into kaly : Daedalus, a prudent and ex
perienced artificer, performed this very well :
buVTearlis was thoughtless and venturesome: he
ws(s. proud <rf his wings, and made too many
flourishes jn his journey : in one of these flourishes
he approached so near to the sun as to melt the
wax, and poor Icarus was drowned in that part
ofuhe j^gean sea, which from his name is called
Mare tcarium*.
z Ov. Met. viii. 183 et seqq. Virg. JQa. vi. 14 et seqq.

192

CHAP. XX.
OF BELLEROPHON AND CHIMERA.
Prcetus, King of Argqs. Bellerophon takes Refuge at
his Court.Is Beloved by Stenoboea, the Queen.
She falsely Accuses him.Proetus orders him to be
put to Death.Bellerophon goes, Mounted on Pe
gasus, to fight the Chimaera. His Success.
The 'story of Danaus king of Argos was
formerly mentioned in my chapter of Hell;
Danaus* was a stranger from Egypt, who usurped
the throne of Argos, and deprived the family in
possession; Abas, his grandson, had two children
that were twins, by name Proetus and, Acrisius,
who contended for the throne of Argos.
.
Proetus reigned first, and in his reign hap
pened the famous story of Bellerophon : Bellero
phon was a prince of Corinth, but was so unfor
tunate as in a scuffle to kill his brother Bellerus,
for which fact he was obliged to fly his country,
and came to Argos : here, as he was an exceed
ingly handsome young man, Stenoboea the wife
of Proetus fell in love with him : but Bellerophon
did not think he ought to pay his addresses to a
lady who was already married, and slighted her
overtures; Stenoboea felt extremely affronted at
his neglect, and to be revenajd upon him went
and told her husband a story^xactly opposite to
the truth : she said that this stranger, in violation
* Apollodor. ii. 1.

BELLEROPHON.

193

of the laws of hospitality, and in defiance of the

peculiar propriety and reservedness of her beha
viour, importuned her to leave Prcetus, and go
find live with him as her husband.
Prcetus, angry with the supposed ingratitude
of Belleropbon, did not wait to examine whether
the story was true, but determined immediately to
send him away from his court; ahd to make his
revenge more complete, pretended that he wanted
to employ him in an honourable mission, and
gave him letters, which he said were letters of in
troduction and embassy to Jobates king of Lycia,
father of Stenobcea : in these letters Prcetus de
sired Jobates, as soon as he had read them to put
the bearer to death.
Bellerophon accepted the employment without
any suspicion, and was happy to be put in the
way of rendering a service to a prince who had
received him so honourably at his court as Prce
tus: Jobates felt some reluctance to, murder a
young prince, who without apprehending any
danger, presented himself before him : and there
fore thought it would be enough to send him,
under pretence of honour, upon some dangerous
expedition, from which it would be impossible
for him to come off alive : it happened that the
borders of Lycia were at that time infested with a
horrible monster, which has already been de
scribed, of the race of the Gods, part lion, part
dragon, and part goat, called Chimaera : Jobates
resolved to commission Bellerophon to destroy
this monster, and was satisfied that he could not
send him to more certain death.
Jobates however was disappointed: Minerva,
taking pity on the unmerited persecutions to
which Bellerophon was exposed, furnished him
K

194

OVERCOMES THE CHIMJERA.

with the winged horse Pegasus: thus mounted,

he had the advantage in the combat: he hovered
in the air over the monster's den ; he pounced
down upon her suddenly, and inflicted a wound ;
then ascended into the air ; and returning again
and again to the attack, at length laid the terrible
Chimera breathless on the ground".
I> Horn. U. . 152. SchoL in IL 156. ApoUodorus, ii. 3. br
Homer the wife of Prottusu called Antxa,

195

CHAP. XXI.
OF PERSEUS AND MEDUSA.
Acrisius, Successor to Prcetus.Jupiter comes to Danae in a Shower of Gold.Danae and her Child Per
seus sent to Sea in a Chestarrive in the Dominions
of Polydectes, who falls in Love with Danae. Per
seus sent to fetch the Head of Medusa, which turned
every one who Looked upon it into Stone.Atlas
changed into a Mountain.Perseus rescues Andro
meda from a Sea-monsterturns Polydectes into
Stoneaccidentally Kills his Grandfatherbanishes
himself to Mycenae.
On the death of Prcetus, Acrisius his twinr
brother ascended the throne of Argos : he had
one beautiful daughter, called Danae; and an
oracle had predicted that Danae should have a
son, by whose hands Iter father should be de
prived of life : to prevent this, Acrisius built a
lower of brass, inaccessible on every side, and
shut up bis daughter in it: thus guarded, she
would perhaps have remained childless, had not
Jupiter conceived a passion for her; and by a
Very extraordinary metamorphosis having change
ed himself into a shower of gold, found his way
through the roof: Danae bore to Jupiter a son,
named Perseus; and, this prince having after
ward laid the foundation of the celebrated Myceme, his history has been adorned with many
extraordinary and fabulous adventures: the Gre
cian Perseus, like the Grecian Bacchus, has no

196

HEAD OF MEDUSA.

doubt been confounded with some Oriental pro

totype; and the feats of two or of several heroes
have thus become imputed to one.
No sooner was Perseus born, than he and his
mother by the order of his grandfather were put
in a chest, and cast into the sea : the chest drifted
upon the island of Seriphos, where Dictys, the
brother of the king of the country, who happened
to be a-fishing, took them to land, treated them
with the greatest attention, and committed them
to the care of the priests of the temple of Minerva,
by whom Perseus was educated.
The young prince was now grown up to the
stature of a man, when Polydectes king of Seri
phos happening to see Danae his mother in the
temple, fell in love with her, and determined to
marry her: Danae did not appjfrve of the match,
and Perseus told the king he was resolved never
to see his mother married without her own con
sent : it was the fashion of these tiroes^ when a
crabbed old tyrant conceived a dislike to a hero,
just arrived at the bloom of manhood, that he
packed off the object of his jealousy upon some
dangerous adventure, from which ; the 'tyrant
hoped that he would never return alive : Poly
dectes ordered Perseus to go and bring him the
head of Medusa, one of the Gorgons,* fyom a cer
tain district of Asiatic Tartary where she lived :
Perseus felt no aversion to the commission, but
was uneasy at the thought of leaving his mother
all the while in the power of her brutal admirer :
he dared nor however disobey the king in whose
country he dwelt.
I 'have already told you the principal particu
lars of Persens's expedition against the Gorgons :
it was lucky for the young hero, that, bred in

PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA.

197

the temple of Minerva, he had that Goddess for

his faithful protector: she lent him her shield,
to which Mercury added his wings, and, away
the hero flew ; nor did he quit his undertaking,
till he had got the head of Medusa safely pursed
up in a bag : on his return he stopped one night
in the dominions of the famous king Atlas, whose
office it was to support the heavens upon his
shoulders ; Perseus thought to obtain the hospi
tality of this monarch, by telling him that he
was the son of Jupiter: but Atlas had always
been the enemy of Jupiter, and therefore bad
Perseus go about his business, for he should have
neither rest nor refreshment there : provoked at
this insult, Perseus took the head of Medusa,
which had the power of turning every one that
looked upon ityrto stone, and shewed it to Atlas:
Atlas felt the effects, and was immediately chang
ed from the human figure into that of mount Atlas:
in this shape he was quite as well fitted for sup
porting the heavens as he had been before.
From the. country of king Atlas, Perseus passed
over into Ethiopia : there the first object that
caught his eye as he skimmed along through the
air, was Andromeda, daughter of the king of
Ethiopia, chained naked to a rock on the shore;
she was a beautiful and admirable creature: Per
seus looked a little longer, and saw a most hor
rible sea-monster, cutting his way rapidly through
the waves, and hastening toward the princess
that he might devour her.
The meaning of what Perseus saw was this:
Cassiope, the mother of Andromeda, was of a
most dazzling fairness; fair women were probably
scarce in Ethiopia, where the majority of the in
habitants are blacks : in the pride of hex heart
k3

198

PERSEUS AND ANDROMEDA.

Cassiope boasted that she was fairer than the Ne

reids, the nymphs of the sea : these Goddesses,
offended at her boast, applied to Neptune to
give them their revenge: Neptune accordingly
overflowed the kingdom with his waves, and sent
this monster to devour its inhabitants : the Ethio
pians applied to the oracle of Jupiler Ammon in
their distress, and received for answer, that the
wrath of Neptune would never be appeased, till
Andromeda, the thing in the world that Cassiope
loved best, was given up as a prey to the monster:
the king and queen refused ; but the people insist
ed: they would not consent to be all devoured in
turns, to save the most beautiful princess in the
world .
It was fortunate for Andromeda, that Perseus
came by just in time : he did not hesitate to at
tack the monster, and after a long battle, killed
it in sight of the king, queen and all the court :
he then carried away Andromeda, and made her
his wife.
When he came back to Seriphos, the first
thing he saw, was Polydectes leading Danae to
the altar where they were to be married : Danae
had begged off the evil day for a long while, and
intreated that the king would spare her, at least
till her son returned from the expedition upon
which he had sent him: Polydectes was satisfied
he never would return, and at last would be put
off no more: in the midst of the ceremony Per
seus arrived: " If," said the hero, " I have
happily accomplished my adventure, then, O
king, consent to grant me a boon in return :"
" You have not accomplished it," said Polydec
tes: "but, though you had, I will still marry
your mother :" and so saying, he rudely seiied

FOUNDATION OF MYCEN^.

199

her hand : Perseus produced the head of Medusa;

and, Polydectes and his wicked favourites look
ing at the head to see that all was right, they
were immediately turned into stones: Perseus
having finished his expedition, returned to Mi
nerva, Mercury, and the other Gods, the wea
pons they had supplied to him, and gave to his
(>atroness besides, the head of Medusa as an obation, which she ever after wore upon her shield,
or according to others upon her breast- plate.
Perseus was now eager to return home to Pelo
ponnesus, the country of his mother: he landed
at Larissa near Argos, where the principal per
sons of the city were just then celebrating certain
splendid games: Perseus joined in the games,
and won many prizes : at length he took up a
disk, or quoit, to throw at a mark : Acrisius, his
frandfather, was present, though both he and
erseus were unknown to each other : the quoit
struck the foot of Acrisius, and occasioned a mor
tification, and the old king died : thus was the
prediction of the oracle fulfilled : Perseus, though
ne had been cruelly used by his grandfather when
born, could not bear to think that he was the oc
casion of his death : he resigned the crown of
Argos which now fell to him, to one of his rela
tions, and became the founder of the kingdom of
Mycenae'.

200

CHAP. XXII.
OF THE FAMILY OF TANTALUS.
Pelops arrives in Greece.Wins Hippodaniia by Fraud
in a Chariot-race.Atreus kills the Son of bis Brother
Thyestes, and serves- up the Flesh to him for a Ban
quetArrogance of Queen Niobe.She loses all
her Children at once.Is turned into Marble.
Arachne becomes a Spider.
At the same time that Perseus lived, came
into Greece another famous hero, Pelops the son
of Tantalus: from this hero the peninsula of Pelo
ponnesus, now called the Morea, is supposed to
nave taken its name: I have already spoken of
the early youth of Pelops, how he was murdered
by his father, and restored to life by the Gods.
Pelops succeeded his father in the throne of
Phrygia, and was a near neighbour to Tros king
of Troy : Tros had a son called Ganymed, so beau
tiful a boy that Jupiter took him up into Hea
ven, and made him his cupbearer' : Dardanus
thought Pelops had kidnapped him : he went to
war against Pelops, and drove him out of his do
minions : this was the cause of Pelops's coming
into Greece.
When the exiled prince reached the shore,
the first news he heard was of the great beauty of
Hippodamia, daughter of CEnomaus king of
Elis: an oracle had predicted that CEnomaus
d Apollod. iii. 12. Horn. IL v. 12SS.

PELOPS AND HIPPODAMIA.

301

should perish by the hands of his son-in-law : he

determined therefore that he would have no sonin-law : but, as all the world was in love with
Hippodamia, CEnomaus was driven to contrive
some means to baffle the importunity of her
lovers: he issued a proclamation that whoever
aspired to the hand of his daughter, should first
engage in a chariot-race with him : if they con
quered in the race, the hand of Hippodamia was
to be their reward : if they were vanquished, the
bargain was they were to be put to death : CEno
maus was the best chariot-driver, and his horses
the best horses, in the world: yet, so irresistible
were the charms of Hippodamia, that thirteen
illustrious lovers had already accepted the terms,
and lost their lives: Pelops offered himself the
fourteenth : he however went cunningly about
the business: he offered a large bribe to Myr
tilus, the groom of king CEnomaus, who, se
duced from his fidelity, privately took out the
pin which confined one of the wheels of his mas
ter's chariot: the wheel came off in the course,
and CEnomaus was killed by his fall: before he
expired however, he called Pelops to him, and
freely crowned his marriage with his consent;
but at the same time intreated him to punish the
false Myrtilus, and not suffer the example of a
king destroyed by the perfidy of his servant to
pass with impunity : Pelops listened to the re
quest of the dying king, and with his own hand
threw Myrtilus into the seae.
Atreus, the son, or as I should rather think
the grandson, of Pelops and Hippodamia, mar
ried iErope, the daughter of Eurystheus the
Pind. 01. a. 95. Schol. in Horn. II. j9. 10*.
K5

202

ATREUS AND THYESTES.

grandson of Perseus, and as Eurystheus had no

male issue, succeeded him in the throne of My
cenae: the quarrel of Atreus and his brother Thyestes has been rendered famous by the Greek
pools : Thyestes was fond of his brother's wife,
and Atreus became jealous : the queen brought
him a son, and Atreus believed it to be the son of
Thyestes: rage rankled in the breast of the hus
band, but he took no notice to his brother: he
invited him to a feast, and pretended that they
were the best friends in the world: in the mean
time the cruel Atreus killed the child that was
just born, and caused him to be served up in a
dish to Thyestes, whom he believed to be the
father : it is said that the sun went backward,
and the day suddenly became as dark as night,
because Apollo could not endure to witness so in
famous a spectacle'.
Pelops had also a sister called Niobe, who is
famous in the Grecian mythology : Niobe was
married to Amphion, the son of Iasus king of
Orchomenus, to whom she bore seven sons and
seven daughters, the most promising youths,
and the handsomest maidens ever seen: who so
happy as queen Niobe? she loved her children,
as a mother ought to do; but, she was, as perhaps
the mother of promising children is apt to be,
a little too proud of them : prosperity made her
haughty and vain : her children loved her ; but
few other people could bear the insolence of her
manners.
Among other things, she thought proper to in
sult Latona, the mother of Apollo and Diana:
41 Latona," said Niobe, " we are always told
f Lucian. Saturn. Ov, Triit. ii. 391.

NIOBE AND HER CHILDREN.

205

is the happiest of mothers : what is her happi

ness compared with mine? she is the mother of
only two children: I might lose twelve of mine,
and yet boast myself the equal of Latona : by
the numerousness of my progeny I am secured
against the attacks of fate.'
A superior does not love to be insulted by an
inferior: the Gods of the Greeks, as they were
in some things but a little higher than mortals,
were supposed to be particularly jealous of the
honours due to them: Latona was offended with
the senseless speeches of queen Niobe, and com
plained of them to her children: Apollo and
Diana came down from heaven to the plains of
Orchomenus, and slew with their arrows all the
children of Niobe: the unhappy queen saw her
self bereft of her whole family at once.
This means nothing more than that queen
Niobe lost all her children by a contagious dis
ease : Apollo, as I have before told you, was the
God of pestilences: the Grecian genius has dressed
up the story in all the magnificence of poetry and
religion : strip it of this, and it is nothing more
than a striking illustration of the uncertainty of
human possessions, and the folly of the pride of
man.
,
What can be more different, says Ovid, than
the same Niobe before and after this event? be
fore it, she turned up her eyes to heaven, she
shook her beautiful tresses on her shoulders in dis
dain, and defied the Gods: before it, she was
disagreeable to her own subjects and servants :
now she might have been an object of pity even
to an enemy: one son did not die, ere another
sickened, and the daughters, while they tended
their languishing brothers, or put on mourning

204

ARACHNE TURNED TO A SPIDER.

for their funerals, were seized with the same dis

temper: Niobe mourned forever, and refused to
be comforted : she moved neither limb nor fea
ture: her eyes were fixed; her cheeks became
white and colourless: gradually and insensibly
she changed into marble, a perpetual monument
of human vanity and impiety".
Arachne, the countrywoman of Niobe, fell a
victim to a similar folly : she was a most curious
artificer in needlework: she wrought figures in
tapestry: her pictures perhaps were as exquisite
as those which have lately been exhibited in wool
or in velvet: she was proud of her proficiency;
and as Minerva is the Goddess of needlework, she
challenged Minerva to surpass her: the Goddess
condescended to the trial, and having evinced
her superior skill, Arachne became so mortified,
that she hanged herself: Minerva changed her
into a spider: in this degraded condition the un
happy artist still pursues a similar occupation;
but her works are universally despised, and every
housewife sweeps them away with her besom*.
t Ov. Met. vi. 150 et seqq,

h Id. vi. 1 et seqq.

205

CHAP. XXIII.
LOVES OF THE GODS.
Apollo and Daphne.Daphne turned into a Laurel.
Diana and Endymion. Diana kisses Endymion in his
Sleep.Venus and Adonis.Adonis killed by a Boar
restored to Life for Six Mouths in every Year.
Cupid and Psyche.Psyche carried away to an En
chanted Palace.Envied by her Sisters.Psyche re
solves to see her Husband.Dismal Effects of her
Curiosity.She is taken up to Heaven.Baucis and
Philemon.They give ap Entertainment to Jupiter
and are rewarded.Pyramus and Thisbeforbidden
to meet, make Love through a chink in the Wall.
Their disastrous Fate.
Beside the loves of the Gods, which were
feigned by the Greeks for the purpose of doing
honour to their favourite heroes, there were others
which seem to have been invented by them purely
for the beauly and ingenuity of the tale: when
they had once formed the habit of describing the
Gods in love, they felt a pleasure in muUiplying
such stories: they produced them, not only when
they wanted to compose a courtly compliment,
but sometimes out of the mere wantonness and
sport of their wit: a few of them, to which no
particular mark of the time when they occurred is
assigned, I will speak of here.
Apollo, the God of poetry, is crowned with
leaves of laurel : Apollo, the charioteer of the
sun, is upon ill terms with the laurel, for the
laurel flourishes best in the shade : out of these

206

APOLLO AND DAPHNE.

two thoughts the Greeks contrived a pretty tale :

the Greek name for the laurel is Daphne.
Daphne was the daughter of the river Peneus,
Peneus that flows through the delightful and farfamed vale of Tern pe, and the banks of which are
fringed with laurels: Apollo, just after he had
killed the Python, met with Cupid : " Idle and
effeminate boy," said Apollo in a jering manner,
" what have you to do with the bow and the
quiver? the quiver is only fit for shoulders such
as mine:" " Your arrows," replied Cupid, " are
proper enough for the conquest of beasts, but
mine can conquer you : unless then you are wil
ling to own yourself a beast, you must confess
my superior glories :" and saying this, he let fly
a bolt, and wounded the great Apollo : the ob
ject of Apollo's love thus produced, was Daphne:
but Daphne entertained more respect for Diana
than for her brother : she loved hunting, but
shrunk from men: Apollo found her unawares,
and poured out his passion to her : " Daphne,"
said he, " you surely mistake me, or you would
feel gratified by my love : I am no shepherd, as
perhaps you think: I am the son of Jupiter : I
am the God of poetry : I spread light over the
whole world : accept then my offer, and be my
wife:" Daphne did not stay to hear the end of
this fine speech : she slily got further and further
from the God, and at last took to her heels : never
was nymph more nimble-footed than Daphne :
Apollo was in love, and would not give her up :
she ran, and he ran : he came so near her, that
his breath drove aside the curls of her hair :
frightened to the utmost, she called upon Jupiter
for pity, who turned her into a laurel: Apollo from
that time, since he could not have the beautiful

V 25 H UT S

VENUS AND ADONIS.

