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Rh king Ogyges to be a creature of fiction, we confine ourselves to the inquiry : what may have been the cause of his name having been placed at the head of the list of Attic Kings.

According to J. K. Ogyges, a lengthened form of Gyges, signifies a man of darkness, being derived from the noun which was equivalent to. This would appear indeed to be something more than conjecture, if we could rely on the present reading in Hesychius, in the words. But we are rather surprised that J. K., who quotes another gloss of the same lexicographer, should not have been struck with the inference which it suggests against the genuineness of the word for which the editors of Hesychius with one accord have proposed to substitute. Still it would not follow, if this connection is admitted, that may not originally have signified dark. Who can say, if Alberti's suspicion is well founded, and we ought to read the gloss after, that may not have been derived from and have been equivalent to which might answer J. K's purpose even better than the etymology which he adopts. But leaving this in its present uncertainty, we proceed to consider the arguments produced in confirmation of the lexicographer's very questionable evidence. Calypso's island was named and it was " situated on the furthest verge of the West, the region of the evening shades," and "the goddess herself appears from her name to have been originally a being presiding over darkness." From this it is inferred that the sense of dark suits very well the Homeric application of the name to Calypso's island. I must own that the force of this inference appears to me to be considerably weakened by the fact, that however near Homer may have imagined Calypso's island to have been to the region of the evening shades, he does not represent it as itself dark or gloomy: and whatever he may have thought of the proper functions of the nymph, he does not describe her as withdrawing her charms from view. To any eye but that of Ulysses Ogygia would have seemed a very cheerful place ; for it is one on which even a god might gaze with delight, and which by its beauty arrests the steps of Hermes when he is bearing his message (Od. E. 75) : and the hero is well aware how inferior his Penelope