Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/448

 416 HISTORY OF GREECE. researches are presented in a new version of fifty legends, amoK.g the most celebrated and the most fabulous, comprising the Cen taurs, Pasiphae, Aktseon, Kadmus and the Sparti, the SphinXj Cycnus, Daedalus, the Trojan horse, ^Eolus, Scylla, Geryon, Bellerophon, etc. It must be confessed that Palasphatus has performed his promise of transforming the " incredibilia " into narratives in themselves plausible and unobjectionable, and that in doing so he alwaya follows some thread of analogy, real or verbal. The Centaurs (he tells us) were a body of young men from the village of Nephele in Thessaly, who first trained and mounted horses foi the purpose of repelling a herd of bulls belonging to Ixion king of the Lapithce, which had run wild and done great damage : they pursued these wild bulls on horseback, and pierced them with their spears, thus acquiring both the name of Prickers (y.t'i'roQsg) and the imputed attribute of joint body with the horse. Aktason was an Arcadian, who neglected the cultivation of his land for the pleasures of hunting, and was thus eaten up by the expense of his hounds. The dragon whom Kadmus killed at Thebes, was in reality Drako, king of Thebes ; and the dragon's teeth which he was said to have sown, and from whence sprung a crop of armed men, were in point of i'act elephants' teeth, which Kadmus as a rich Phoenician had brought over with him : the sons of Drako sold these elephants' teeth and employed the proceeds to levy troops against Kadmus. Daedalus, instead of flying across the sea on wings, had escaped from Krete in a swift sailing-boat under a violent storm: Kottus, Briareus, and Gyges Avere not persons with one hundred hands, but inhabitants of the village of Hekatoncheiria in Upper Macedonia, who warred with the inhabitants of Mount Olympus against the Titans : Scylla, whom Odysseus so narrowly escaped, was a fast- been done in former times (he affirms), they would continue to be done now ; as they cannot be done now, we may be sure that they never were really done formerly fMinucius Felix, Octav. c. 20) : " Majoribus enim nostris tarn facilig in mendaciis fides fuit, ut temere crediderint etiam alia monstruosa mira miracula, Scyllam multiplicem, Chimseram multiformem, Hydram, et Cen- tauros. Quid illas aniles fabulas do hominibus aves, et feras homines, cl de hominibns arbores atque florcs ? Qua, si cssent facta, ficrent ; quia for, now posaunt, idea nee facta sunt."