207

Daphne for a wife, vowed that her tree should at

least be his; and so the laurel became sacred to
Apollo1.
Diana is said to have fallen in love like her bro
ther, though she were the Goddess of Chastity:
the object of her flame was Endymionk, a shep
herd of Caria: she saw him naked on the top of
mount Latmos, and thought she had never beheld
so beautiful a creature : as she was the most bash
ful and modest of existing beings, she cast him
into a deep sleep, that she might kiss him unseen
and undiscovered even by him she loved : every
night she visited the beautiful shepherd, whom
Jupiter endowed with perpetual youth, and every
night she loved him better than the night before:
the meaning of the fable is, that Endymion was a
great astronomer ; that he passed whole nights
upon mount Latmos, contemplating the heavenly
bodies, and therefore 1 suppose not asleep } and
that he is said first to have explained the pheno
mena of Diana, that is, the moon, and to have
given a just account of their causes.
The loves of Venus and Adonis are singularly
famous: he was the son of Cinyras king of Cy
prus: his name is constantly used to this day, to
express the perfection of smooth and polished
beauty in the male sex : he was exceedingly fond
of hunting, and as Venus could not leave the side
of her charmer, she hunted with him : she intreated him however, if he had the least value for
her, to confine himself to hunting the hare, the
fox or the deer, and to abstain from the chace of
wild beasts : Adonis, though delicate of appear
ance, had somewhat of a manly disposition : he
1 Ov. Met. i. 452 et seqq.
k Apollodorus, i. 7. Apollon. Rhod. it. 7

CUPID AND PSYCHE.

did not fmd in h is heart always to comply with
the timid counsels of the Goddess : once hunting
a wild boar, he wounded the ferocious animal ;
but the boar turned upon him, and tore him so
that he died: from his blood sprang the beautiful
flower, called anemone : Venus was inconsolable
for his loss, and at length obtained from Jupiter
that he should return to lite for six months in
every year; so that Adonis revives and dies in
incessant succession: there were festivals in his
honour in Phcenicia, Greece, and other countries,
expressive of this circumstance : the solemnity
continued several days; the first part being spent
in lamentations for his loss, and the second in joy
for his restoration1.
The story of Cupid and Psyche is more modern
than any of these, having been written since the
birth of Christ : it is too beautiful however to be
omitted : Psyche, the daughter of a king of I
know not what country, was so wonderfully hand
some, that the people mistook her for Venus, and
almost adored her : the Goddess of Beauty was
exceedingly offended with the mistake, and de
termined to punish Psyche : she spoke to Cupid
her son, and commanded him to make the prin
cess fall in love with the most stupid, deformed
and base-looking clown in her father's dominions :
Cupid set out on his commission; but he no sooner
saw Psyche, than instead of punishing, he fell in
love with her : afraid however of his mother's dis
pleasure, he resolved to carry on the affair secretly :
he caused the West Wind to take her from her
father's house, and convey her to an enchanted
palace: here, as soon as it was night, Cupid came
l Ov. Met. x. 515 et seqq. Bion. Epitaph. Adoru

psyche's rash curiosity.

209

to her in the dark, and with all the ceremonies

compatible with the situation, made her his bride.
Psyche was the youngest of three sisters: the
eldest was married to an-ill tempered tyrant, and
the second to a driveller: they envied exceedingly
what their younger sister told them of the wonders
of her marriage: though she had never seen her
husband, nor heard his name, yet she could tell
of the beauties of his enchanted palace (for if Cu
pid left her before the dawn, she staid as long as
she pleased), of the silver voice of the bridegroom,
and the million passionate and charming things
he said to her.
To be revenged upon Psyche, the sisters deter
mined one way or other to put an end to her hap
piness: they had no doubt that the husband had
reasons for his concealment, and believed that he
would desert Psyche, if he found himself thwarted
in this respect: they reminded her of an oracle
which had said that she should marry a clown or
a monster: " for their parts they had no doubt
that this new husband, though his lips were soft,
had the fins of a fish, and the tail of a dragon:" the
poor young princess could not bear this thought,
and could not get it out of her head : she cried all
day long: the sisters provided her with a dark
lanthorn that she might make the discovery, and
a dagger that she might stab him if he proved a
fiend-like monster.
The next night Cupid was no sooner asleep,
than Psyche got out of bed, and fetched her lan
thorn and dagger: what was her surprize, and
what was her joy, when instead of a monster, she
saw a young creature beaming in every part with
celestial beauty ! she could never make an end of
admiring: in her transport she carelessly let fall

210

BAUCIS AND PHILEMON.

a drop of burning wax upon his polished shoulder :

Cupid awoke.
The palace now vanished, and Psyche was left
alone on a desolate rock : Venus discovered the
secret of Cupid, and was beyond measure exas
perated : she directed all her vengeance against
Psyche, who had first passed for the Goddess of
Beauty, and now had seduced her child from his
obedience: she imposed upon her impossible
tasks: she subjected her to unheard-of torments :
Jupiter at length was moved to pity: he took up
Psychclo Heaven, made her immortal, and gave
her as a wife to Cupid in the face of the celestial
inhabitants.
Astoryofanotherkind respecting the intercourse
of Gods and men, not well knowing to what place
to assi.<rn5 1 will mention here: Jupiter had heard
of the pride, the tnsolefiCe ami licentiousness of a
certain district in Phrygia, and determined to ob
serve the fact with his own eyes: he disguised
himself as a traveller, and took with him Mercury,
his confidential servant : alone, and unrecommended by any pompons appearance, they visited
the house of many a rich man, and knocked at
many a portal: at all they were refused refresh
ment and shelter: neither the rich nor those who
enjoyed a moderate competence, would afford them
any civility: at length they came to a hut, the
poorest in all the province, and knocked there.
This cottage contained two inhabitants, Phile
mon and Baucis, an old labourer and his wife,
who had married young, and were now sinking
into decrepitude: the good couple saluted the
strangers kindly, and invited them in : you could
m Apuleii Mat. iv. et w.

JUPITER IN A COTTAGE.

211

not enter the cottage-door without stooping : the

old rustics stirred the fire, and drew a bench : the
table had only three legs, and one of them was too
short ; but Baucis mended that by putting a shard
underneath : they prepared for the Gods a rasher
ofbacon and a Ballad, and roasted them some eggs :
they added a plate of olives, arid a small pitcher
of new-made wine : they gave the best that they
had : the Gods ate, and were pleased with their
hosts: the good man and his wife were however
surprised to find that, however often the pitcher
was resorted to, the quantity of wine continued
the same, while the quality evidently improved.
Baucis and Philemon could no longer doubt
that their guests were more than mortal: sacrifices
were the mode of the Grecian religion, and they
hastened to fetch one poor solitary eoose they had
in their back-court, to make a sacrifice of her: the
goose ran fast for her life; the feeble old couple
could not overtake her: at length the poor animal
took refuge in the bosom of Jupiter, who forbad
her to be killed : he added, that he and Mercury
had come from Heaven to witness the guilt of the
district, and were now resolved to sweep the whole
race from the earth : the two Gods invited their
hosts to climb the neighbouring mountain, and
aided their faltering steps : Baucis and Philemon
had no sooner reached the top, than looking round,
they saw that a miraculous torrent had swept
away all the houses and their inhabitants to the
sea, while their cottage only remained.
" Now," said Jupiter, " that 1 have inflicted
justice on your wicked countrymen, tell me, my
good old delver and dame, what favour J can
bestow on you, and it shall be granted :" " Please
your Godships," answered they, " we desire no

212

PYRAMUS AND THISBE.

thing more, than that we may spend the small

remainder of our lives in your worship, and in
gratitude for this signal preservation ; and that,
as we have lived so long together, and are of
the same age, you would bestow upon us the
mercy, that at last we may die in the same
hour."
Jupiter immediately turned the cottage in
which he had been so hospitably received into a
magnificent temple, in an apartment of which
Philemon and Baucis lived in quality of priest
and priestess: some years afterward as this good,
old couple stood on each side of the door of the
temple talking over old times, they became rooted
to the spot, and were both at once turned into
trees, an oak and a lime, a durable monument
that hospitality and a liberal treatment toward
the stranger and the wanderer, is one of. those
virtues by which we may best earn the approba
tion of Heaven*.
There is a story of two merely human lovers
which has commonly found a place in books of
the Grecian Gods, and as it is an interesting tale,
1 will not leave it out : Pyramus and Thisbe were
inhabitants of the city of Babylon : their parents)
-lived next door to each other, and they had been
accustomed, while boy and girl, to see each other
every day : at that early age they were very fond
of each other's company : when they grew up,
they asked leave to marry : the parents, either
because they thought them too young, or for some
other reason , forbad it : for more caution they
would not let the lovers see one another : Pyra
n Ot. Met. Ti. 626 et seqq.

THEIR ASSIGNATION.

213

mus and Thisbe were never permitted to go out

of the house but in company with their friends.
There is a proverb that says, " Love will find
out the way :" almost from the time that the
houses were built that Pyramus and Thisbe lived
in, there was a little chink in the wall between,
hardly wide enough to let the light pass, but
quite large enough to speak through : nobody had
ever discovered this chinkj but the lovers found
it out : at night, and at all convenient times, they
would get to the chink, one on one side, and the
other on the other, and talk for hours together :
not a day passed that Pyramus did not swear here
that he would have no other wife than Thisbe,
and Thisbe that she would have no other husband
than Pyramus.
In time however they grew discontented with
this slender mdulgence: they thought it hard
that they could not see each other, nor so much
as shake hands: then they could not talk in secu
rity, without one or the other saying every mi
nute, M Hush, I think I hear somebody com
ing:" they agreed that at least they would have
one evening of more undisturbed conversation:
they fixed that as soon as it was dark, each
should steal out of the house, and so they would
meet : the tomb of Ninus the Great, king of
Assyria, stood a little way out of the walls : near
the tomb was a fountain ; and the fountain was
shaded by a fine mulberry-tree : they agreed that
they would sit and have their talk under the
It so happened that Thisbe got to the place
first : in the neighbourhood was a forest of lions :
Thisbe had scarcely seated herself under the tree

214

THEIR DISASTROUS FATE.

to wait for Pyramus, before by the light of the

moon she saw a great lion : the lion had just been
devouring a bull, and came to the fountain to
drink: Thisbe jumped up, and ran as hard as
she could : in her hurry she dropped her veil :
the lion drank, and when he had done, he
saw the veil, and in mere wantonness towzled
and tore it in a terrible manner : he then went
away.
A minute after, Pyramus arrived : he saw
the print of the lion's foot in the sand, and was
frightened : he saw the veil : what was worse,
the lion's lips were smeared with the blood of the
bull, and he saw blood upon the veil : he no
longer doubted that Thisbe was devoured : in the
utmost anguish he said, " It was I that sent you
to this terrible place : It is I that suffered you to
get here first ; I have been the author of your
death ; but I will not survive you :" he kissed
the veil a thousand times : he drew his sword,
and thrust it to his heart.
*
Pyramus was scarcely stretched a corpse upon
the ground, before Thisbe returned : she was
afraid of the lion, but she could not disappoint
her lover : she saw him dying, with her veil in
his hand : he could not speak, but the veil told
the story sufficiently: she killed herself with the
same sword that had killed her lover: " Cruel
parents," said she with her last breath, " you
could not join us in life, at least bury us in one
tomb :" Ovid says, that the fruit of the mulberrytree had before been white, but as its roots were wa
tered with the blood of these faithful lovers, the
fruit ever after became of the deepest blood-colour0.
Ov. Met. iv. 55 et eqq.

215

CHAP. XXIV.
OF HERCULES.
Amphitryon and Alcmena.Jupiter assumes the Form of
Amphitryon, and is the Father of Hercules.Am
phitryon banished to Thebes. Birth of Hercules.
He is the God of Strengthfated to be the Slave of
Eurystheus, his Cousin.Strangles two Serpents in
his Cradle.Education of Hercules.His Twelve La
bours, h. The Nemtean Lion, 2. the Hydra, 3. the
Hind of (Enoe, 4. the Erymanthian Boar, 5. the
Stables of Augeas, 6. the Stymphalian Birds, 7. the
Cretan Bull, 8.- the Mares of Diomedes King of
Thrace, 9. tke*Gi.rdle of Hippolita Queen of the
-Amazons, 10. The Oxen of -Geryon, 11. the Apples
o.f the Hespeeides, 12. Cerberus. Hercules wrestles
jjth Antaeus.Wars of the Pigmies and Cranes.
H,*rcules kills Busiris-^-and Cacus.Pillars of Her
cules.jHe delivers .Prometheussacks Troysails
With the Argonaut-figures in the War of the Giants
lwvesloleand Omphaleis employed in spinning
marries Dejanira'.ijhe sends him a poisoned Shirt
Death of Hercules.Taken up into Heaven, and
marries Hebe.Story of Philoctetes.Various Heroes
named Hercules.

meda, Electryon the father of Alcmena, Alcaeus

the father of Amphitryon, and Sthenelus: Elec
tryon succeeded his father on the throne of My
cenae : he engaged in war with the Teleboans, a
people of iEtolia, and intrusted the command of
his army to his sons, who were all killed : Elec

216

SUN FORBIDDEN TO RISE.

tryon, broken-hearted at the news, offered hi*

daughter Alcrnena and the succession of the
throne, to whoever would revenge him on his
sanguinary enemies: Amphitryon, his nephew,
accepted the commission: and previously to his .
march, was solemnly espoused to Alcmena, but
On condition that she should never receive him as
her husband, till he returned triumphant over
his enemies: Alcmena was the mother of Hercules,
who is next to Bacchus the^reatest of the Gre
cian Demigods.
According to the practice of the ancient my
thology, Jupiter? became enamoured of Alc
mena, and was the father of Hercules : the affair
happened thus: Amphitryon gained a .complete
victory over the Teleboans, and prepared o re
turn home rich with the spoils' of the: enemy. t
Jupiter however determined1 to 'be betcrtehajd
with him: for this purpose he aljumed^hfefocfa
of Amphitryon, and ..caused Mercury to take
the form of Sosia, Amphitryon's servant: hjfbesides stole a magnificent cup* from the>spoils of
Amphitryon, and presented j^jP to Alcmeua: he
told a long story of the victory' tbIHruc Amphi
tryon had gained over the- 'JJeleboans: Alcmgna
had no doubt the person she ''saw was her hus
band: as Jupiter thought he should -rTever have
such another opportunity, he caused the sun not
to rise all the next day, that he might Ae longer
enjoy Alcmena's conversation : the uigjbl was as
long as three.
The next day the true Amphitryon came*, and,
as Alcmena and he were talking together, it came
out that he had been at home (as Alcmena sup' Apollodorui, ii. 4, 5, 6, et 7.

EXILE OF AMPHITRYON.

217

posed) one night sooner than he knew any thing

about the matter: Alcmcna believed that her
husband was mad, so soon to have forgotten
every thing that had passed : she produced the
cup, which Amphitryon immediately recognised:
he searched among his spoils, and found it had
been taken away : in his perplexity he applied
to Tiresias the prophet, who told him that it was
Jupiter, king of Gods and men, who had con
descended to assume his shape.
The principal advantage which the Teleboans
had gained pver >EIectryon, was the taking from
him spine (Inc.herds, of remarkable cattle : these
Amphitryon SrougJi.f' back- to him: but, as he
presert&$ them tolhe king, Amphitryon threw a
stick atfcncof thc/nff'that strayed from the rest:
;hc stick struck uppa' tjie'bull's horn, and rebpurftied with such-fwee, tHat lighting upon the
brcasj: of Electryoiv, it killed him on the spot:
SJthenelus', the surviving- -brother of the king,
wiyftd not allow that ins murderer should succeed
him jo the thrones Jitf.drove Amphitryon into
rxiliijto Thebes, where .Hercules was born in the
sa meatfly which had beatr before the birth-place
of Bacchus.
Hercules is usually considered as the God of
Strength : hf is the Samson of the Grecian my
thology : and his muscles, as you may see them
displayed in the Farnese statue, express a corpo
ral power, such as never resided in any other
man.
Jupiter foresaw what an extraordinary perso
nage Hercules would prove, and, with the fond
ness of a father, boasted in the assembly of the
Gods, that on that day a child should be born
who should be paramount to all the Demigods
L

218

HERCULES AMD THE SERPENTS.

that inhabited the earth : Juno was always the

enemy of the children of Jupiter of whom she
was not the mother : she had a double advantage
in this case, as Juno is the Goddess of child-bear
ing : "Swear by the Styx," said she, "that it
shall be as you have said :" Jupiter swore: Juno
immediately quitted the Heavens, and by her
power put off the birth of Hercules for a day, at
the same time forwarding by two months the birth
of Eurystheus the son of Sthenelus, Amphitryon's
brother : by this device Eurystheus, contrary to
the intention of Jupiter, was made the master of
Hercules his illustrious cousin.
* .
When Alcmena became a jnothe'r, she had two
children, twins, Hercules the son of^fupiter,
and Iphiclus the son of AiiSphitryon : ajie chil
dren were only eightTOonths old when J*uotff still
urged by her former' hatred, rsent two monstrous
serpents to destroy Hercules in the cradle where
they lay : Iphiclus, terrir?(!T*at the sight, crept
out of the cradle, and alarmed the whole Jroushold with his shrieks: bftt when the)' came info
see what was the matter they found Herfcules
lying unmoved, holding with each hand the nexks
of the serpents in his grasp :*when he let go, Uiey
were dead.
Hercules received a very liberal education, and
this is among the first examples of refinement in
Greece : we are told of six masters who instructed
him, Castor in the art of defence, Eurytus in the
use of the bow, Autolycus to drive a war-chariot,
Eumolpus in singing, Linus the son of Apollo
in poetry, music and history, and Chiron the
Centaur in astronomy, medicine, and every other
<t Ov. Met. ix. 285 et seqq.

THE NEMJEAN LION.

219

art which was then known: when he was only

eighteen years of age, he killed a huge lion that
preyed upon the flocks of his father, and distin
guished himself by other extraordinary achieve
ments.
Hercules was now become completely a man,
when Eurystheus, instructed by Juno, summoned
him to appear before him at Mycenae, that he
might perform those acts of subjection which fate
had assigned him: Hercules at first refused; but
Juno afflicted him with madness, and in his lucid
intervals he consulted the oracle of Apollo tow
he was to be delivered from this calamity: the
oracle told him there was no other remedy for
him, than to be twelve years the slave of Eurys
theus, and to perform twelve labours which Eu
rystheus should impose upon him,: Hercules re
paired to the court of Mycenae, where he had a
better right to the throne than the king that
reigned, and, told Eurystheus that he was come
to perform whatever he might think fit to enjoin:
he came crowned with- the gifts of all the Gods ;
Minerva had given him a suit of armour, Apollo
a bo v and arrows, Mercury a sword, Neptune a
horse, Vulcan a club of brass, and his father Ju
piter a shield.
The first labour in which Eurystheus employed
him, was the destruction of the Nemaean lion:
this was a much more terrible creature than that
he had killed when he was a stripling : the Ne
maean lion, the offspring of Orthus and Chimaera,
had by Juno's enchantment fallen from the circle
of the moon, and was invulnerable by any
weapon : Hercules tried his divine arrows in
vain, and at last, having bruised the,, monster
exceedingly with his club, he destroyed it by

220

HYDRA, &c.

hugging it in his arms : he from that time fori

ward wore the skin of this lion : Eurystheus was
so terrified at the sight of the skin, that he ever
after forbad Hercules from entering the city of
Mycenae when he returned from his achievements,
and spoke to him from a brazen bastion in the
walls.
The second labour of Hercules was the destruc
tion of the Hydra, the daughter of Echidna,
which has already been mentioned : this creature
inhabited the banks of the Lerna?an lake : it was
shaped like a dragon, and had a hundred heads:
beside which, if any one of these heads were
destroyed, it was the nature of the animal for
two others immediately to spring up in its place:
Hercules attacked the monster with his club of
brass: but finding all his efforts ineffectual, he
instructed his friend and charioteer, Iolas,
set
fire to a neighbouring wood, and have/always
ready a brand, with which, as soon as Hercules'
had demolished one of the heads, Iolas was kysear
the wound : by this contrivance Hercules k^led
the Hydra; and dipping his arrows in the' blood,
the wounds he gave ever after were mortal and
incurable.
His third labour was to catch the hind of
CEnoe, whose feet were brass, and whose horns
were gold : this, like most of the labours of Her
cules, cost him a year : the hind was sacred to
Diana, and therefore Hercules was forbidden to
wound her : at last he overtook the animal, and
brought it on his shoulders to the presence of
Eurystheus.
( The fourth labour of Hercules was the con
quest oftheErymanthian boar: this has sometimes
been confounded with the Calydonian boar killed

AUGEAS'S STABLE,

&e.

