And quell'd his deadly might. Then social reign'd The kindred powers, Tethys, and reverend Ops, And spotless Vesta7; while supreme of sway cum causa causæ nexa rem ex se gignat-ex quo intelligitur, ut fatum sit non id quod superstitiose, sed id quod physice dicitur causa æterna rerum." To the same purpose is the doctrine of Hierocles, in that excellent fragment concerning Providence and Destiny. As to the three Fates, or Destinies of the poets, they represented that part of the general system of natural causes which relates to man, and to other mortal beings: for so we are told in the hymn ad. dressed to them among the Orphic Indigitamenta, where they are called the daughters of Night (or Love), and, contrary to the vulgar notion, are distinguished by the epithets of gentle, and tender-hearted. According to Hesiod, Theog. ver. 904, they were the daughters of Jupiter and Themis : but in the Orphic Hymn to Venus, or Love, that Goddess is directly stiled the mother of Necessity, and is represented, immediately after, as governing the three Destinies, and conducting the whole system of natural causes. 5 Cronos, Saturn, or Time, was, according to Apollodorus, the son of Cælum and Tellus. But the author of the hymns gives it quite undisguised by mythological language, and calls him plainly the offspring of the earth and the starry heaven; that is, of Fate, as explained in the preceding note. 4 The known fable of Saturn devouring his children was certainly meant to imply the dissolution of natural bodies; which are produced and destroyed by Time. 5 Jupiter, so called by Pindar. 6 That Jupiter dethroned his father Saturn, is recorded by all the mythologists. Phurnutus, or Cornutus, the author of a little Greek treatise on the nature of the gods, informs us, that by Jupiter was meant the vegetable soul of the world, which restrained and prevented those uncertain alterations which Saturn, or Time, used formerly to cause in the mundane system. 7 Our mythology here supposeth, that before the establishment of the vital, vegetative, plastic nature (represented by Jupiter) the four elements were in a variable and unsettled condition; but afterwards, well-disposed and at peace among themselves. Tethys was the wife of the Ocean; Ops or Rhea, the Earth; Vesta, the eldest daughter of Saturn, VOL. II. H Remain'd the cloud-compeller. From the couch [old You, Nymphs, the winged offspring 12, which of Fire; and the cloud-compeller, or Zɛuç vɛɛɛɛns, the Air: though he also represented the plastic principle of Nature, as inay be seen in the Orphic hymn inscribed to him. 8 The river-gods; who, according to Hesiod's Theogony, were the sons of Oceanus and Tethys. 9 The descent of the Naiads is less certain than most points of the Greek mythology. Homer, Odyss. xiii. xxpas Alos. Virgil, in The Eighth Book of the Eneid, speaks as if the Nymphs, or Naiads, were the parents of the rivers : but in this he contradicts the testimony of Hesiod, and evidently departs from the orthodox system, which representeth several nymphs as retaining to every single river. On the other hand, Callimachus, who was very learned in all the school-divinity of those times, in his hymn to Delos, maketh Peneus, the great Thessalian river-god, the father of his nymphs: and Ovid, in The Fourteenth Book of his Metamorphoses, mentions the Naiads of Latium as the immediate daughters of the neighbouring river gods. Accord ingly, the Naiads of particular rivers are occasionally, both by Ovid and Statius, called by a patronymic, from the name of the river to which they belong. 10 The grove of Daphne in Syria, near Antioch, was famous for its delightful fountains. 11 Mineral and medicinal springs. Pæon was the physician of the gods. 12 The Winds; who, according to Hesiod and Apollodorus, were the sons of Astræus and Aurora. Aurora to divine Astræus bore, Owns; and your aid beseecheth. When the might Ascend the cheerful breezes: hail'd of bards You too, O Nymphs, and your unenvious aid 19 A son of Cælum and Tellus, and father of the Sun, who is thence called, by Pindar, Hyperionides. But Hy perion is put by Homer in the same manner as here, for the Sun himself. 14 The state of the atmosphere with respect to rest and motion is, in several ways, affected by rivers and running streams; and that more especially in hot seasons: first, they destroy its equilibrium, by cooling those parts of it with which they are in contact; and secondly, they communicate their own motion: and the air which is thus moved by them, being left heated, is of consequence more elastic than other parts of the atmosphere, and therefore Atter to preserve and to propagate that motion. The rural powers confess; and still prepare To spread their deepest umbrage. Well the god Your genial dews to nurse them in their prime. Throws wide her blooms, her odours. Still with you 15 One of the epithets of Apollo, or the Sun, in the Orphic hymn inscribed to him. 16 The ancient Greek name for Flora. 17 The mother of the first Bacchus, whose birth and edu. cation was written, as Diodorus Siculus informs us, in the old Pelasgic character, by Thymates, grandson to Laomedon, and contemporary with Orpheus. Thymœtes had travelled over Libya to the country which borders on the western ocean; there he saw the island of Nysa, and learned from the inhabitants that " Ammon, king of Lybia, was married in former ages to Rhea, sister of Saturn and the Titans: that he afterwards fell in love with a beautiful virgin whose name was Amalthea: had by her a son, and gave her possession of a neighbouring tract of land, wonderfully fertile; which in shape nearly resembling the horn of an ox, was thence called the Hesperian horn, and afterwards the horn of Amalthea that fearing the jealousy of Rhea, he concealed the young Bacchus, with his mother, in the island of Nysa;" the beauty of which, Diodorus describes with great dignity and pomp of style. This fable is one of the noblest in all the ancient mythology, and seems to have made a particular impression on the imagination of Milton; the only modern poet (unless perhaps it be necessary to except Spenser) who, in these mysterious tra : Well-pleas'd the wealth of that Ammonian horn, For better praise awaits you. Thames, your sire, As down the verdant slope your duteous rills Descend, the tribute stately Thames receives, Delighted; and your piety applauds ; And bids his copious tide roll on secure, ditions of the poetic story, had a heart to feel, and words to express, the simple and solitary genius of antiquity. To raise the idea of his Paradise, he prefers it even to "that Nysean isle Girt by the river Triton, where old Cham, Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye." 18 The priestesses and other ministers of Bacchus; so called from Edonus, a mountain of Thrace, where his rites were celebrated. 19 Hermes, or Mercury, was the patron of commerce; in which benevolent character he is addressed by the author of the Indigitamenta, in these beautiful lines: Ερμηνευ τσανίων, κερδεμπορε, λυσιμερίμνες |