Page:Gesta Romanorum - Swan - Wright - 1.djvu/469

Rh her author and not grow too proud of her golden beard." P. 31.

This idea seems to have arisen from a witticism of Dionysius the tyrant of Syracuse, recorded by Valerius Maximus, lib. 1. Cap. 1. ex. 37.

"Idem Epidauri Æsculapio barbam auream demi jussit: quod affirmaret, non convenire patrem Apollinem imberbem, ipsum barbatum."

"This story is founded on the twenty-eighth chapter of Aristotle's : in which a queen of India is said to have treacherously sent to Alexander, among other costly presents, the pretended testimonies of her friendship, a girl of exquisite beauty, who having been fed with serpents from her infancy, partook of their nature. If I recollect right, in Pliny, there are accounts of nations whose natural food was poison. Mithridates, king of Pontus, the land of venomous herbs, and the country of the sorceress Medea, was supposed to eat poison. Sir John Mandeville's Travels, I believe, will afford other instances."—.