221

by. Meleager : Hercules took this furious animal

alive.
His fifth labour was cleansing the stables of
Augeas king of Elis, in which three thousand
oxen were kept, and which had not been cleansed
for thirty years : Hercules undertook to do this
in a day : Augeas did not believe him, but pro
mised him a tenth part of the oxen as it is re
ward if he performed it: Hercules, with a truly
grand conception, turned the river Alpheus
through the mews of Augeas : Augeas said this
was a cheat, and withheld the reward; and Her
cules killed the tyrant.
His sixth labour was to kill the Stymphalian
birds, whose pinions, beaks and talons were of
iron, and who fed upon human flesh: these six
labours were achieved within the limits of Pelo
ponnesus.
Th$ seventh labour of Hercules was to take
alive Shrill, which Neptune had sent against the
island of Crete, to punish Minos for having ne
glected his sacrifices. .
The/eighth labour of Hercules was to bring
away the mares of Diomedes king of Thrace,
whose breath was fire, and who were fed with
human flesh; Diomedes caused every stranger
who came into his country to be thrown to these
mares to be devoured : Hercules however resisted
the officers of the king, and at length threw the
tyrant himself to be eaten by his own cattle: I
suppose he afterward tamed these wild creatures,
and taught them to be content with vegetables and
corn.
*
Eurystheus was astonished by the constant suc
cesses of Hercules, and was tired of the services
of so powerful a subject : he seems to have beeu
l3
, .

222

HIFPOLITA, GERYON.

almost at the end of his invention : he bad heard

that Hippolita queen of the Amazons in Asia,
wore the most beautiful girdle in the world : he
commanded Hercules to fetch this girdle, and
make a present of it to
daughter of Eurystheus : Hercules accomplished
this task, and is said to have destroyed the whole
nation before he could possess himself of the
girdle.
The tenth labour of Hercules was one of the
most terrible in which he ever engaged : it was
to bring away the purple-coloured oxen of Ge
ryon, a monster with three heads, the brother of
Echidna, and the uncle of Orthus, Cerberus,
Hydra and Chimaera: Geryon lived in the island
of Gades in Spain, and he had Orthus, his
nephew, who was a dog with two heads, beside a
dragon with seven heads, to guard bis cattle':
Hercules killed Geryon and the dog and the dra
gon, and brought away the oxen : many attempts
were made to rob Hercules of his prize, as he
drove them along through Spain, Italy and
Sicily: some robbers fell upon him in his sleep,
and others endeavoured to overpower him with
numbers; but he baffled and defeated them all.
The eleventh labour of Hercules was the ga
thering the golden apples in the garden of the
Hesperides, and the killing of the dragon who
was appointed to guard them : Hesiod says that
the garden of the Hesperides was to the north be
yond the limits of the ocean: a long journey for
Hercules to perform : he first applied to the
nymphs of the Eridanus in Italy to know where
these apples were to be found : they referred him
to Nereus, God of the sea, whom the hero caught
in his chains, and in spite of a variety of forms

HERCULES IN HELL.

223

which Nereus successively assumed, Hercules

compelled him to answer: Nereus told Hercules
that if he applied to Prometheus, whom he
would find chained to mount Caucasus, he would
be informed of every particular: Prometheus,
who was the most crafty, and if we may believe
Hesiod', the most faultless of existing beings,
sent Hercules to Atlas: the site of Atlas, which
is now the name of a mountain in Africa, seems
once to have been placed far to the north of
mount Caucasus: Atlas informed Hercules, that
if he would for a short time take the weight of the
heavens from his shoulders, who was condemned
to bear them, he would afford his visitor every
assistance in his power: Atlas was the grand
father of the Hesperides, and his instructions were
final: Hercules killed the dragon, and possessed
himself of the apples.
Eurystheus had but one more command that
he was permitted to impose upon this extraordi
nary mortal : the office he chose was that of bring
ing up to the face of the sun, Cerberus the tripleheaded dog that guarded the entrance of Hell:
Hercules descended by a cavern of mount Tsenarus
in Laconia: Cerberus no sooner saw him, than
he took refuge beneath the steps of Pluto's throne :
Hercules cast a threefold chain round his three
necks, and dragged him, in spite of all the re
sistance he could make, to the gates of Mycenae:
Pluto at the same time permitted this illustrious
son of Jupiter to bring away with him the two
friends, Theseus and Pirithous, who had been
condemned for their misdemeanour to sit for ever
upon a stone at the entrance of Pluto's palace' Axaxmx Ilpopiflnif. Theog. 613.
L4

!224

HERCULES AND ANTjBUS.

several of the labours of Hercules remind us of

Guy earl of Warwick and certain heroes in the
Christian romances, and are strongly representa
tive of an uncultivated age, when one of the
greatest public services that could be achieved,
consisted in the destruction of wild beasts.
Hercules had now completed his period of sub
jugation to Eurystheus, and became a free man :
but the rest of his life was spent in feats of valour
scarcely less desperate than the twelve labours I
have described.
He vanquished Antaeus, a giant of Lybia, sixtyfour cubits high: Antaeus was the son of the Sea
and the Earth : he forced all travellers to wrestle
with him, and then killed, and I suppose ate
them: what chance had a moderate man with a
giant sixty-four cubits high ? Hercules accepted
his challenge: three times he threw Antaeus to the
ground with such force, that he thought he had
killed him : Hercules however presently per
ceived that, as soon as Antaeus fell upon his mo
ther, the Earth, he derived new vigour from the
contact, and returned to the struggle fresher than
ever : finding therefore that it was necessary to
change his mode of attack, Hercules caught the
monster to his breast, and squeezed him to death
in his arms.
There is a pleasant story told by one of the an
cient authors', that when Hercules fell asleep on
the sands after the conquest of Antaeus, he was set
upon by an arrny of pigmies: the pigmies' were
a race of men three inches high : they built their
houses of egg-shells, and when the corn they
had sown was ripe for the harvest, they came
3 Philoitr. Icon. ii. 22.

1 Schol. in II. y. 6.

busiris: CACUS.
with axes to hew it down, as men of ordinary sta
ture fell trees : they had once a year a fierce and
bloody war with the cranes, who coming in bodies
at a certain season, and taking them for pismires
or some such insignificant animal, thought to
make a delicate meal of them : this gallant nation
however presently taught the birds the difference
between a pismire and a pigmy : how after these
battles they ventured to meddle with Hercules I
know not: they shot their arrows with great fury
at his arms and legs : at length the hero awoke,
and being highly pleased with their courage,
wrapped a battalion of his assailants in the skin of
the Nemaean lion, and carried them as a curiosity
to Eurystheus.
When Hercules passed through Egypt, Busiris
was king of the country : Busiris was an intole
rable tyrant, and one instance of his cruelty was,
that he sacrificed whatever stranger came into the
country upon the altar of Neptune, who he said
was -his father: Busiris seized Hercules, regardless
of the name of Jupiter whose son he was, and
dragged him to the place of sacrifice : but Her
cules burst his chains; and by 1 he law of retali
ation of which the hero was fond, he slew the
tyrant h pon his own altar.
Virgil* has left us a very fine description of a
combat between Hercules and the robber Cacus,
who is said to have been the son of Vulcan and
Medusa: Cacus attempted to steal from Hercules
some of the oxen of Geryon which the hero was
conducting from Spain : that Hercules might not
find his lost cattle by their footsteps, Cacus drag
ged them backwards by their tails to his den : but
r JExu viii. 185 et seqq. Ov. Fasti, i. 547.
,

226

PILLARS OF HERCULES, &c.

they betrayed the thief by their lowing for the loss

of their companions.
When Hercules was in Spain, he is said to
have torn asunder the promontories of Gibraltar
and Ceuta, which were before joined, by the force
of his arm : and to have erected there certain
pillars, afterward called the pillars of Hercules,
to mark what he considered as the western extre
mity of the world.
He shot the vulture which preyed upon the
liver of Prometheus, after that illustrious perso
nage had suffered this torment for thirty years:
this was probably when he was seeking the apples
of the Hesperides: the early Greeks troubled
themselves but little about chronology; otherwise
they would surely have interposed ' more than
thirty years between the creation of man and the
labours of Hercules.
He took and pillaged the city of Troy : of this
more will be said when I come to speak of the
kings of Troy.
Hercules was one of the heroes who embarked
in the expedition of the Argonauts": he was left
however by the rest of the crew on the Asiatic
coast before they arrived at Colchis : his friend
Hylas bad been drowned, and while Hercules was
in quest of him, the ship sailed x.
It has already been seen that Hercules made a
distinguished figure in defending Jupiter and the
other Gods in the war of the Giants against Hea
ven : fate had decreed that the king of Gods and
men could never succeed in this war, unless he
called a mortal to his assistance : this idea pro
digiously exalts our notion of Hercules ; at the
v ApelL Rbod. a. 129.

* Id. a. 1861 et wqq.

HERCULES SPINNING.

227

same time that it lowers our conception of the

Grecian Gods, and shews that, in personal prowess
at least, they were little superior to the strongest
men.
After having considered Hercules as the indis
pensable ally of the greatest of the Gods, it is
some descent from this elevation to relate the his
tory of his wives.
One of the first persons for whom he conceived
the passion of love was Iole, the daughter of Earytus, the hero who had first instructed him in the
use of the bow: Eurytus, confident in his supe
rior skill, issued a declaration that, if any one
could conquer him in this his favourite exercise,
he would give to that person his daughter's hand
in marriage: Hercules accepted the challenge,
and vanquished his master : but Eurytus, vexed
to see himself thus defeated, refused to abide by
his engagement.
One of the ladies that won the heart of the
mighty Hercules was Omphale queen of Lydia :.
he was so desperately enamoured of this princess
that she made him do what she pleased : she com
manded him to dress himself in female garb, and
spin among her women : she took pleasure in
seeming angry with him, and giving him a blow
whenever he handled the distaff aukwardly : Her
cules forgot for a time all his wondrous exploits,,
and whoever saw him in this degraded situation
would have taken him for the most effeminate of
mankind.
Lastly, the lady who makes the principal
figure in the history of Hercules, and who was
actually his bride, was Dejanira the sister of Meleager : one memorable adventure that happened
to him with Dejanira, was that, endeavouring to.
l6,
,

228

THE POISONED SHIRT.

cross a river in a flood, the centaur Nessus, half

man and half horse, came up, and offered to carry
Dejanira across on his back : Hercules consented,
but as soon as they had got over, observed Nessus
behaving rudely to his wife : he let fly at him one
of his arrows dipped in the blood of the Hydra,
and Nessus was killed : but before the centaur
died, being bent on revenge, he made Dejanira
carefully preserve the shirt he wore, assuring the
foolish princess that it was gifted with such vir
tue, that if her husband ever abated in his affec
tions to her, he had but to put on that shirt, and
they would return as forcibly as ever: Nessus
knew in his heart that the shirt was impregnated
with the blood of the Lernaean Hydra from the
arrow that slew him, a poison whidvcgultr' never
be washed out, and which would prove fatal to
whoever attempted to put it on.
Sometime after this Hercules met with lole, the
object of his first affections: her father was now
dead, and she was completely her own mistress :
Hercules was going to perform a sacrifice on
mount GEta on the borders of Thessaly, and
begged her to go along with him: before he be
gan the sacrifice, he recollected that he had not
the sacred garments proper for the occasion : he
sent his servant Lichas to fetch them from Deja
nira : Dejanira asked who Hercules had got along
with him: Lichas named lole: inflamed at the
mention of a rival she had always feared, Deja
nira went to her wardrobe, and fetching out the
shirt of Nessus, folded it up with the rest of the
things which Hercules had sent for.
Hercules put on the fatal shirt, and presently
felt the effects of it: it clung to his flesh, and oc
casioned him indescribable torments : he cuden

DEATH OT HERCULES.

229

voured to tear it off; he tore away the flesh, but

still the venom remained: in the first transport of
his anguish he caught up Lichas, the bearer of
the present, and who had been the cause that it
was sent, and hurled him into the sea, where by
the power of the Gods he was turned into a rocky.
Seeing however that his death was now inevit
able, Hercules recovered all his magnanimity and
presence of mind : he had with him Philoctetes,
one of the Argonauts1: he ordered this hero and
his other servants to prepare for him a funeral
pile: he ascended it with no marks of fear and
astonishment: he delivered to Philoctetes as his
last legacy his quiver and his arrows, and ordered
him to set fire to the pile: his last act was to re
quire ao/oath from his attendants that they should
discover fj> no one the place where the closing
scene of hip, life was transacted: Homer' says that
the siSfcov or shade of Hercules wanders in the in
fernal regions: but his immortal part was taken
up to Heaven by Jupiter, who gave him Hebe to
wife, the Goddess of perpetual youth.
There is an interesting story of the adventures
of Philoctetes with the arrows of Hercules : an
oracle had assured the chiefs leagued against
Troy, that they would never take the town, un
less they carried with them the arrows of Hercu
les: Hercules had disappeared from the face of
the earth, but no one knew what was become of
him : some believed that he was gone on a distant
expedition to the extremities of the earth : Ulys
ses, the most crafty of the chiefs, went in search
of Philoctetes, the dearest friend of Hercules: he
y Ov. Met. ix. 1 et seqq.
2 Philoctetes is not in the list of
the Argonauts given by Apollonius Rhodius. He is however
mentioned by Valeriu* Flaccus and Hygimu. a Od. 601.

230

FRAUD OF PHILOCTETES.

found him in a cavern of mount CEta: from his

silence and his sorrow Ulysses became convinced
that Hercules was dead : he demanded of Philoetetes where his ashes had been deposited : by his
artful manners and his insinuation he wrung this
secret from Philoctetes, notwithstanding his oath :
Philoctetes led him to the spot, and though he
would notspeak what he had promised to conceal,
he pointed out the place by striking upon it with
his fool.
Philoctetes then embarked with the other chiefs
against Troy, carrying with him the arrows of
Hercules: they touched at the island of Lemnos,
and there Philoctetes, attempting to shoot at a
bird, let fall an arrow on his guilty foot: it only
rased the skin, but the consequence was such
agonies, that the cries of Philoctetes frightened the
whole camp of the Greeks, and the stanch of his
wound was intolerable: they left him for nine
years on this uninhabited shore: at length, find
ing that his presence was still necessary to them,
they returned : they brought along with tbem
Machaon and Podalirius, physicians, who healed
Philoctetes of his wound, and Troy snrrenderedb.
Hercules, like Bacchus, was not originally a
native of Greece: in other words, there was a
Hercules, before the existence of the Theban Her
cules : it has been remarked, that even the name is
not a native of the Greek language, but has been
transplanted from some foreign source : the origi
nal Hercules was probably a conqueror and a le
gislator, and his name was given to persons born
in a subsequent age, as we call our children Alex
ander, and Augustus, and Arthur, and Alfred :
Horn. U./3. 718. Find. Pyth, i. 92. Soph, in Philoct.

DIFFERENT HERCULESES.

231

the Greek story leads him through many parts of

the world, to Spain, to Lybia, to mount Cau
casus, and probably far north of that mountain :
the Egyptian historians speak of a Hercules, the
lieutenant of Osiris, that is, of Bacchus (of what
ever part of the world the true Bacchus was a na
tive): the Greeks seem to have joined together all
the exploits ascribed to any man who ever bore the
name of Hercules, that they might do the greater
honour to the hero of Thebes'.
c Hesiod Theog. et Scut. Here. pass. Apollodoros, ii. 4, 5, 6
et 7. Ov. Ep. iz. Deian. ad Here.

232

CHAP. XXV.
OF THE ARGONAUTIC EXPEDITION.
Pelias and jEsoii, Kings of Thessaly.Jason, Son oF
jEson, appears in his Father's Capital with one Shoe.
Demands Justice of the Usurper.Story of Phryxus.
and Helle.Jason undertakes the Voyage in Search
of the Golden Fleece.Is accompanied by all the
Heroes ofGreece.Visits Hypsipyle, Queen of Lemnos.Deli+ers Phineus, the Blind Prophet, from the
Persecution of the Harpies.Passes the Cyauean
Bocks.Assisted by Medea, a Sorceress, he over
comes the Guardians of the Golden Fleece. Medea
goes off with him.Tears her Brother Absyrtus to
Pieces.Makes old iEson young again.Her Kettle
for restoring Youth.Murders her own Children.
Escapes through the Air in a Chariot drawn by Fiery
Dragons. History of Circe.
Four great historical events form the conclu
sion of the fabulous history of Greece: the expe
dition of the Argonauts, the first and second
sieges of Thebes, and the destruction of Troy :
these stories long occupied the pens of the ancient
poets who sought for fame in the composition of
the epic, that is, of a species of poetry treating
at large of some memorable event in history, and
usually consisting of twelve or twenty -four parts,
or books, and perhaps of twenty thousand verses :
we have remaining the Argonautics of Apollonius Uhodius in Greek, and of Valerius Flaccus
in Latin; the Thebais ofStatius, a Latin poet,

BIRTH OF JASON,

233

on the first siege of Thebes ; and the Iliad, or

siege of Troy, by Homer.
The story of the Argonautic expedition is as
follows: Cretheus4, king of Iolchos a town in
Thessaly, had a son named jSCson, who when
-Cretheus died ought to have succeeded to the
Ihrone: but the mother ofiEson had a son by
Neptune, called Pelias, before her marriage with
Cretheus: ,and at the decease of Cretheus, Pelias
usurped the crown, and drove /Eson into banish
ment: iEsonhad one son, called Jason, a youth of
the greatest hopes, whom he privately committed
to the care of Chiron, the centaur, the preceptor
of so many heroes : when Jason grew to man's
estate, filled -with the story of his father's wrongs,
he left Chiron, and hastened to visit Iolchos,
having formed a resolution boldly to demand
from the usurper the restoration of his kingdom :
he expected that his appearance, and the justice
of his claim, would interest the citizens of Iolchos
in his favour, and he was not disappointed : as
the gallant stripling, on foot and alone, ap
proached his patrimonial dominion, he was stop
ped by the course of the river Enipeus : Juno
saw his difficulty, and in the shape of an old
woman transported him over the river through
the air: in the passage one of his sandals dropped
from his foot, and was carried away by the
stream: the mind of Jason was full of great
things, and suffered no disturbance from so trivial
a circumstance: he entered the market-place of
Iolchos, and related to the multitude he found
there, who he was, and wherefore he came: his
Story, his noble appearance, and the courage of
Apollodorus, i. 9.

236

HYPSIPVLE AND PHINEUS.

be related hereafter : the name of the ship in

which they sailed was Argo, and from her the
adventurers have received the name of the Ar
gonauts.
The first considerable place at which they
touched was the island of Lemrtos : here Hypsipyle queen of the country, conceived a passion for
Jason, and he and his companions made an abode
of two years in the island, after which he deserted
her: the story of Jason .and Hypsipyle bears a
considerable resemblance to the story of jEneaa
and Dido, which has been immortalised in the.
verses of Yrirgilc.
The next considerable adventure of, the Argo
nauts was the delivery of Ph incus kiug.g&Sgit.hynia from the persecution of the Ha'tyks :
neus the son of Neptune had married (jPcVpatra,
daughter of the North Wind : Cleopatra *<tfed,
and the children she left behind were persecuted
by their step-mother, the second tyife of VW\.s :
she pretended I hat I hey had formetl.a pfo|^fiiingt
his life, and influenced by her,accusiiio7i, .Ptmieus
ordered that they should trave thfck ey#sJUit out:
to punish him tor this cruelty; the Gods .struck,
him with blindness, and sent trie Harpies^iBk tor
ment him : the Harpies were monsters witn the
face of a woman, the body of a vulture, and the
claws of a dragon : they were in nature filthy and
voracious; they devoured the food of the king of
liilhynia as soon as it was spread upon the table,
and they defiled what they did not devour : Zethes and Calais, two of the Argonauts, had the
North Wind for their father, and were therefore
brothers of the dead queen Cleopatra : they howL JEo. IT.

JASON AND MEDEA.

"237

ever thought that Phineus had suffered enough,

and took compassion upon him : as you might
expect from the children of the Wind, they were
furnished with wings: they hunted and pursued
the Harpies, till they drove them lo the Strophades, two islands on the further side of Pelo
ponnesus, where iEncas afterward found them.
Phineus, in gratitude to the Argonauts who had
done him this essential service, instructed them
how to avoid IWe Cyanean rocks at the entrance
of the Euxine sea : these rocks floated loose in the
sea, and if any vessel attempted to make its way
between them, immediately met together, and
crushedlfhe vessel to pieces : the mode of avoid
ing jhyimn>yf was to st ikI a dove before, and if
he passed tmhiirt through, the opening, the mariner-ftyglUffifely follow : Phineus is one of the
most celebfagd prophets of antiquity.
iEeles, kirtg^cj^olchisV. whither the Argonauts
were bSurrifl^was a^child of the Sun, and was bro
ther toCiic artftrasiphae: when the Argonauts
arrived irfColcmV; me first object of Jason was to
obtain th* grfl^er^ fleece, and he remitted the in
tention, if he pajfl evefentertained it, of puttin'
iEetes to*dcath# the enterprise of the golden fleeue
however woulilliave been too hard for him, if it
had not been for Medea, daughter to iEetes, who
no sooner s%w the beautiful Jason, than by the
contrivance of Juno his protector, she immedi
ately fell in %jVe with him : Medea was the most
powerful sorceress in the history of the world :
it was easy therefore for her to enable Jason to
accomplish his errand.
The ram which had borne the golden fleece was
dead, and having been taken up into heaven,
was turned iuto one of the constellations : but his

238

THE FLEECE OBTAINED.

fleece was carefully preserved, and was hanged

up in a grove sacred to Mars; Jason addressed
himself to king iE;?tes, told him his errand, and
enquired in what manner it was to be accom
plished : iEetes answered that the conditions upon
which he was to obtain what he sought were very
plain ones ; that the sacred grove was guarded by
bulls whose hoofs were brass, and whose breath
was fire, and by a furious dragon, who always
planted himself at the foot of the tree upon which
the golden fleece was suspended, and who never
slept: Jason therefore had nothing to do but to
tame the bulls, to kill the dragon, and to con
quer an army of soldiers that were to spring from
the dragon's teeth : the fleece would^thcn be his
own.
Instructed by Medea, and armed* by her with
philtres, drugs and enchantments, Jason tamed the
bulls with the breath of fire, pM. life yoke upon
their necks, and caused them tr^lougrrHwo acres
of the stiffest land : he then gave a sleeping
draught to the never-sleeprn*^Jr^on, and cutoff
his head: and lastly, to complete the adventure,
Jie drew the monster's 166%, sowed them in the
ground, and saw an army of soldkrs rise*up from
the seed : the army hastened forward to attack
him, but he knew the charm: he threw a large
stone into the midst of their ranks, and they im
mediately turned from him, and falling on each
other were all killed with their mutual weapons :
iEetes and his people looked on at the actions of
Jason with astonishment: they had no suspicion
of any foul play between Jason and Medea :
Jason took down the golden fleece from the ma
gic tree, and was acknowledged to have won the
prize.

MSOS MADE YOUNG AGAIN.

239

What was the surprise of jEeles, when the

next day he found that the Argonauts had taken
the advantage of the night to depart, and had
carried Medea his daughter along with them ! he
sent his only son Absyrtus in pursuit of the fugi
tives ; but Medea was able to persuade her bro
ther to join in her flight : the danger however did
not end here : JEetes finding his son did not re
turn, himself followed the pursuit : sorcerers are
always cruel: Medea perceiving herself almost
overtaken, made no scruple to 4ear her brother
Absyrtus in pieces, and scatter his mangled limbs
in the way: iEetes could not endure the agonizing
spectacle : he stopped to gather up the limbs of
Absyrtus, and the lovers escaped.
At length, through multiplied dangers, and
after many years absence, the Argonauts returned
to Thessaly whence they set out: both iEson and
Pelias were tiow^rown old and decrepid: Jason's
first visifr wa"s tojiis father iEson, and observ
ing his great infirmities, he applied to his con
sort and fello\#traveller Medea, and asked her
whether, she had ilO^harms by which she could
make art okT man yo'hng again : she replied she
had : she drew, the wasted and watery blood from
the body of iEson : she infused the juice of certain
potent herbs into his veins ; and iEson rose from
the operation to the full as fresh and vigorous a
man as his son,
They then went to court to demand the resigna
tion of Pelias : they found the hoary usurper sur
rounded with his daughters : these ladies declared
that they could not think of resisting so just a
claim; but, while they retired into private life, they
requested Medea to do the same kindness for their
father which she had already done for iEson : she

240 medea's flight through the air.

said she would: she told them the method was
to cut the old gentleman in pieces, and boil him
in a kettle, with an infusion of certain herbs ;
and he would come out as smooth and active as a
child.
The daughters of Pelias a Utile scrupled the
operation : Medea, seeing this, begged they would
not think she was deceiving them ; if however they
harboured any doubts, she desired (hey would
bring her the oldest ram from their flocks, and
they should see the experiment: they did so:
Medea cut up the ram, cast in certain herbs, and
the old bell-weather came out as beautiful and in
nocent a he-lamb as you ever beheld : the daugh
ters of Pelias were now satisfied: theyvdj^yided
(heir old father in pieces : but he wfsrtever re
stored either to youth or life.
f \ *t
After this Medea and Jason, driveh\orit By
some rebellion of the people, who afft*not love
their new queen, retired to CuJTntlf? litre they
lived ten years: Jason howeverV last grew tired
of her : he did not like to have a<%orccress for his
wife: he gave her notice^fhat he would not
live with her any longer"; and Medea, to pu
nish his infidelity, murdered the two children
she had borne him, before his face: Jason or
dered her to be laken into custody, that she might
be brought to justice: but Medea laughed at his
threats, and mounting a chariot dra*vn by fiery
dragons, flew away to Athens : here she is said
to have become the wife of iEgeus king of that
place f.
Circe was the sister of iEetes and Pasiphae,
and was, like Medea her niece, skilful in magic :
Eur. Medea. Ov. Ep. liii. Med. ad Jas.

341

CIRCE.

she had besides the gift of immortality*: she re

tired to jEaea, an island of the Tyrrhenian sea,
and there lived like a queen: she was exquisitely
beautiful, but she employed the charms of her
person, and the seducing grace of her manners,
to a bad purpose : she presented to every stranger
who landed in her island, an inchanted cup
which she intreated him to drink : he no sooner
tasted it, than he was turned into a hog, and was
driven by the Goddess to her sty h: the unfortunate
stranger retained under this filthy figure the per
fect consciousness of what he was, and mourned
for ever the easiness of temper by which he had
been reduced to this melancholy pass : this is a
lively representation of the mischievous effects of
intemperance, by which a man makes a beast of
himself.
sHonv 04 t- 1S6.
> -

* Id. it. 232.

242

CHAP. XXVI.
OF THE ARGONAUTS.
Amphion raises the Walls of Thebes by the Music of his
Lute.Orpheus, King of Thrace.The Wild Beasts
and the Woods follow his Music.Goes to Hell in
Pursuit of Eurydice, his Wife.Obtains her from
Pluto. Loses her again. His Tragical Death.
Arion saved by a Dolphin.iEsculapiusafter his
Death becomes a Serpent.Apollo keeps the Flocks
of Admetus, King of Thessaly.Alcestis, Queen of
Thessaly, consents to die for her Husband.Foot
race of Hippomenes and Atalanta, won by means of
the Golden Apples of the Hesperides.Jupiter courts
Leda in the Form of a Swan.Pollux shares his Im
mortality with Castor his Brother.' *
Several of the Argonauts were famous for
some instances
been doubted whether these exploits were per
formed by the Argonauts, or by other persons of
the same name : this enquiry is not material ; and
where the persons achieving these adventures lived
about the period of the Argonautic expedition, I
shall not think it worth while to preserve a useless
distinction.
The adventures of Hercules have already been
related.
Amphion was the son of Jupiter and Antiope :
Antiope was the niece of Lycus, viceroy of
Thebes; and being cruelly treated by her uncle,
Amphion, with his twin-brother Zethus, set upon
him, put him to death, and delivered Antiope

ORPHEUS AND EURYDICE.

243

from her dungeon : Amphion now usurped the

crown of Thebes : he was a skilful musician,
and played admirably on the lute, in which he
had been instructed by Mercury : one extraordi
nary proof he gave of his skill was, that being
desirous to surround his capital With a wall, the
stones were moved by the sound of his instru
ment, and arranged themselves in the way he in
tended, without a human hand being once applied
in the erection ofthis miraculous bulwark': Thebes
was inclosed by Amphion with a wall, and in the
wall there were seven famous gates.
Orpheus was the son of Apollo by one of the
Muses : he Was a native of Thrace, and one of
the sovereigns of that country : he was the most
accomplished musician that ever existed : when
he played upon his lyre, the savage beasts forgot
their nature, and assembled round him, the woods
came down from the mountains and followed his
steps, and the most rapid rivers ceased to flow.
Orpheus married Eurydice, one of the woodnymphs*, but Aristafus, another son of Apollo,
and who is the God supposed to preside over the
cultivation of olives and of the bee, fell in love
with her at the same time, and endeavoured to
persuade her to give him her company : Eury
dice disdained his overtures, and one day run
ning away from Aristaeus that she might escape
his importunities, she was stung by a serpent so
that she died.
Never did husband doat upon a wife as Or
pheus doaled upon Eurydice : confident in the
music of his lyre, he set out for the realms of
Pluto in pursuit of her : when he began his celes
tial strains, all Hell was suspended at the sound :
Horn. A. 959. PaUs. ix. 17. Horat iii. Od. 11.
M2

244

ORPHEUS MURDERED.

the wheel of Ixion slopped, the stone of Sisyphus

lay still, and Tantalus forgot his raging thirst:
Pluto and Proserpine relented and permitted Eurydice to return to earth, upon condition that
Orpheus should walk before her, and not once
look back till they were beyond the limits of the
infernal regions: Orpheus persisted for a consi
derable time to observe the injunctions he had re
ceived : he was now in the last circle of Hell : at
length he stood still ; he listened for the steps of
Eurydice, but could hear nothing ; Eurydice had
stopped as well as her husband: she was close
behind him, but they were forbidden to speak :
how could he help looking round ? he bad no
sooner done so, than she became again a ghost :
she flitted along from field to field, and from
circle to circle : Orpheus hastened to follow her :
but now the stern centinels of Hell would not
suffer him to proceed*.
Orpheus returned to earth alone, and more dis
consolate than ever: he avoided all human so
ciety as much as he could : he particularly re
fused to speak to, or so much as to look upon a
woman: the Thracian women, his subjects, re
sented this contempt: one day when they were
celebrating the mysteries of Bacchus, inflamed
with the wild ceremonies of this festival, they
worked themselves up into a fury, and fell upon
the unfortunate Orpheus: they tore his body into
a thousand pieces, and cast it with the bead into
the river Hebrus: to the last Orpheus retained
his unconquerable passion for Eurydice, and it
is said that as his head floated down the river,
his tongue still repeated her beloved name, till it
k Virg. Georg. iv. 454 et seqq.

ARION AND THE DOLPHIN.

245

was lost among the waves of the ocean, and could

be heard no more1.
In the expedition of the Argonauts, Orpheus
rendered eminent service to his fellow-voyagers as
they passed the caves of Sirens : he not only had
fortitude enough to resist the blandishments of these
deities: he also exerted bis eloquence to that end
with his companions: and the persuasions of Or
pheus were more seducing, than the magical in
cantations of these dangerous deceivers".
Arion may fitly be mentioned for his skill in
music with Amphion and Orpheus, though he
was no Demigod, but a poet of Greece contem
porary with Sappho and Anacreon: he was a na
tive eif*the island of Lesbos, but settled at Co
rinth, under the patronage of Periander king, or
tyrant as he is called, of that place: having ac
cumulated considerable wealth, he was desirous
of returning to his own country, and hired a Co
rinthian vessel for that purpose : the mariners re
solved to destroy him for the sake of his riches :
having informed him of their determination,
Arion requested to be permitted to play one more
piece of music on his lyre before he quitted the
world : the mariners were desirous of hearing so
exquisite a performer, and readily consented :
having finished a heavenly air, Arion leaped from
the poop of the vessel into the sea, where a dol
phin, attracted by his music, and unseen by the
mariners, waited for him : the dolphin took Arion
on his back, and carried him safe to Greece, so
that the poet returned on foot to the court of Pe
riander: Periander kept him secretly: after some
time the vessel came back, and Periander, having
1 Ot. Met. i I et seqq.
,

Apoll. Rhod. S. 885 et >eqq.

M 3

jESCULAPICC.
sent for the mariners, demanded of them what
they had done with Arion ? they had left him
safe, they said, in Lesbos, where he had been re
ceived with great joy by his relations and coun
trymen: as they said this, Arion to their utter
confusion came in from an adjoining apartment :
and being thus convicted of conspiracy and for
gery, Periander ordered them all to be put to
death".
^- ./Esculapius was one of the Argonauts: he was
the son of Apollo by one of the nymphs, and
was given, like many other heroes of that time,
to the celebrated Chiron to be educated : for his
skill in medicine he may be considered as the
most eminent of the pupils of Chiron : no disease
could resist the efforts of his art, and he was even
said to restore the dead to life : at length Plirto
com plained, that if this man
on unmolested, his realm would be qujto^epopulated; and Jupiter, to please his brother^ suvek
iEsculapius dead0 with a thunderbolt a strange
treatment from the father of the Gods' toward an
eminent benefactor of his creatures..'.
iEsculapius was principally worshipped at
Epidaurus, which appears to have been his birth
place : the Romans about three hundred years
before Christ, being visited by a plague, were
directed by the Sibylline books to fetch iEscula
pius from this place : they sent an embassy for
that purpose: and while the vessel lay in the har
bour, a huge serpent came on board the sacred
ship : the serpent, which is the most long-lived
of animals, and which by casting its slough re
news its youth annually, is the emblem of Jiscu-

APOLLO TURNED SHEPHERD.

847

lapius: the ambassadors therefore rejoiced at the

appearance of this serpent, and tended it care
fully, believing it to be no other than iEsculapius
himself : they conveyed it to Rome, built a tem
ple for its habitation, and jEsculapius was ever
after worshipped there under the form of a ser
pent .
Admetus, king of Phera? in Thessaly, was an
other of the Argonauts, and his history is con
nected with that of iEsculapius : Apollo was ex
ceedingly afflicted at the death of his son, and to
avenge himself, attacked the Cyclops, the forgers
of Jupiter's thunderbolts, and killed some of
them : this was an offence against the majesty of
Heaven : to punish so audacious a proceeding,
Jupiter condemned Apollo to nine years' banish
ment^ and the God was reduced to such necessity
as to be obliged to keep the flocks of Admetus for
his subsistence: here he taught to the shepherds
of Admetus the use of the pipe and other instru
ments of music ; and these pastoral people, who
had before led a savage life, became so happy,
that the Gods, fearful lest mortals should become
happier than themselves, suddenly recalled Apollo
to Heaven.
During the residence of Apollo in the dominions
of Admetus, pleased with the kind treatment he
received, the God promised his master that he
should never die, if, whenever the Fates called
for him, another person could be found who would
lay down his life for his sake: Admetus married
Alcestis, one of those daughters of Pelias whose
zeal for the restoration of their father's youth had
turned out so unfortunately: the same character
t Epitome Liv. ii.
M4

248

JUPITER AND 1EDA.

led her with more enlightened affection to offer

her life for her husband: Hercules in his expe
dition to the infernal regions, is said once more to
hare brought her back to mortal existence*.
Atalanta was a female who, from a love of en
terprise, disguised herself in man's attire, and
engaged in the Argonautic expedition : as she
was extremely beautiful, many princes desired to
marry her, but she determined to lead a life of
celibacy : to get rid of their importunities, she
proposed a foot-race to them, with the same con
dition as the chariot-race of GEnomaus king of
Elis, that if they won the race they should obtain
her hand, and if they were baffled they should
suffer death: Atalanta was unequalled in swift
ness, and many suitors lost their lives in this hard
competition : last of all came Hippomenes, the
son of Macareus : Venus bestowed upon him pre
viously to the race three golden apples from the
gardens of the Hesperides : these he threw on the
ground as he ran ; and Atalanta struck with
their beauty, could not refrain from stooping to
pick them up : thus Hippomenes won the race
and the lady'.
Castor and Pollux, also Argonauts, were the
twin-sons of Leda, wife of Tyndarus king of
Sparta: Jupiter became enamoured of Leda as
he saw her bathing : he took the form of a beau
tiful swan, and soon won the fair lady's heart:
they had frequent conversations, and after a time
Leda became a mother of twins, of whom Pollux
was the son of Jupiter, and Castor of Tyndarus :
as Jupiter when he was the father of Pollux took
the shape of a swan, Pollux is said to have come
1 Eurip. Alccitis.

r Ov. Mett. x. 560,

CASTOK AND POLLUX.

249

into the world inclosed in an egg : the common

story is that Leda had two eggs, one inclosing
Pollux and Helen, the children of Jupiter, and
the other Castor and Clytemnestra, of whom Tyndarus was the father: Pollux became exceedmgly
expert in wrestling and the use of the cestus, and
Castor in horsemanship.
, ft is related of Pollux that he received from his
father the gift of immortality, though most of
the Demigods were subject to death like mere
men : Castor was killed in battle, and Pollux
loved him so tenderly that he continually impor
tuned Jupiter to restore him to life: Jupiter at
length consented that they should live and die by
turns, and thus divide the gift of immortality be
tween them : accordingly they live and die alternately every day, or as other accounts say, every
six months' : they seem however to havfe vanished
from the earth before the disastrous adventures
of their sister Helen and the siege of Troy', and
their life is therefore probably as signs in heaven
under the name of Gemini : in the belt of the zo
diac they are delineated side by side, mounted on
horseback : and under this figure they are repre
sented by the Romans as sometimes appearing in
their armies, turning the tide of battle in favour
of the republic v.
' Horn. Od. A. 229. Schol. in Od.
Pind. Nern. x. 1 13 et seqq.
r Plut.in Coriolan.

297. Apollodorus, iii. 10.

1 Horn. II. y. 243.

250

CHAP. XXVII.
OF THESEUS.
Egeus, King of Athens.The Pallautides, his Nephews.
iEgeus consults Pittheus.Birth of Theseus. Bred
at Troezene.His Adventures with Coryuetes, Sinnis,
and other Robhers.The Bed of Procrustes.Me
dea, attempts to poison Theseus.Theseus kills the
Minotaur, and Delivers his Country.JEgeus casts
himself into the Sea.Rivalship of Ariadne and Phae
dra for the Love of Theseus.Ariadne becomes the
Wife of Bacchus.Friendship of Theseus and Pirithous.Marriage ofPirithous.Battle of the Centaurs
and Lapithae.Theseus and Pirithous descend into
Hell.Phaedra causes Theseus to murder Hippolitus,
his Son.
The most eminent of the Demigods of Greece
after Bacchus and Hercules, is Theseus^: he was
king of Athens, and was the first governor of that
city who divided the people into tribes, and gave
a regular and civilised form to the state : the gra
titude of his countrymen exalted him into a Demi
god, and their refinement and genius have con
ferred uncommon lustre upon the events of bis
story : I have before observed that the temple of
Theseus was one of the richest and most magnifi
cent that Athens contained: he is also understood
to have been one of the Argonauts, though some
particulars of his life seem to be inconsistent with
that supposition.
Plut. ia Thes. Diodor. iv. 59.

BIRTH OF THESEUS.

251

JEgeas, king of Athens, had a brother named

Pallas, the father of fifty sons: JEgeas had him
self no children : the children of Pallas, as they
grew up, had the folly and wickedness to insult
3geus upon his misfortune in not being a father,
and to hint to him that they set no great value on
his favour, since, let him think of it as he would,
Athens and its throne would infallibly be theirs,
whenever he died.
iEgeus could ill digest the rudeness of these
striplings, who did every thing but shove him
from his throne ; and was very desirous to have a
son by whose means to quash their fond expecta
tions: he consulted the oracle on the subject,
which returned him a very obscure answer; and
in his way back he visited the court of Pittbeus
king of Trcezene, the brother of Atreus and Thyestes: Pittheus was supposed to be the deepest
politician of his time: lie privately married his
daughter JEthta. to iEgeus, but would not send
her to Athens, lest the impious sons of Pallas
might find secret means of destroying the mother
and her child when born : ./Egeus, when he took
leave of his bride, led her into a neighbouring
field, and placing a sword and a pair of sandals
in a hole he had dug for that purpose, covered
them with a stone so huge that no common man
could move it : he bade her, if she had a son, to
send him to Athens with that sword and those
sandals, as soon as he should be strong enough to
remove the stone that covered them, but in the
mean time carefully to conceal bis parentage :
this was a project suggested by PittbeusAs the parentage of Theseus (such was the
name of the son that was born), was not to be
divulged, his mother gave out that Neptune was
M&

252

ADVENTURES OF THESEUS.

his father: but, contrary to the custom of the

Grecian heroes, Theseus, when he came home to
Athens, laid aside this pretence, and was careful
for the most part to call himself the son of
iEgeus.
When Theseus was sixteen years of age, yEthra
led him into the field before mentioned, revealed
to him the secret of his birth, and caused him to
remove the stone, and to set out with the sword
and sandals for Athens.
Before he went, Pittheus gave him his last ad
vice : like a careful grandfather, he recommended
to him to take the safest road, which he said was
by sea: Hercules, he added, had for a time
cleared Greece of robbers, monsters, and wild
beasts : but now Hercules was absent, the roads
were as much infested as ever: at the* name of
Hercules the youthful courage of T'hescus took
fire: he intreated his grandfather 4o let him go by
land: " Consider, sir," said he, V I go to claim
a crown : my birth is unknown ; my rights are
disputed: what figure shall I make^an untried
stripling, before the insolent ffens^qf my uncle
Pallas? no; my desire is, tofentfr my father's
capital, with trophies in, my ^najid Ribre expres
sive of my birth, and affirmative of my pretensions,
than even the sword and sandals which my mo
ther iEthra has given me:" Pittheusj yielded to
the ardent spirit of the hero.
* *
Many and critical were the adventures to which
Theseus was exposed between Trcezene and Athens,
but he came out victorious from them all: he
killed Corynetes, a robber, the son of Vulcan,
famous for the terrible club he bpre, not far from
Trcezene: his next encounter was with Sinnis, a
cruel outlaw, who tied all strangers he could

BED OP PROCRUSTES.

253

catch to the heads of two tall pines, which he

bent together for that purpose and then let go,
by means of which the unfortunate victims were
torn in pieces : Theseus tied him to his own pines,
and put him to the death he had inflicted on so
many others: his third exploit was the killing
Phaea, the sow of Crommyon near Corinth, mo
ther to the wild boar of Calydon : according to
other accounts Phaea was a female robber, who
first enticed travellers by courtship into her den,
and then murdered them: the fourth adventure of
Thesens was the destruction of Sciron, a giant,
who first compelled his4Baptives to wash his feet,
and then hurled them frani a high rock into the
sea : his fifth adventure Was^he death of Cercyon,
the son of Vulcan, and king of Eleusis, who com
pelled all strangers to wrestle with him, and had
hitherto (ajnq^er.ed, and killed all he encountered:
These'iui*dWfe^ed'ljim in wrestling, and then put
him to ^caln:*be Ia^|t and most celebrated exploit
of the 'Atheifim hero in this journey, was
against .Procrii*k* a cruel tyrant, who with
mock hosjtftaUty.lwifed every stranger to sleep
under hia roof^ aijrl then placing them upon his
own bed, 'if' it pftjed too long, stretched them
with pullie's, an'ct dislocated their joints, till he
had drawn them out to the requisite stature,
and if it wa$ too short, chopped off their feet, and
part of their legs,* till he had brought them to his
own size: Theseus destroyed this monster.
With the club of Corynetes, the bed of Pro
crustes, and the.wmer trophies of his valour, The- ,
seus entered the city of Athens : it is said that
Medea had by this time married iEgcus: this is
inconsistent with Theseus's being one of the Ar
gonauts: both cannot be true.

354

THESEUS FOR CRETE.

Theseus had no sooner arrived at the end of his

journey, than Medea, by her skill in sorcery, or
by some other means, knew who he was: step
mothers are said seldom to be fond of the children
of their husband which are not also their own :
Medea, who had less of human feelings than al
most any body in the records of mankind, imme
diately determined to poison Theseus.
The young hero, as the gallant destroyer of
robbers and monsters, was invited to feast with
king iEgeus : Medea put a poisoned goblet into
the hands of the king to deliver to his guest : The' seus rose to receive it : iEgeus observed the sword
by his side, and begged to be favored with a
nearer inspection : he recognised the stranger for
his son : what became of the poisoned goblet, or
of the animosity of Medea, we are not told : per
haps, though she was willing tp, poison Theseus
as a stranger, she dared not make such an-attempl
upon him as TEgeus's only son." .
The most famous of all the <id ventures of The
seus is the destruction of the Minotaur: this mon
ster was described when I gatp an account of the
family of Minos: he was shuflhip in the famous
labyrinth of Crete : AndrogeuVthc son of Minos,
having been killed in a riot at Athens, this pow
erful monarch imposed as a fine upon the Athe
nians, that they should send every year seven
noble youths, and as many virgins, to be devour
ed by the Minotaur.
A
This tribute had already bMb exacted three
years, when Theseus arrived a^Hicns : hunger
ing and thirsting as the gallant cnampion did for
arduous adventures, he intreatcd his father that,
superseding the ordinary course of lot, he might
be admitted as one of the seven noble youths t

THE MINOTAUR KILLED.

955

iEgeus unwillingly consented : Theseus took with

him two flags, a black and a white one, the first
under which to sail in his voyage out, the second
to be unfurled, if he returned victorious, as his
heart told him he should do, in his voyage home.
Minos had a favourite daughter Ariadne * :
Theseus, soon after his arrival in Crete, was shut
up with his companions in the fatal labyrinth ;
but not so soon as not to allow time to Ariadne to
fall in love with the gallant presence of the youth,
and to communicate to him the necessary instruc
tions for destroying the Minotaur, as well as to
present him with a clue of thread, by which to
find his way out of the labyrinth when he had ac
complished the adventure.
The Minotaur being killed, Theseus returned
home in triumph to Athens with the youths and
virgins his companions: iEgeus his father, who
had but just felt the pleasure of having such a
son and being delivered from the tyranny of his
graceless nephews, watched day and night for the
arrival of the vesstd in which Theseus had em
barked: for this purpose he remained perpetually
oft the top of a high? turret, which overlooked the
waves of the sea: re at length discovered the ap
proach of the ship: he watched for the white or
black flag, which was to announce his good for
tune or disaster : unhappily in the hurry and tu
mult of their joy, every one on board had forgot*
ten to take down the black flag, and rear the
white: /ngeus saw me fatal signal, and threw
himself from tHlPFop of his turret into the sea,
which from him was named the /Egean sea.
Theseus brought away Ariadne from Crete, as
1 Ov. Ep. z. Ariadne ad Thes.

256

THESEUS AND PIRITHOUS.

Jason had brought away Medea from Colchi's :

but Ariadne had a sister Phaedra, who had con
ceived a passion for Theseus not less ardent than
that of Ariadne: Phaedra prevailed upon her
sister to take her with her as the companion of
her flight: during the voyage Phaedra treacher
ously employed all the iirts in which she abound
ed, to supplant the unsuspecting Ariadne in the
affections of the hero: the vessel of Theseus touch
ed at the island of Naxos, and here Phasdra per
suaded him to leave Ariadne asleep and alone on
the shore: Naxos was the favourite residence of
Bacchus: he met Ariadne in the midst of her
desperation, first pitied, and then loved her:
Ariadne became the wife of Bacchus, and after
death was turned by him into a constellation T.
The fame of Theseus by this time spread itself
over all Greece, and Pirithous, son of Ixion,
king of the Lapithae in Thessaly, a spirited and
enterprising young prince, was desirous like many
others to behold the vanquisher of Sinnis, Pro
crustes, and the Minotaur : Jie conceived an ex
traordinary manner of gratifying this inclination,
but he held no other manifer to be worthy of
himself and of the man he wished to call bis
friend : he collected a military force, and invaded
the territories of Athens: Theseus marched out
agamst him : the two heroes advanced in the
front of their respective armies: they were mutu
ally struck with the open and bold port and car
riage of each other : Ihey rushed^nto each other's
embrace, and struck up a relgue of endless
friendship ; and from that time never was attachr Ov. Art. Arn. i. 527.

CENTAURS AND LAPITHjE.

257

nient more sincere, generous and unalterable, than

that of Theseus and Pirithous.
Pirithous married llippodamia, the daughter
of Adrastus king of Argos: his nuptials were cele
brated with great pomp, and among others the
Centaurs were invited lo be there: 1 have already
frequently mentioned the Centaurs: they were in
their form half-man and half-horse! they were
among the most learned and accomplished per
sons of their times: the Centaurs are said to have
been the children of Ixion, and of the cloud
which Jupiter sent lo Ixion in likeness of Juno :
so that they were half-brothers to Pirithous".
In the sacrifices to the Gods with which the
nuptials of Pirithous were solemnised, the hero
we are told forgot the sacrifice to Mars: the God
of war resented the neglect, and urged Eurytion
the Centaur in the midst of his wine to offer a
gross affront to the bride : Hercules, Theseus, and
the other friends of Pirithous became exasperated
at this behaviour, and killed Eurytion on the
spot: a general contention ensued, and all or
nearly all the Centaurs were slain*.
After some time Pirithous lost his wife Hippodamia, and Theseus lost Phaedra : flushed with
their exploits and their fame, they came to a
mutual resolution that they would not marry
again but to the daughters of the Gods : Theseus
accordingly seized Helen, the sister of Pollux,
who was only nine years of age, but the valour of
her brothers soon rescued her out of his hands:
it is to be obserxjflf that if Helen were only nine
years of age, Pollux must have been the same :
z Pindar. Pyth. ii. 78 et seqq. Diodorus, iv. 70.
a Schol. in Pind. Pyth. ii. 85. Horn. Od-$. 295. Ov. Metxifc 210 et seqq.

THESEUS IN HELL.
Pirithous, finding no female on the face of the
earth whom he deemed worthy of his hand,
formed the impious resolution of going down to
Hell, and taking away Proserpine queen of the
infernal regions from her husband : Theseus would
not let his friend go alone on this dangerous ex
pedition : their success was such as might be ex
pected : Plulo defeated their conspiracy, and sen
tenced them both to sit for ever upon a stone at
the entrance of his palace: at length when Her
cules came down into Hell, sent thither by his
task-master Eurystheus, he prevailed upon Pluto
to forgive their temerity, and suffer him to con
duct Theseus back to earthb.
The other adventures of Theseus are less splen
did than those which have been mentioned : he is
said to have accompanied Hercules when he went
to fetch the girdle of Hippolita queen of the Ama
zons: and as Hercules only wanted the girdle, he
gave Theseus the queen who wore it, and Theseus
made her his wife: by her he had a soii, ia^ed
Hippolitus.
.
SlW
It is not easy to settle the order of thdwives and
love-adventures of Theseus: jjner^ J a famous sto
ry', that as Hippolitus grew up, i*hedra became
jealous of him : and she who had acted so basely
to her sister, had no scruple to form a plan to de
stroy him: she wrongfully accused him to his fa
ther of disrespectful and undutiful behaviour;
and Theseus, without making a proper examina
tion into the charge, caused his son to be put to
death.
b Apollodorus, ii. 5. Schol. in Ap. Rh. . 101.
* Eurip Hippol.

250

CHAP. XXVIII.
OF (EDIPUS KING OF THEBES, AND HIS
POSTERITY.
Birth of (Edipus.He is Exposed on the Mountains.
Adopted by the King of Corinth.Kills his Father
in a Broil.Explains the Riddle of the Sphinx.
Marries his Mother.^-Tiresias, the Blind Prophet.
CEdipus tears out his own Eyes.Eteocles succeeds.
War, Seven Chiefs against Thebes.Single Com
bat of Eteocles and Polynices: both are killed.The
Flames of their Funeral Pile Divide.Second Siege
of Thebes by the Epigoni.Thebes is Taken.
The story of the Argonautic expedition,
whatever may be the true meaning of so mysteri
ous a riddle, may be supposed to be the story of
some beneficent adventure: the remaining stories
of the heroic ages, the sieges of Thebes and Troy,
are undoubtedly stories of calamity.
Laius king of Thebes was the great-grandson of
Cadmus : he married Jocasta, the daughter of
Creon an eminent Theban, and was assured by an
oracle that he should lose his life by a son who
was to be born of that marriage : to prevent this
he gave CEdipus, his child, as soon as he was
Jborn, to one of his domestics, to be exposed on
the mountains to^perish; the domestic bored a
hole in each foot of the infant, and passing a
string through, hanged him up on a tree, and left
him : from this circumstance he afterward obtain
ed the name of CEdipus, " swelled feetd."
d Eur. Ptaa. 1 et seqq. Soph. CEATyr. civ. 6.

260

CEDIPUS EXPOSED.

In this terrible situation the poor child was

found by one of the shepherds of Poly bus king of
Corinth, who carried it home to his master: Po
ly bus had no children: the infant was exceeding
ly beautiful: and Poly bus bred the little OEdipus
as his own son: one day, CEdipus being now
grown to a young man, one of his youthful com
panions brutally insulted him, told him that he
was no son of the king and queen of Corinth, and
that no true Corinthian would bear to be dictated
to by a base-born brat.
CEdipus closely questioned king Polybuson the
subject, but could obtain no satisfactory reply :
afflicted with this uncertainty, he repaired to the
oracle of Apollo at Delphi, but received no other
answer than the advice never to go home, if he
did not wish to kill his father: a cruel advice,
since CEdipus knew not how to make the right
use of it: his mind revolted from all immorality,
but most from that with which he was threatened :
he resolved never again to set foot in Corinth : he
turned the direction of his chariot toward The
bes : he met Laius travelling privately in an ob
scure road : Laius or his companions called out in
a rude manner to him to make way, and retire:
the pride of CEdipus was roused: a scuffle en
sued : and thus CEdipus slew his father in the
very attempt to avoid that crime*.
1 believe the reason CEdipus had bent his steps
toward Thebes, was that he had heard of Sphinx,
a monster whoinfested the border of Bceotia, sprung
from the marriage of Orthus flhd Echidna, with
the head and breasts of a woman, the body of a
dog, the claws of a lion, the wings of a bird, and
a human voice: this monster had stationed here Soph. CEd. Tyr. 784 et seqq.

sphinx's riddle.

261

self by the road-side, where she stopped all tra

vellers, and proposed a riddle to them, which if
they did not solve they were devoured : the oracle
on the other hand had declared, that if any one
explained her riddle, the Sphinx would immedi
ately kill herself for vexation: CEdipus, who
lived in an age when the destruction of monsters
was the most admired of human achievements,
was anxious to put an end to the Sphinx : and
the Thebans, understanding. that Lai us was no
more, offered their queen and the vacant throne
to whoever should rid them of this monster.
CEdipus presented himself fearlessly before the
den of the Sphinx, and demanded to hear her
riddle: " What creature is that," said the mon
ster, u which goes in the morning upon four legs,
at noon upon two, and at night upon three ?" " It
is a man, replied CEdipus: ** by morning, noon
and night you mean the three great changes to
which human nature is subject : the imbecility of
infancy, when we crawl on all fours; the vigour
of manhood, when we require no support but
the two natural pillars with which our maker has
furnished us; and the decrepitude of age, when
we are fain to call in the assistance of a walkingstick : the Sphinx had no sooner heard the an
swer of the wise CEdipus, than she threw herself
from a rock, on which she had sat listening to
him, and from which she meditated to dart upon
him in case of his failure, and was dashed to
pieces'.
CEdipus now asdlhded the Theban throne, mar
ried Jocasta, and had by her two sons, Eteocles
and Polynices : some years after, Thebes was in.* Argument, ad Phanist.

262 CALAMITOUS FORTUNE OF CQDIPU9.

fested with a terrible plugue, and an oracle having
been consulted on the subject, gave for answer,
that it would never be well with Thebes, till the
murderer of king Laius was banished from his
territories : the death of Laius had happened at a
time of so great calamity that the particulars had
never been enquired into : after a long search it
was proved to the astonishment of all, that CEdipus was the murderer of Laius, and that in so do
ing he had killed his father: the person by whom
he was exposed when an infant, and the person by
whom he had been found, concurred in proving
his identity: and at length the whole was confirm
ed by the venerable Tiresias, whom the Gods had
deprived of sight, but had made up this calamity
to him by endowing him with the gift of prophecy,
and the knowledge of all hidden things : the ten
der and honest heart of CEdipus was struck with
despair at this discovery: he tore out his eyes,
and, retiring to Colone on the borders of Athens,
was indebted for his existence ever after to the kind
care of his daughter Antigone*.
Eteocles and Polynices, the sons of CEdipus,
succeeded to the vacant authority : and, as they
were both ambitious and impatient of a superior,
they agreed to reign in turns, each his year ; a
strange engagement, which they could scarcely
expect to have fulfilled: Eteocles, as the elder,
reigned first ; but at the end of the year refused to
give up the kingdom.
Polynices fled to Adrastus king ofArgos, dne of
the most powerful monarchs of%is time: and such
were the prepossessing manners of the youth, that
he easily prevailed upon Adrastus to embrace his
8 Soph. CEd.Tyr. et Col.

SEVEN CHIEFS AGAINST THEBES. 263

cause: a marriage first took place between the
exiled prince and the daughter of Adrastus, and
they then marched together against Thebes.
This is the first siege of Thebes, memorable for
the obstinacy with which it was it carried on and
the calamities that attended it: Adrastus divided
his army into seven bodies, and planted them with
seven approved commanders at their head before
the seven gates of Thebes : he himself command
ed one; Polynices another: the names of the
other chiefs were Tydeus, Capaneus, Amphia
raus, Parthenopceus and Hippomedou: after a
great deal of fighting it was agreed that Eteocles
and Polynices should meet together in single com
bat".
Never did two human beings hate each other
more mortally than Eteocles and Polynices : they
fought with such deadly resolution, that the
combat did not end till both were killed: the
fashion of these times was for the dead body of a
person of rank to be burned on the funeral pile: as
Eteocles and Polynices were brothers, and died in
the same hour, both parties agreed to place their
bodies upon the same funeral pile: when, lo, a
miracle ensued ! the flames which proceeded from
these bitter foes divided in two, and even the
sparkles and ashes which flew up from one of
their bodies refused to have communication with
those of the other'.
The death of these rival candidates did not put
an end to the siege: Eteocles left a son named Laodamas, and Polynices another named Thersander;
and the besieged and the besiegers set up the opk JEschyli Sept. ap. Theb. Eur. Phoen.
i Stat. Thebais. 429. Ov. Trist. lib. v. 35.

264

THE EPIGONI.

posite prelensions of these children to the throne :

Creon, the brother of Jocasta, became the guar
dian of Laodamas : after infinite bloodshed the
besieged got the better v not one of the Seven
Chiefs against Thebes returned alive, except Adrastus : Creon, who was of a brutal and insolent
disposition, having routed the besiegers, would
not even grant them permission to bury their
dead: a circumstance held to be of great impor
tance in those days: Adrastus fled to Theseus at
Athens, who joined his forces with the remains of
the besieging army, and compelled Creon to suffer
these unfortunate men to pay the last duties to
the bodies of their deceased friends.
Ten years after the first siege of Thebes, the sons
of the Seven Chiefs who had then commanded,
being grown up, began to ponder upon the cala
mities and untimely fate of their fathers, and
resolved to avenge their misfortunes: they march
ed against this unhappy ctyy: this is the second
siege of Thebes, frequently called by ancient
writers the war of the Epigoni, u after-born:"
a bloody battle was fought, but the Epigoni
were completely victorious, and finally placed
their leader Thersander upon the throne*.
k Diod. Sic. ir. 66.

265

CHAP. XXIX.
OF THE CITY OF TROY.
Kings of Troy.Teucer. Succeeded by Dardanus,
Prince ofthe Sacred Island of Samothrace.Ericthonius.Tros, the Father of Ganymed.Ilus.Laomedon.Apollo and Neptune build the Walls of
Troy.Hesione exposed to a Sea-monster.Hercu
les Delivers her, and Sacks Troy.Tithonus, beloved
by Aurora, is turned into a Grasshopper.Wonderful
Statue of Memnon.Priam and his Fifty Sons.Paris
Exposed on Mount Ida.Judgment of Paris. Mar
riage of Menelaus and Helen. Helen goes off with
Paris.Greeks Confederate against Troy. Iphigenia in Aulis.Achilles in Petticoats. Death of Patroclu9.Achilles drags the Body of Hector three
times round the Walls of Troy.Contention of Ajax
and Ulysses for the Arms of Achilles.Stratagem of
the Wooden Horse.Pyrrhus the Son of Achilles.
Troy is Burned.Agamemnon, Generalissimo of the
Greeks, Murdered by his Wife Clytemnestra.Ores
tes, his Son, kills her, and is haunted by Furies.
Penelope's Web.Ulysses puts to Death I he Suitors
of Penelope./Eneas, the Son of Venus.
The last great event of the heroic age is the
destruction of Troy : and it is not the least sin
gular circumstance attending this subject, after
the infinite details which have been handed down
to us respecting it, and the incomparable poems
which Homer and Virgil have founded upon this
basis, added to the claims that the Romans
and other nations have set up to be descended

266

TEUCER, DARDANUS, TROS.

from the ancient Trojans, that volumes have been

written of late years to prove that no such city
ever existed.
'With critical enquiries of this sort, the Pan
theon or history of the Gods and Demigods, has
little to do: it is our business to recollect, and
give an account of, the ancient history of Troy.
One of the remotest sovereigns of this part of
the world upon record is Teucer: he was the son
of the river Scamander and the neighbouring
mountain of Ida : from him the Trojans are fre
quently called Teucri1.
Teucer having no male issue, married his only
daughter to Dardanus, prince of the little island
of Samothrace, and named him his successor:
Samothrace is represented by ancient historians as
the first seat of the Grecian religion: for this rea
son it was held a sacred and inviolable asylum,
or sanctuary, for fugitives: Dardanus taught his
new subjects a multitude of religious ceremonies,
and brought over with him from Samothrace the
Palladium, a -small statue of Minerva which was
afterward placed in the citadel of Troy, and re
specting which there was a prediction that, as
long as it remained there, Troy could never be
takenm: from Dardanus his subjects received the
name of Dardanians.
EricthoniusD was the son and successor of Dar
danus: he is not to be confounded with the Athe
nian Ericlhonius.
Tros, the third sovereign of the Dardanian
race, founded the city of Troy, and from his
own namecalled it- Troja: (another name of Troy
l Virg. M. iil. 108.
" Horn. 1L v. 216 et seqq.

m Dionys.Hal. Ant. iv.68.

ILUS, GANYMED, LAOMEDON.

267

was Ilium, from Ilus the son ofTros): he ac

cused Pelops, a neighbouring sovereign, or his
father Tantalus, of, haying stolen from him his
younger son Ganymed, a youth of inexpressible
beauty, and on this pretence deprived Pelops of
his dominions, and compelled him to take refuge
in Greece: the fact was, that Jupiter, struck with
the comeliness of Ganymed, had taken him up
' into Heaven to make him his cup-bearer.
Ilus, the elder brother of Ganymed, was fourth
king of Troy : he distinguished himself by re
scuing with his own hands the Palladium from the
citadel of Troy, which had been set on fire with
lightning : this was a service of so much danger,
that Ilus lost his sight in the enterprise, which
was soon after restored to him by Minerva : ac
cording to some accounts Minerva first deprived
him of sight for having sacrilegiously touched
her image on this occasion0: Ilus had another
brother beside Ganymed, whose name was Assaracus.
Laomedon, the son of Ilus, was fifth king of
Troy, and his reign was rendered memorable by
many calamities: he was anxious, like Amphion,
to surround with walls the city which his grand
father had built: and Apollo and Neptune hap
pening to be both of them in a state of banish
ment from Heaven, he engaged with them to
com plete the work he had at heart : the Gods per
formed their contract ; but the narrow soul of
Laomedon stimulated him to refuse them the hire
to which their labours were entitled *.
To punish this perfidy, Apollo sent a plague
against the Trojans, and Neptune commissioned
0 Plut. in Parall.

P Horn. II. <p. 441.

N2

268

HESIONE, LAOMEDON.

a sea-monster to devour them : they consulted an

oracle how they were to be delivered from their
calamities: and were told that nothing would
suffice, but the voluntarily exposing one noble
Trojan virgin every year to be devoured by the
monster: after this tribute had been repeatedly
paid, the lot fell in the sixth or seventh year upon
Hesione, Laomedou's daughter : Hercules found
Hesione in the same situation as Perseus had
found Andromeda, and engaged to deliver her,
on condition that Laomedon would present him
with six beautiful horses of which he was posses
sor: Hercules killed the monster, but Laomedon
refused him the horses : in resentment of this re
fusal Hercules, at the bead of a band of Grecian
heroes, took and pillaged the city of Troy, put
Laomedon to death, and gave his daughter He
sione in marriage to Telamon, one of the friends
of Hercules who had been the first to mount the
breach in the walls, and who was father to the ce
lebrated Ajax1.
Laomedon had two sons by Strymo daughter
of the river Scamander, Priam and Tit bonus :
/ Tithonus, for his youthful and vigorous beauty,
became the object of the affections of Aurora,
Goddess of the morning: the Goddess in the
warmth of her attachment bade Tithonus ask
whatever gift he pleased, and it should be granted
him : Tithonus requested that he might never die:
but, as he forgot to ask for perpetual youth
and strength, this prince, once so much admired
for the delicate hue and smoothness of his person,
gradually became all over wrinkles, and sunk in
q Horn. II. . 565. 638, U. v. 145. Schol. in II. v. 145, who
mentions the story as from Hellanicus. Apoilodor. ii. 5. Ov. Met.
li. 199.

BIRTH OF PARIS.
decrepitude: he lost his voice, his sight, his hear
ing, his smell, and his taste: he prayed to be
released from that immortal life he had so earnest
ly coveted ; and Aurora in pity turned him into a
grasshopper'.
Memnon was the son of Tithonus and Aurora :
he is also said to have been king of Ethiopia: he
came to the Trojan war, the events of which I
shall presently relate, to the assistance of his uncle
Priam, and was slain in single combat by Achil
les: an exquisite statue was erected to his memo
ry near the Egyptian Thebes; and, as he was the
son of Aurora, this statue had the peculiar pro
perty of uttering a melodious sound every morn
ing when touched by the first beams of the day,
as if to salute his mother; and every night at sun
set, it gave another sound, low and mournful, as
lamenting the departure of the day *.
Priam, the eldest son of Laomedon, was placed
by Hercules upon the throne of which he had de
prived his father : Priam was the last king of
Troy : he had fifty sons, the most celebrated of
whom were Hector and Paris, beside a great num
ber of daughters: Hector was an accomplished
soldier, and the valiant defender of his native
country : Paris was of a debauched and effeminate
character, and by his dissolute conduct proved
the ruin of Troy: a short time before he was born,
his mother Hecuba dreamed that she was brought
to bed of a burning torch ; which was explained
by the sooth-sayers to signify that the child which
should be born would be the occasion that Troy
should be consumed with flames : alarmed at this
r Horn. Hymn, in Ven. 219 et seqq. Schol in II. y. 151, who
mentions the story as from Hellanicus.
' Ov. Met. xiii. 575.
w3

270

JUDGMENT OF PARIS.

prediction, Priam and Hecuba directed that the

infant, as soon as born, should be cast naked upon
one of the rocks of mount Ida: here he was
found by certain shepherds, and educated as if
he had been shepherd-born'.
Paris was grown to man's estate in this humble
condition, when an event happened of great note
in the history of the heroic ages: this was the
marriage of Peleus, son of iEacus and brother of
Telamon, to Thetis one of the Nereids : all the
Gods were invited, as was the custom on these
occasions, to grace the nuptials with their pre
sence: the Goddess of Discord T alone uas omit
ted: and, to revenge herself for this neglect, she
caused a beautiful apple to be delivered in the
midst of the festival, upon which was inscribed,
" Let it be given to the Fairest:" Juno, Miner
va and Venus, with the true female spirit of rivalship, immediately put in their respective claims :
no one of the Gods had the courage to decide in
such a contention : though perhaps every one felt
the superior beauty of Venus, no one was willing
to make Juno, the Queen of Heaven, or Minerva,
the Goddess of wisdom, his enemy.
The three Goddesses at last agreed to be decided
by the judgment of the shepherd Paris: as he was
the most beautiful male then existing on the earth,
they inferred~tb&t~he must be the best judge of
female beauty : when they came before him how
ever, all Goddesses as they were, they trembled
and shuddered at the thought of being rejected:
each offered Paris a bribe: Juno privately told
him that he should be the most powerful monarch
of his time : Minerva that he should be victorious
t Schol. II. y. S25. Apollodorw, iii. 12.
v Lueian. Dial.
Mar. Panopei et Galencs.

HELEN.

271

and invincible in war : and Venus that he should

have the most beautiful woman in the world for
his wife: Paris decided in favour of Venus: from
that moment he had no chance to be blessed with
empire, prudence, or courage: soon after this,
Paris having appeared to advantage as a stranger
at the court of his father Priam, was discovered
by him, and admitted to all the privileges of a son.
About this time was consummated the marriage
of Helen, the sister of Pollux, to Menelaus, the
younger brother of Agamemnon, the son of Atreus
king of Mycenae: I have already spoken of the
manner in which Helen was carried away, when
nine years of age, by Theseus, and rescued by her
brothers: when she grew to be a woman, it was
universally confessed that nothing so beautiful in
human shape had ever been seen : all the princes
of Greece were rivals for her hand : and, as she
could mar/y only one of them, they agreed to
leave the selection to her free choice, and swore
that, if any one attempted to molest in his rights
the lover she accepted, they would all join as one
man to avenge his cause: she accepted Mene
laus: but the oath of the Grecian princes turned
out in a different manner from what they intended:
they had only thought of guarding against any
violent proceedings of one of their own body:
they were called upon to execute their oathw
against a stranger.
Menelaus and Helen had now been husband and
wife three years, and Menelaus had succeeded in
right of his wife to the throne of Sparta, when
Paris came as a stranger to their court, and was
mdst hospitably received : but Paris no sooner
w Hor. Od. i. 15. 7,
N4

272

IPHIGENIA.

saw Helen, than he fell in love with her, and like

a perfidious villain, stole her away from the roof
of her husband: this was the wife, with which
Venus, Goddess of beauty, but of beauty only,
had promised to crown his desires.
The theft of Helen was the occasion of the de
struction of Troy, of a ten years' siege, and a
thousand ships being fitted out by the Greeks to
avenge such an affront : all the princes who had
sworn to maintain Menelaus in his rights were
faithful to their oath : the most eminent of the
leaders in this expedition were Agamemnon, commaader in chief, Achilles, the son of Peleus and
Thetis, Ajax, the son of Telamon, and the wise
Ulysses, king of Ithaca \
The expedition was to sail from Aulis, a town
in Bceotia: but, when every thing was' ready, it
was detained a long time by contrary winds :
having enquired of the Gods, they were told that
they should never have a prosperous voyage, till
Agamemnon, their chief, who had offended Diana
by unwittingly having killed one of her sacred
hinds, sacrificed his daughter Iphigenia upon her
altar: Iphigenia was accordingly brought from
Mycenae, and Calchas the priest had raised the
knife against her bosom, when Diana relented,
carried away the royal maiden in a cloud, and
made her priestess of her temple in Tauris on the
Euxine sea*.
The allied chiefs against Troy, though they
finally discharged their engagements with the ut
most honour, many of them at first expressed
aversion to so distant an expedition, and which
promised to be so tedious of execution : Ulysses
* Horn. II. passirn.

* Eur. Iphigenia in Aulide.

DEATH OF HECTOR.
pretended to bemad1; and Achilles, respecting
whom his Goddess-mother knew that he was des
tined to perish in this war, was for some time hid
in female attire in the palace of Lycomedes, king
of the island of Scyros : here he was found out by
Ulysses, by the trick of putting armour in his
way, which he could not help handling, and ex
ercising himself with, in a manner that was im
possible to belong to a woman *.
The siege of Troy was the fertile source of what
has been styled an Iliad of woes: Patroclus, the
intimate friend, and bosom-companion of Achil
les, having been slain by Hector, the grief of
Achilles could only be appeased by the death of
the slayer1": and when he was killed, the con
queror in his rage, forgetting all the refinements
and princely ..accomplishments of music and sci
ence in which he had been instructed by Chiron
the Centaur", savagely dragged the dead body at
his chariot-wheels, thrice round the walls of the
city which Hector had so nobly defended*: after
this, Achilles conceived a passion for Polyxena
the sister. of Hector: by a stratagem of Paris he
was invited to meet her in the temple of Apollo,
and was there^ 1>asely assassinated: Ulysses and
Ajax, Whd oh this occasion may be considered as
the personincatipns of wisdom and valour, con
tended for the armour of Achilles: and the prize
being awarded to Ulysses, Ajax slew himself in
despair: from his blood sprang the flower we
call the violet: Ulysses also distinguished himself
by stealing away the Palladium from the citadel
z Ov. Met. xiii. 308 et seqq.
1 Pindar. Nern. iii. 73.

Horn. IL sr. 786 >> Id. <r. 22.

* Hum. II. x- 395 et eqo,

274

THE WOODEN HORSE.

of Troy": Paris himself, though late, was one

of the victims of the war, being killed in the
field.
A fter ten years' siege, and no decisive progress
having been made, the Greeks bethought themselves of a stratagem : they built a wooden horse,
of so enormous a sire, that it could contain a band
of armed men in its belly : they left this horse,
concealing within it many of their most valiant
leaders, with Neoptolemus or Pyrrhus, the son of
Achilles, at their head, on the shore: the rest
sailed away for the island of Tenedos, and pre
tended to give up the siege: Sinon, a spy whom
they left behind, told the Trojans, that if this
horse were once placed within their walls, Troy
would one day reduce all Greece under her sove
reignty: actuated by this false intelligence, the
Trojans were themselves most active imintroduoing ruin into their city: the fleet returned in the
silence of night: those who TOfMm glased inVJthe
wooden horse let themselverjiiif, and; adfijttted their companions at the gales-? T.roy wtks burned,
Priam was killed, and his 'CvpAly aj)d, subjects
sold to slavery : in the siege of. Tra^vibCGods
took opposite sides, as theirrraeptjWnt^dr partiali
ties leathern, and Neptune ai^^pq'Lko hjfd finally
the satisfaction of demolishing .fye walls which
they had been drawn in to re&r.' I;. ' v ,
Helen was now restored to her first bjftband Mcnelaus, who conducted her to Sparta in triumph.
Agamemnon, the brother ofMenelaus, also re
turned home, but the event of his arrival proved
tragical : Clytemnestra, the sister of Helen, his
wife, had for some years lived in adultery with
Soph. Ajax. Ov. Met. xii. 580 t seqq. Id. liii. 1 et seqq.
f Virg. /En. ii. 57 et seqq.

PENELOPE'S WEB.

275

jJSgisthus, the son of Thyestes : and this wicked

pair contrived, under all the appearance of a wel
come reception, to assassinate Agamemnon, and
his most faithful friends in the midst of the ban
quet: Orestes, the son of Agamemnon, when he
grew up to be a man, avenged his father by the
doath of iEgisthus and his mother: but though
Clytemnestra was a bad woman, the Gods did not
approve of a mother perishing by the hands of her
son, and. caused him to be haunted by the Furies*.
Laspy, Ulysses experienced so many disasters
at sea,- that ten years elapsed between the burn
ing of Troy and his arrival in Ithaca: he visited
the caverns of the Cyclops, the island of Circe,
and the infernal regions, and passed through .dan
gers surpassing human belief: at last when he
reached his native country, he found his palace
and government in the possession of a set of dissolute^uilor* who had agreed to urge his wife to
quarry one
em Hnder pretence that Ulysses
was certainly dead: the name of the wife of
UJ^sses was PeijeLgpe: she was the niece of Tyndarus, and tlie/d'ou'sin of Clytemnestra and Helen ;
'tWf, her conduct was ^very different from that of
these infamous- jV<mien: she remained faithful to
Ulysses during- ilie whole of his twenty years'
absence: one 'expedient by which she baffled the
importunity of her suitors, was telling them that
she had vowed to weave a funeral web for Laertes
the aged father of Ulysses, before she would marry
a second husband: this web she unravelled by
night, as fast as she worked upon it by day: at
the end of ten years' wandering Ulysses came
home, slew the suitors, and rewarded the fidelity
t JEschyl. Agamemnon, Choephorse, Euinenides, pass.
N 0

276

jENEAS, SOU OF VENUS.

of the virtuous Penelope with uninterrupted hap

piness11.
One other hero of the Trojan war remains to be
mentioned: this was JEnens, the son of Anchises,
descended from Assaracus the brother of llus:
the mother of iEneas was Venus : one would think
it was more natural to give out that a hero had a
God for his father, than a Goddess for his mother ;
for in the latter case he must have been born in
Heaven, or the Goddess must have come and re
sided for some length of time on earth: but every
hero, who was desirous to pass for a Demigod,
was not prepared to deny his father: perhaps, in
both instances the pretence of a celestial origin is
the cover for some blemish : when a God was said to
be the father, the mother was unchaste ; and when
a Goddess was feigned to be the mother, the true
mother was of obscure rank.
v.
When Troy was burned, iEneas escaped from
the flames, bearing his old and infirm father upon
his shoulders: he is said to have passed into
Italy : and the ancient Romans claimed iEneas as
the founder of their state : Virgil has consecrated
this claim in a splendid and incomparable poem,
entitled the ./Eneid : iEneas was worshipped at
Rome under the name Jupiter lndigetes.
k Horn* 04, patsim.

277

CHAP. XXX.
OF ROMULUS.
Amulius Usurps the Throne of Alba.Birth of Romulus
and Remus, Sons of Mars.They are exposed on the
Banks of the Tiber.Suckled by a Wolf.Educated
among Shepherds.They Discover themselves, and
put to Death Amulius.Numitor, their Grandfather,
is King ofAlba.Building of Rome.Remus Killed.
The Asylum.Rape of the Sabines.They break off
a Battle between their Fathers and their Husbands.
Romulus taken up into Heaven. Worshipped by the
name of Quirinus.Final Greatness of the Roman
State.
The Romans, a more sober and plain-spoken
race of men than the Greeks, added only one God
of their own countrymen to the fabulous Pan
theon, previously to the sad period, when despo
tism destroyed in them the pride of integrity,
and every tyrant became a God: this one was
Romulus the founder of that city, and in that
respect having the same claim to their regard, as
Cadmus to that of the Thebans, or Theseus of the
Athenians.
Numitor, the grandfather of Romulus, was by
paternal descent king of Alba : but Amulius his
brother, more ambitious and daring than be, de
prived him of the kingdom, and reduced him to
a private station : at the same time he put to
death the son of Numitor, and compelled his
daughter, by name Rhea Sylvia, to take the vows.

278

ROMULUS SUCKLED BY A WOLF.

of virginity as a vestal : the sacred character of

Rhea however was no obstacle to the love of the
God Mars : he grew enamoured of her, and be
came the father of Romulus and Remus,- the twin
progeny of the vestal.
Amulius no sooner understood that she was a
mother, tban he condemned Rhea herself to per
petual imprisonment, and ordered the infants to
be thrown into the Tiber : the Tiber had at that
time overflowed its banks, and the servant who
bore the children, not being able to reaeh the bed
of the river, left them in the marshes : here they
were found and suckled by a she- wolf, and in this
situation were discovered by Faustulus the royal
shepherd, who having some suspicion of the par
ticulars of their birth, took them home, and bred
them as his own children.
These royal youths, as they grew up, not only
delighted in hunting wild beasts, but often with
the bands of their companions made an onset on
a gang of robbers : in one of these skirmishes Remus was taken prisoner, and by these bold out
laws accused of their own crime : he was given
up to Numitor to be punished, who having tried
him with various questions, began to suspect the
secret of his birth : Faustulus at the same time di
vulged his thoughts to Romulus: and both bro
thers, having collected a party of armed men,
beset the palace at once, killed Amulius, and re
stored Numitor to the crown
Romulus and Remus were of too active and
adventurous a disposition to sit down contented in
their father's little kingdom : they expressed to
him their wish to be permitted to build a town
1 Ov. Fasti, ii. 382, et iii.,7 et seqq.

pa.2

RAPE OV THE SABINES.

279

on the spot where they had first been exposed:

they had not made much progress in this work,
when they fell out wilh each other: Remus in a
petulant and insulting disposition leaped over the
beginning walls of Rome, and Romulus imme
diately smote him to the heart, saying, " May
such be ever the fate of him who attempts to pass
over these walls*!
The walls of Rome being finished, though the
circuit was small, Romulus found that his ambi
tion had been greater than his strength : he there
fore opened an Asylum in his town for criminals
and slaves, who by his liberal policy were ad
mitted to the rights of citizenship: his Asylum
however brought only males: all the neighbour
ing states refused to contract marriage with so
mixed and disreputable a concourse: at length
Romulus invited the people of the neighbouring
towns to a grand spectacle, and directed his citi
zens, in the midst of the show to seize and carry
off the unmarried daughters of their guests : this is
what is called "the rape of the Sabines:" the
Sabines was the name of the foreign state nearest
to Rome, and whose citizens most abounded at
this spectacle: when the Romans and the Sabines
met in battle, which was about a year after, the
Romans to defend their prize, the Sabines to
avenge the affront they had received, the Sabine
women married to the Romans rushed in the
midst between the combatants, with their infant
children in their arms, intreating their fathers
not to murder their husbands, and their husbands
not to be the destroyers of their fathers : by this
seasonable interposition a peace was produced1.
k Ov. Fasti, iv. 835 et seqq.

1 Id. v. 179 et seqq.

280 BOMULUS TAKEN UP INTO HEATEN.

Romulus reigned thirty-nine years: and such
was the soundness of his policy, and the wisdom
of his measures, that even in this first reign from
the building of Rome, the foundation seemed to be
laid for all the future greatness of the Roman em
pire : at length Romulus sitting upon his throne
in the open field, reviewing the military force of
his newly-created slate, a violent storm of thunder
and lightning suddenly arose : it enveloped the
throne, and when the storm subsided Romulus
was no longer to be seen : the nobles who sur
rounded the throne affirmed that they had beheld
their king taken up into Heaven : the people
suspected that he had fallen a victim to the jea
lousy of the nobles : all doubt however was re
moved the next day, when Julius Proculus, the
gravest and most respected nobleman of his time,
publicly declared, that in the middle of the night
Romulus had come to him in a vision, and bade
him inform his Romans, that the Gods, into
whose society he had just been admitted, had
decreed, that Rome should hereafter be the me'
tropolis of the zeorld, and that, no sublunary
force should ever be able to resist 'her prowess m.
Romulus, as I have said, was one of the prin
cipal Gods of the Romans: Quirinus was the
name under which he was worshipped: Quirisu
is an old Latin word signifying a spear : hence
the ceremonial appellation of the Romans on so
lemn occasions was Quirites, or spearmen : and
the name Quirinus was probably formed by ana
logy from these : to shew the dignity of Romulus
in the Horn an Pantheon, it is sufficient to men
tion, that the Romans had two orders of priestm Ov. Fasti, ii. 480 et seqq.
n Hasta Curis priscis est dicta
Sabinis. Ov. Fasti, ii. 477.

GREATNESS OF ROME.

281

hood, the Pontifex and the Flamen, and that of

Flamens there were originally only three, the
Flamen of Jupiter, the Flamen of Mars, and the
Flamen of Quirinus0.
A moral lesson plainly inculcated on us by the
beginnings of Rome, and which though often re
peated, I will mention here, is how little mortals
are qualified to judge by appearances, and dive
into the secrets of futurity : Rome began from
an indiscriminate concourse of robbers and run
away slaves: yet Rome is in certain respects the
most memorable state in the history of the world:
no country could ever boast of purer manners and
more virtuous citizens than those of Rome in her
best days: and their virtue and valour laid the
foundation of that universal empire, which Rome
afterward extended over almost the whole known
world, and which endured for several centuries.
Ov. Fasti, iv. 910.

THE END.

INDEX.

Abstraction, explanation of the operation of the mind so

termed, 6.
Absyrtus, torn to pieces by his sister Medea, 239.
Acheron, one of theinfernal rivers, 123.
Achilles, disguised in female attire is discovered by Ulysses, 273.
drags the body of Hector three times round the walls of
Troy, it,is slain by Paris, it.contention of Ajax and Ulysses
for the arms of, it.
Actseon, story of, 185is changed into a stag, and devoured by
his own dogs, it.
Admetus, king of Pherae, receives Apollo, 247.
Adonis, beloved by Venus, 207 slain by a wild boar, and
changed into the flower anemone,
e, 208festivals
208festiv in honour of
the memory of, it.
.fliacus, one of the judges of Hell, 129.
JEgeon, one of the Giants, 71.
.flsgeus, king of Athens, history of, 251the father 'of Theseus,
it.casts himself into the sea, which from ikn was afterwards
called the iEgean sea,
W t i*i T ' 'IK^H
./Egle, one of the daughters of HesperuSj J.
^'
r. /
Mneas, his descent and adventures, '2}6.r;"^
jEolus, the God of the winds, 116, ' **\ *.-,.
J/. -/
iEsculapius, his skill in medicine, 246&piter, on Pluto/scOmplaint, strikes him dead with V thunderbolt,^worshipped at
Rome under the form of a serpent, 24V . *" , . "
iEson, the father of Jason, restored to yeuth'qj Medea, 235. '
jEthon, one of the horses of the sun,*i*6. Jv^, *"
.ffithra, the wife of jEgeus, 251.
'
Agamemnon, general of the Greeks, at the siege of Troy, 272
murdered by his wife Clytemnestra, at his return, 75. #
Aganippe, the fountain of the Muses, 48. *.
Agenor, king of Sidon, the father of Cadmus ajJTJEurqpa, 173.
Aglaia, one of the Graces, 138.
Aglauros, one of the daughters of Cecrops, 166.
Ajax, one of the Grecian chiefs at the siege
i <oWKoy,
tends with Ulysses for the armour of Achilles, 273kills him
self, and his blood is turned into the violet flower, it.
Alcestis, the wife of Admetus, her conjugal affection, 248.
Alcmena, visited by Jupiter in the shape of her husband Amphi
tryon, 2 i Gbecomes the mother of Herc%>, 218.

INDEX.

283

Alecto, one of the Furies, 145.

Allegory explained, 9.
Alpheus and Arethusa, the story of, 92.
Amalthjea, one of the nurses of Jupiter, 36.
Amazons, vanquished by Hercules, 222.
Amphictyonic council, account of the, 49.
Amphion, raises the walls of Thebes by the music of his lute, 243.
Amphitrite, the wife of Neptune, 114.
Amphitryon, the husband of Alcmena, slays Electryon, and it
banished Thebes, 217.
Androgeus, son of Minos, king of Crete, killed at Athens, 188.
Andromeda, delivered by Perseus from a sea-monster, 197.
Antaeus, the giant, overcome by Hercules, 224.
Antigone, the daughter of (Edipus, 262.
Apollo, one of the twelve superior Gods, 45his birth, it.
destroys the serpent Python, which had tormented his mother,
46his figure, it.God of the sun, it.of music and poetry,
it.the author of plagues and contagious diseases, 47God of
medicine and prophecy, it.his oracle at Delphi, account of,
it.contends with Pan, 181punishes Midas with ass's ears, it.
slays the children of Niobe, 203enamoured of Daphne,
206keeps the flocks of Admetus king of Thessaly, 247.
Apollo Belvedere, celebrated statue, 2.
Arachne, turned into a spider by Minerva, 204.
Arethusa, courted by Alpheus, and changed into a fountain, 92.
Arges, one of the Cyclops, 72.
Argonautic expedition, account of the, 232.
Argus, the story of his hundred eyes, 1 63is slain by Mercury,
and changed into a peacock by Juno, it.
Ariadne, the daughter of Minos, instructs Theseus how to de
stroy the Minotaur, 255-r-deserted by Theseus, 256becomes
the wife of Bacchus, and after death is changed into a constel
lation, it.
Arion, an admirable musician, cast into the sea, and carried safe
to land by a dolphin, 245.
Asterope, one of the daughters of Atlas, 75.
Astraea, one of the daughters of Jupiter, the Goddess of justice,
. 142-.is taken up into Heaven, and made the sign Virgo, 144.
Atalanta, conquered in a foot-race by Hippomenes, 248.
Athamas, destroys his son, and is changed into a marine deity,
185.
,
Athens, temple of Minerva at, 18.
Athenians, thar priests, 19their religious worship, 20festi
vals of the, 23.
Atlas, one of the Titans, 74condemned to support the heavens
on his should^, it.explanation of the fable of, it.his pro
geny, 75cmnged into a mountain by Perseus, 197.
Atreus, story ornis cruelty, 201.

284

INDEX.

Atropos, one of the Fates, 141.

Aty, beloved by Cybele, 35.
Augeas, king of Elis, his stable containing three thousand oxen
cleansed by Hercules in one day, 221.
Aurora, the Goddess of the morning, 117enamoured of Tithonus, 268changes him into a grasshopper, 269.
Auster, the God of the south wind, 116.
Autolycus, one of the preceptors of Hercules, 218.
B
Bacchus, the God of wine, his birth and education, 176solem
nity of his worship, it.his figure and appearance, 177
adventure with pirates, it.his conquests in Ethiopia, India,
and other countries, 179is the same with the Egyptian
Osiris, ib. confers on Midas the power of turning every thing
he touched into gold, 181punishes Lycurgus king of Thrace
with madness, 183causes his cousin Pentheus to be torn in
pieces, by his mother and aunts, 184.
Baucis and Philemon, story of, 210entertain Jupiter and Mer
cury, 211their cottage converted into a temple, 212.
Bellerophon, his continency, story of, 192catches the winged
horse Pegasus, and destroys the Chimaera, 194.
Bellona, the Goddess of war, 107.
Berecynthia, one of the names of Cybele, 33.
Boar, the Erymanthian, tamed by Hercules, 220.
Bona Dea, one of the names of Cybele, 33.
Boreas, God of the north wind, 116.
Briareus, one of the Giants, who had a hundred hands, 71, 124.
Brontes, one of the Cyclops, 72.
Brutus, the evil genius of, 104.
Busiris, the tyrant of Egypt that offered human sacrifices, slain by
Hercules, 225.
C
Caeus, the robber, slain by Hercules, 225.
Cadmus, one of the most eminent personages in the early.Grecian
history, 172lays the foundation of Thebes, 174sows the
teeth of a serpent in the ground, from which armed men spring
up, it.his progeny, 175.
Caduceus, the wand of Mercury, described, 57its virtues, ib.
Calliope, the muse of epic poetry, 136.
Callirhoe, the wife of Chrysaor, 108.
Calumny, one of the deities of the Greeks, 155.
Calypso, detains Ulysses on his return from TroJ 75.
Castalian stream, account of the, 48.
,

INDEX.

385

Castor and Pollux, history of, 248are made the constellation

Gemini, 249.
Cecrops, the founder of Athens, 166.
Celasno, one of the daughters of Atlas, 75.
Celestial, or superior Gods, 40nymphs, 97.
Centaurs, half men and half horses, 130and Lapithx, battle of,
257.
Cephalus, the son of Mercury and Herse, beloved by Aurora,
167taken up by her into Heaven, it.
Cephalus, king of Thessaly, and Procris, the loves of, 169.
Cerberus, a dog with three heads, placed as a guard at the en
trance of the infernal regions, 126chained and brought up
from Hell, by Hercules, 223.
Ceres, the Goddess of corn and harvests, 66her daughter Pro
serpine, carried offby Pluto, it. searches through the world for
her, 67agreement between her and Pluto, 68explanation
of the fable, it.festival of, commonly called the Eleusinian
mysteries, 24.
Ceryces, one of the sacred families of Athens, 20.
Ceto, the mother of the Gorgons, 105.
Chaos, the most ancient of the Grecian deities, 32.
,
Chan n, his descent, 125- the ferryman of Hell, it.his figure
and manners described, it.receives a small brass coin for the
fare of each ghost, it.
Caurus, one of the winds, 116.
Charites, the three Graces, 137.
Charity, the Roman, story of, 1 54.
Charybdis, account of, 110.
Chimaera, description of the monster, 109killed by Bellerophon,
194.
Chiron, the Centaur, one of the preceptors of Hercules, 218
of Jason, 233and of Achilles, 273.
Chorus of the Greeks, account of the, 22.
Chrysaor, the rider of the horse Pegasus, 108.
Circe, the sorceress, story of, 110, 240.
Cimmeria, represented by Homer as the country in which Hdl is
situated, 121.
Clio, the Muse of history, 1 36.
Clotho, one of the Fates, 141.
Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon, murders her husband, 275
is killed by her own son Orestes, it.
Cocytus, one of the rivers of Hell, 123.
Ccelus, one of the most ancient deities of the Greeks, 32de
posed by Saturn, 33.
Contumely, one of the deities of the Greeks, 155.
Cumaean Sybil, story of the, 28.
Cupid, the God of love, 55his figure and attributes, it.and
Psyche, story of, 208.

INDEX.
Cybele the wife of Saturn, 33her figure and appearance, 34
modes of worshipping, 35her love for Atys, it.
Cyclops, the servants of Vulcan, 1 10forge the thunderbolts of
Jupiter, it.
D
Daedalus, a celebrated artificer, 187his inventions, it.builds
the famous labyrinth of Crete, 188confined in it with his son
Icarus, 191 escapes from thence with artificial wings, it. his
son Icarus is drowned, it. "
Danae, daughter of Acrisius, visited by Jupiter in a golden
shower, 1 94thrown with her son Perseus, in a chest, into
the sea, 19.5arrives in the dominions of Polydectes, who falls
in love with her, it.delivered by her son from the violence of
Polyuectes, 198.
Danaides, the fifty daughters of Danaus, who killed their hus
bands on the wedding night, their punishment in Hell, 131.
Daphne, the nymph, beloved by Apollo, 206is changed into a
laurel, it.
Dardanus, king of Troy, 266.
Darkness, one of the more ancient Gods of the Greeks, 32.
Death, an allegorical Deity, 146.
Dejanita, the wife of Hercules, 227sends him the poisoned
shirt of Nessus the Centaur, 228.
Delphi, account of the oracle of, 48.
Demigods, account of the, 159.
Destinies, or Fates, description of the, 139.
Deucalion, king of Thessaly, his descent, 171restores the race
of mankind destroyed by a deluge, it.
Diana, the Goddess of the moon, and of hunting, 51her names,
figure and appearance, 52the Goddess of Chastity, it.some
times called Hecate, it.her magnificent temple at Ephesus, 53
human sacrifices offered to her at Sparta, it.tranforms
Actxon into a stag, 185enamoured of Endymion, 207
explanation of the fable of, it.
Dice, or Judgment, one of the daughters of Jupiter, 139.
Dindymene, one of the names of Cybele, S3.
Diras, a name of the Furies, 145.
Diomedes, king of Ttirace, vanquished by Hercules, and given for
food to his horses, 221.
Dionysia, festivals of Bacchus, 23, 177.
Discord, an allegorical Deity, 147.
Doris, a nymph of the sea, 11 4.
Dreams, mythological beings, 147.
Dryads, the Goddesses of trees, 94.

INDEX.

287

.
Echidna, the sister of the monster Geryon, 108.
Echo and Narcissus, story of, 96.
Egyptians, worshipped the Gods under the forms of different
animals, 72.
Electra, one of the daughters of Atlas, 75.
Elysium, the mansions of the blessed, description of, 133.
Enceladus, one of the Giants, 71.
Endymion, beloved by the moon, 207explanation of the fable
of, it.
Enyo, one of the names of Bellona, 107.
Epaphus, the son of Jupiter and Io, 164.
Epigoni, the war of the, 264.
Epimetheus, the brother of Prometheus, opens Pandora's box, 77.
Erato, the Muse of lyric, divine and amatory poetry, 136.
Ereobutadx, one of the sacred families of Athens, 20.
Eous, one of the horses of the sun, 47.
Erebus, one of the more ancient deities of the Greeks, 32.
Erichthonius, the son of Vulcan, 167,
Erynnis, a name of the Furies, 145.
Erymanthian boar, conquered by Hercules, 220.
Eteocles and Polynices, combat of, 263the flames of their fu
neral pile divide, it.
Eumenides, a name of the Furies, 145.
Eumolpidae, one of the sacred families of Athens, 20.
Eumolpus, one of the preceptors of Hercules, 218.
Eunomia, good government, one of the daughters of Jupiter,
139.
Euphranor, a Greek artist, embellishes the temple of Jupiter
Eleutherius, 19.
Euphrosyne, one of the Graces, 138.
'
Europa, carried away by Jupiter in the form of a bull, 173.
Eurus, the God of theeast wind, 116.
Euryale, one of the Gorgons, 106.
Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, 243.
Eurystheus, the master of Hercules, 213.
Eurytus, one of the preceptors of Hercules, 218the father of
Iole, 227.
Euterpe, the Muse of music, 136.
F
Fame, worshipped as a Goddess, 158mythological personifica
tion of, it.
Fates, or Destinies, description' of the three, 139their names
and offices, 141.

28$

INDEX.

Fauns, nearly the same as satyrs, rural deities, 90.

Filial duty, a temple dedicated to at Rome, 153illustrious ex
ample of, it.
Flora, Goddess of (lowers, 85her figure, it.story related of
by Lactantius, it.
Fortitude, her figure, 153one of the attributes of Minerva, 44.
Fortune, her figure, 155.
Furies, description of the three, 145their names, it.
G
Ganymed, taken by Jupiter 'up into Heaven, and made his cup
bearer, 157,267.
Gemini, one of the constellations in Heaven, the same with Cas
tor and Pollux, '249.
Genial, poetical senses of the word, 104.
Genii, opinions of the ancients, respecting, 103.
Genius, the evil, of Brutus, 104.
Genius of Socrates, 103.
Geryon, a monster with three heads, 108is slain by Hercules,
222.
Giants, their descent, 69war of the, it.are vanquished, 72
punishment of the, 73.
Golden Age, described, 142.
Golden Fleece, account of the, 234.
Gorgons, their names, and description of them, 105destroyed
by Perseus, 106, 196.
Graces, three, their names and descent, 137.
Graise and Lamise, account of the, 107.
Grecian artists the finest that ever existed, 1 games, account of
the, 25.
Greeks, the excellence of their statues, 1 the beauty of their
forms, 2their athletic exercises, it. summary of their reli
gion, 5historical origin of the Gods of the, 12their modes
of worship, temples, altars, and priests, 15were unacquainted
with the figure of the earth, 120.
Halcyone, one of the daughters of Atlas, 75.
Hamadryads, nymphs of trees, 94.
Harpies, description of the, 112expelled from Bithynia by
Zethes and Calais, 236.
Hebe, the Goddess of youth, 156her beautiful form, it.made
cup-bearer to Jupiter, it.but for an unlucky fall is turned out
of her office, ib.bestowed in marriage upon Hercules, 157.
Hecate, one of the names of Diana, 51 one of the infernal deities,
127 her figure and appearance, it.worshipped with horrid
rites, 128.

INDEX.

289

Hector, the Trojan hero, slain by Achille, and dragged three

times round the walls of Troy, 273.
Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world, married to Menelaus, 271goes off with Paris,, and occasions the destruction
of Troy, 272restored to her first husband, 274.
Helicon Mount, sacred to Apollo, 48.
Hell, account of the Gods of, 1 1 9site and topography of, 1 21
rivers of, 123Judges of, 129description of, according to
the Greek mythologists and poets, 1 22-monstrous and terrific
forms of, 124visited by different heroes, 121by Hercules,
223Orpheus, 243Theseus and Pirithous, 258.
Helle and Phryius, story of, 234is drowned in that sea which
from her is since called the Hellespont, it.
Heraclitus, story of the philosopher, 99. '
Hercules, his descent and birth, 216usually considered as the
God of strength, 217fated by the contrivance of Juno to be
the servant of his cousin Eurystheus, 218strangles two ser
pents in his cradle, it.is educated by the best masters of
Greece, it.his twelve labours, 2191. kills the Nenuean lion,
it.2. destroys the Hydra, 2203. catches the hind of CEnoe,
it.4. conquers the Erymanthian boar, it.5. cleanses the sta
bles of Augeas, 2216. kills the Stymphalian birds, it.
7. takes alive the Cretan bull, it.8. carries away the mares of
Diomedes, king of Thrace, and gives the tyrant himself to be
eaten by his own cattle, it.9. obtains the girdle of Hippolita,
queen of the Amazons, 22210. kills the monster Geryon, and
brings away his oxen, it.1 1. gathers the apples of the Hesperides, and kills the dragon that guarded them, it.12. chains
the dog Cerberus, and drags him to the gates of Mycenx, 223.
Hercules, further exploits of, 224wrestles with the giant An
taeus, and vanquishes him, it.set upon by an army of pigmies,
it.seizes Busiris the tyrant of Egypt, and sacrifices him upon
his own altar, 225destroys the robber Cacus, it.delivers
Prometheus from the vulture that preyed upon his liver, 225
sacks the city of Troy, it.sails with the Argonauts, it.
assists the Gods in the war of the Giants, it.his love for Iole
and Omphale, 227employed by Omphale in female occupa
tions, it.marries Dejanira, it.she sends him a poisoned shirt,
228ascends a funeral pile on mount CEta, inThessaly, and is
taken up into Heaven, 229marries Hebe, the Goddess of
youth, it.
Hercules, various heroes so named, 230.
Hermione, or Harmonia, the wife of Cadmus, 174.
Herse, one of the daughters of Cecrops, 166.
Hesiod, his account of the distance between Heaven and earth)
and between earth and Hell, 120.
Hesione, the daughter of king Laomedon, delivered from a seamonster by Hercules, 268.
O

290

INDEX.

Hesperus, the son of Atlas, the evening star, 75.

Hesperides, the three daughters of Hesperus, in whose garden
were golden apples, guarded by a dragon, which Hercules
killed and took away the fruit, 75, 222.
Hind of (Enoe, with brazen feet and golden horns, hunted and
caught by Hercules, 220.
Hippodamia, the daughter of CEnomaus king of Elis, won in a
chariot-race by Pelops, 201.
Hippodamia, the wife of Pirithous, 257.
Hippolita, queen of the Amazons, vanquished by Hercules, 222
marries Theseus, 258.
Honour, the temple of, only to be approached through that of
Virtue, 152.
-Hope, the emblem of the Goddess, 153left at the bottom of
Pandora's box, 78.
Hours, the, 139attendants of Aurora, 118.
Hydra, a monstrous serpent, 109 destroyed by Hercules, 220.
Hygeia, the Goddess of health, 156.
Hymen, the God of marriage, 157story of the Athenian youth,
it.attributes of, 158.
Hyperion, one of the names of Apollo, 46.
I
Janus, his image, 38his temple shut only twice during the
whole period of the Roman republic, it.
Iapetus, the family of, 74.
Jason, his descent and youthful adventures, 233sails on the Argonautic expedition, accompanied by all the heroes of Greece,
235visits Hypsipyle, queen ofLemnos, 236delivers Phineus
the blind prophet, from the persecution of the harpies, ii.
gains the golden fleece by the assistance of the sorceress Medea,
238carries her off, and marries her, 239forsakes her,
240.
Icarus, the son of Dzdalus, flies with artificial wings, but the
sun melts the wax of them, so that he falls into the sea and is
drowned, 191.
Icelus, one of the offspring of Sleep, 147.
Idaei Dactyli, 187.
Ilium, one of the names of Troy, 267.
Ilus, one of the kings of Troy, 267.
Impudence, honoured by the Athenians with religious worship,
155.
Immortality of the soul, the doctrine of the, maintained by the
Greeks, 120.
Inachus, one of the demigods, 162founds the city of Argos, it.
Ino, one of the aunts of Bacchus, transformed into a marine
deity, 185.

INDEX.

291

to, beloved by Jupiter, 162is transformed into a heifer, and

committed to the care of Argus, 163worshipped in Egypt by
the name of Isis, 164.
Iole, daughter of Eurytus, beloved by Hercules, 227, 228.
Iphiclus, the twin-brother of Hercules, 218.
Iphigenia, daughter of Agamemnon, is carried to Aulis to be sa
crificed to the Goddess Diana, but is spared, and made her
priestess, 272.
Irene, Peace, one of the Hours, 139.
Iris, the messenger of Juno, 43.
Isis, one of the names of Io, 164.
Isthmian games, account of the, 25.
Judges of Hell, their names and functions, 129.
Juno, the queen of Heaven, her figure and appearance, 42
sometimes called Lucina, ib.delays the birth of Hercules, 218.
Jupiter, his statue by Phidias, 2, 40birth of, 36nursed upon
mount Ida, ib.vanquishes the Titans, 37dethrones his father
Saturn, 38his supreme government and authority, 41.
Jupiter, source of the licentious character attributed to him, 161
becomes enamoured of Io, 162carries off Europa in the
form of a bull, 173is the lover of Semele, 175the father
of Minos, 186visits Danae in a shower of gold, 195assumes
the form of Amphitryon, and becomes the father of Hercules,
216visits Leda in the form of a swan, and becomes the fa
ther of Pollux, 248.
Justice, her figure, 153worshipped as a Goddess, ib.
Irion, in love with Juno, 130the father of the Centaurs, ib.
his punishment in Hell, ib.
L
Labours, the twelve of Hercules, 219.
Labyrinth of Crete, built by Daidalus, 188.
Lacnesis, one of the Fates, 141.
Laius, king of Thebes, account of, 259exposes his son (Ediput
on the mountains, ib.is slain by him, 260.
Lamentation, the Fields of, one of the divisions of the infernal
regions, 1 26.
Lamiae, a species of daemons, described, 102.
Lampetie and Lampethusa, two of the sisters of Phaeton, 166.
Laomedon, king of Troy, breaks the promise he had made, for
which Hercules sacks the city of Troy, 268.
Lapithas and Centaurs, battle of the, 257.
Lares, houshold Gods, their different classes and functions, 100.
Larvae, the spirits of wicked men deceased, 102.
Latona, the mother of Apollo and Diana, 45.
Leda, receives Jupiter in the form of a swan, 248becomes the
mother of Castor and Pollux., it.
02

292

INDEX.

Lemures,. the spirits of wicked men deceased, 102.

Lemuralia, the festival of, 102.
Lethe, one of the rivers of Hell, 133the water of oblivion, 1 34.
Leucosia, one of the Sirens, 111.
Liberty, worshipped as a Goddess by the Greeks and Romans,
156the emblems of, it.
Lichas, the servant of Hercules, thrown by his master into the
sea, and changed into a rock, 229.
Ligeia, oneof the Sirens, 111.
Lilybceum, the promontory of, placed upon the feet of the Giant
Typhosus, 73.
Lucifer, the morning star, 118.
Lucina, one of the names of Juno, 42of Diana, it.
Lupercalia, festival of the, 83.
Lycurgns, king of Thrace, struck with madness by Bacchus, 183.
M
Magna Mater, the Great Mother* one of the names of Cybelc,
33.
Maia, one of the daughters of Atlas, 75.
Manes, infernal deities, 100.
Mars, the God of war, 44 the animals sacrificed to, it.
Medea, a sorceress, assists Jason to obtain the golden fleece, 237
goes off with him, and tears her brother Absyrtus in pieces
to delay the pursuit, 239makes old .ffison, the father of Ja
son, young again, it.her kettle for restoring youth, 240
murders her own children, and escapes through the air in a
chariot drawn by a fiery dragon, it.
Medusa, one of the Gorgons, 106her head cut off by Perseus,
107is fixed on the shield of Minerva, it.
Megssra, one of the Furies, 145.
Meleager, story of his birth, 141 kills the Calydonian boar, 142
his mother burns the fatal brand on which his life depends,
and he expires, it.
Melpomene, the tragic Muse, 1 37.
Memnon, the son of Aurora and Tithonus, slain in combat by
Achilles, 269wonderful statue of, it.
Menelaus, the brother of Agamemnon, marries Helen, 271
succeeds to the throne of Sparta, it.is deserted by his wife,
272carries Helen back in triumph to Sparta, 274.
Mercury, his birth, 56the messenger of the Gods, it.his
figure and appearance, it. supposed to be the inventor of let
ters, 58the God of commerce and thieves, it.his office in
Hell, 128 cuts off the head of Argus the keeper of Id, 163.
Merope, one of the daughters of Atlas, 75.

INDEX.
Midas, obtains from Bacchus the gift of turning every thing hetouches into gold, 181condemns the music of Apollo, it.pu
nished with the ears of an ass, it.his barber, story of, 182.
Minerva, temple of at Athens, 18the Goddess of wisdom, 43
the daughter of Jupiter, it.statue of by Phidias, it.her
emblems, 44presides over military fortitude, and the arts of
life, ii.transforms Arachne into a spider, 2C4,
Minos, king of Crete, 186made one of the judges of Hell, 129.
Minotaur, account of the, 187destroyed by Theseus, 255.
Mnemosyne, or Memory, tke mother of the Muses, 136. .
Momus, the God of scoffing and censoriousness, and the satirist
of Heaven, 148his judgment on the bull of Neptune, the
house of Minerva, and the man of Vulcan, 150.
Morpheus, one of the offspring of Sleep, 147.
Muses, the nine, their birth, names, characters, and functions,
136.
Myrtilus, the groom of king CEnomaus, who betrayed his
master, 201.
Mysteries, account of the Eleusinian, 24.
N
Naiads, the Goddesses of springs, wells, and fountains, 94.
Narcissus and Echo, the story of, 95falls in love with his own
image, and is turned into the flower which bears his name, 97.
Naxos, the island of, the nursing place of Bacchus, 176.
Nemasan lion, killed by Hercules, 109, 219.
Nemsean games, account of the, 25.
Nemesis, the Goddess of vengeance, 144her fierce aspect, it.
Neptune, the God of the sea, 59his figure and appearance, 60
extensive authority, it. description of his chariot, 115 his
consort, 1 14Isthmian games in honour of, 25.
Nereids, sea nymphs, 114.
Nereus, the father of the Nereids, 114.
Nessus, the poisoned shirt of, sent to Hercules occasions his
death, 228.
Night, the daughter of Darkness and Chaos, one of the more
ancient Gods, 32.
Niobe, the mother of seven sons and seven daughters, offends
Latona by her arrogance, 202her children slain by Apollo,
203is changed into a marble statue, 204.
Nisus, his purple lock of hair, 1 89.
Numitor, king of Alba, the grandfather of Romulus, 277 de
throned by his brother Amulius, it.restored to his kingdom
278.
'
Nymphs, who,-93Nereids, 1 14Naiads, Oreads, Dryads, and
Hamadryads, 94the celestial, 97.
o3

294

INDEX.

O
*
Dceanides, sea-nymphs, 114.
Oceanus, one of the Titans, a marine deity, 37, 113.
[Edipus, king of Thebes, his story, 259exposed on the moun
tains, it.adopted by the king of Corinth, 260kills his father
j in a broil, it.explains the riddle of the Sphinx, 261 mar
ries his mother, it.madness of, 264.
(Enomaus, father of Hippodamia, killed by fraud in a chariotrace, 201.
Ogyges, the deluge of, 166.
Ogygia, the residence of Calypso, 75.
Olympus mount, the residence of the Gods, 40.
Olympic games, account of the, 25.
OmfJhale, queen of Lydia, beloved by Hercules, 227makes
him spin, it.
Ops, one of the names of Cybele, 33.
Oracles, account of the most celebrated, 29.
Oracle of Delphi, 47Dodona, 29Trophonius, it.
Oreads, or Orestiades, nymphs of the mountains, 95.
Orestes, kills his mother Clytemnestra, and is haunted by the
s Furies, 275.
Orpheus the son of Apollo, the wonderful effects of his lyre, 243
descends into the infernal regions to recover his wife Eurydice, but loses her again, 244torn in pieces by the women of
. Thrace, 245.
Orthus, the two-headed dog that guarded the herds of Geryon,
109.
Orus, one of the names of Epaphus, 164.
Osiris the same as Bacchus, 180.
Ossa, the mountain thrown upon Pelion, 71.
Othus, one of the Giants that made war against the Gods, it.
P
Pactolus, a river whose sand is gold, 181
Palladium, the image of Minerva preserved in the citadel of
Troy, 266carried off by Ulysses, 273.
Pales, the Goddess of shepherds, 85.
Palilia, festival of the, it.
Pan, the God of inanimate nature, 82his figure and appearance,
83 the God of shepherds, hunters, and fishermen, it.the
inventor of the uneven-reeded pipe, it.enamoured of the
nymph Syrinx, 84deters Brennus the Gaul from plundering
the city of Delphi, it.the author of panic fears, it.accom
panies B.iechns in his conquests, ISO contends with Apollo
before Midas, 181.
Panathensta, festival of the, 23.

INDEX.

293

Pandora, a woman of clay, formed by Vulcan, 77origin of her

name, M.sent to Prometheus with a box filled withthe calamities and evils of human life, 77.
Pandrosos, one of the daughters of Cecrops, 166,
Pantheon, description of the, 3.
Parcae, the Destinies, or Fates, account of, 139. '
Paris, his descent, 269is exposed upon mount Ida, and brought
up by shepherds, 270the Judgment of, 148carries away
Helen, 272killed at the siege of Troy, 274.
Parnassus, the seat of the Muses, 48.
Parthenon, the temple of Minerva at Athens, 18.
Parthenope, one of the Sirens, 111.
Pasiphae, the mother of the Minotaur, 1 86.
Patroclus, the friend of Achilles, slain by Hector, 273.
Pegasus, the winged horse, account of, 108appropriated tothe
Muses, 48is caught and rode by Bellerophon, 193.
Pelias, usurper of the throne of Iolchos, sends Jason to fetch the
golden fleece, 233cut in pieces by his daughters, 240.
Pelops served up to table by his father Tantalus, 130restored
to life by the Gods, 131 his arrival in Greece, 200wins Hippodamia by fraud in a chariot-race, 201.
Penates, the houshold Gods, tits presiding deities of hospitality, 98.
Penelope, the wife of Ulysses, story of her conjugal fidelity, 275.
Pentheus, torn to pieces by his mother and aunts, 184.
Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danae, 195is inclosed with his
mother in a chest, and cast into the sea, 196cast onshore
upon the island of Seriphos, and educated in the temple of Mi
nerva, ib.cuts off the head of Medusa, 197changes Atlas
into a stone, ib.delivers Andromeda from a sea-monster, ib.
rescues his mother from Polydectes, and turns him into stone,
198kills his grandfather Acrisius by accident, and banishes
himself to Mycena:, 199.
Petasus, the winged hat of Mercury, 56.
Phatdra, the wife of Theseus, 256causes him to murder his son
Hippolitus, 258.
Phaeton, his descent, 164obtains leave to drive the chariot of
the sun for one day, 165overturns it, by which the heavens
and the earth are set on fire, 166is struck by Jupiter with a
thunderbolt into the river Po, ib.his sisters changed into
poplars, id.
Phantasus, one of the offspring of Sleep, 147.
Philoctetes, story of, 229.
Philomela, the story of, 167is changed into a nightingale, 169,
Phineus, the blind prophet, delivered from the persecution of the
. harpies by Jason, 236.
Phlegethon, one of the rivers of Hell, 124.
Phlegon, one of the horses of the sun, 46.

296

INDEX

Pigmies, their assault upon Hercules, 224and cranes, war of '

the, 225.
Pileus, the cap of Liberty, 158.
Pirithous, his friendship for Theseus, 256descends into Hell
with the design to carry off Proserpine, 258.
Pleiades, the seven daughters of Atlas, 75
Pluto, the God of Hell, his descent, 37seizes Proserpine, and
carries her off to the infernal regions, 66his palace, 127.
Plutus, the God of wealth, 156.
Pollux and Castor, history of, 248.
1'olydectes, enamoured of Danae, 196is changed by Perseus
into a stone, 199.
Polyhymnia, the Muse of rhetoric, 137.
Polynices and Eteocles, combat of, 26S the flames of their fu
neral pile dividej it.
Pomona, the Goddess of fruits, 86courted by and marries Vertumnus, 87.
Pontus, one of the sea Gods, 115.
Prayers, the daughters of Jupiter, 151.
Priam, king of Troy, the father of Paris and Hector, 269is
killed, and his family and subjects sold to slavery, 274.
Priapus, the God of gardens, 89.
Procris, the wife of Cephalus, 169accidentally killed by him,
170.
Procrustes, his bed, account of, 253is killed by Theseus, it.
Progne, the wife of Tereus, destroys her son, and is changed into
a swallow, 169.
Prometheus, one of the Titan race, 74 deceives Jupiter at a sa
crifice, 76forms a man of clay, it.assisted by Minerva, he
carries off at the tip of his wand a portion of the celestial fire
from the chariot of the sun, and animates his image, 77re
jects Pandora and her box, it.persecuted by Jupiter, and
chained to a rock, 78delivered by Hercules, 226.
Proserpine, the daughter of Ceres, 66carried off by Pluto, 67
explanation of the fable of, 68.
Proteus, his various metamorphoses, 1 i 5.
Psyche, story of the loves of Cupid and, 208 is carried away to
an enchanted palace, it.envied by her sisters, 209resolves
to seeher husband, it.dismal effects of her curiosity, 210is
made immortal, and becomes the wife of Cupid, it.
Pyramus and Thisbc, unfortunate lovers, their story, 212.
Pyrrha, the wife of Deucalion, 171.
Pyroeis, one of the horses of the sun, 46,

^
Pythagoras, inculcates the doctrine of transmigration, 13*
Pythia, the priesiess of Apollo at Delphi, 49.
Pythian games, account of the, 25, 49.
Python, the serpent, destroyed by Apollo, 46.

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