They regarded not her entreaties, but with many threats endeavoured to drive her away; and lest she should drink, they leaped into the water and mudded the stream. This great inhumanity moved the indignation of Latona, who, not able to bear such barbarous treatment, cursed them, and said to them, "May ye always live in this water. Immediately they were turned into frogs, and leaped into the muddy waters, where they ever after lived.

M. Who do you think that stately "goddess is, who is drawn in a chariot of gold, by white horses?

P. Is it not Aurora, the daughter of Terra and Titan, the sister of the Sun and the Moon, and the mother of the Stars and the Winds? I fancy so; because her countenance shines like gold, and her fingers are red like roses, and Homer describes Aurora after that manner.

M. Your observation is very right: it is, as you

1

Quem non blanda Dee potuissent verba movere ?

Hi tamen orantem perstant prohibere; minasque,
Ni procul absedat, conviciaque insuper adunt.
Nec satis est ipsos etiam pedibusque, manuque
Turbavere lacus: imoque è gurgite mollem
Huc illuc limum saltu movere maligno.

With whom would not such gentle words prevail?
But they, persisting to prohibit, rail;

The place with threats command her to forsake;
Then, with their hands and feet, disturb the lake :
And, leaping with malicious motions, move

The troubled mud; which, rising, floats above. in Eternum stagno, dixit, vivatis in isto:

Eveniunt optata Deæ.

E'er, said she, may ye in this water dwell:
And, as the goddess wish'd, it happ❜d.

n Virg, En. 6. Theocr. in Hyla. Apollon. 1. 1. in Vener.

°Hymn.

say, Aurora, whom the Greeks call by another name; you have named her parents right; yet some say, that she was the daughter of Hyperion and Thia, or else Pallas, from whom the poets also called her Pallantias.

P. Does history relate nothing done by her?

M. Yes, she by force carried two beautiful young men, Cephalus and Tithonus, into heaven.

Cephalus married Procris, the daughter of the king of Athens. When Aurora could by no persuasion move him to violate his marriage-vow, she carried him into heaven; but even there she could not shake his constancy; therefore she sent him again to his wife Procris, disguised in the habit of a merchant; who, being desirous to try her fidelity to her absent husband, tempted her, with much courtship and many presents, to yield to his desires; and when she almost consented, he cast off his disguise, and chid his wife for her inconstancy. She was greatly ashamed, and hid herself in the woods; but afterward was reconciled to her husband, and gave him an arrow, which never missed the mark, which she had received from Minoe. When Cephalus had this arrow, he spent his whole time in hunting and pursuing wild beasts. Procris, suspecting that her husband loved some nymphs, went before, and lay in a bush, to discover the truth; but when she moved carelessly in the bush, her husband heard the rustling, and, thinking that some wild beast was there, drew his bow, and shot his wife with his unerring arrow.

Tithonus was the son of Laomedon, and brother of Priamus; Aurora, for his singular beauty, carried him up to heaven, and married him; and, instead of a portion, obtained from the Fates immortality for him; and she had Memnon by him: but she forgot to ask the Fates to grant him perpetual youth, so that he became

P Græcè dicitur 'Has et 'Ew's unde Eous et Heous: Latinis nominatur Aurora, quasi Aurea. Est enim, ut inquit Orpheus in Hymnis, 'Ayysλía O Travos, id est, Solis Nuncia. 9 Hesiod. r Ovid. Met. 7. Pausan. in Lacon. $ Ovid. * Horatius, 1. 2. Carm.

in Theogon.

Met. 7.

so old and decrepid, that, like an infant, he was rocked to sleep in a cradle. Hereupon he grew weary of life, and, wishing for death, asked Aurora to grant him power to die. She said, that it was not in her power to grant it; but that she would do what she could; "and therefore turned her husband into a grasshopper, which, they say, moults when it is old, and grows young again. P. And what became of Memnon?

M. Memnon went to Troy, to assist king Priam, where, in a duel with Achilles, he was killed; and in the place where he fell, a fountain arose, which every year, on the same day on which he died, sends forth blood instead of water. But as his body lay upon the funeral pile to be burnt, it was changed into a bird by his mother Aurora's intercession; and many other birds of the same kind flew out of the pile with him, which, from his name, were called Aves Memnonia: these, dividing themselves into two troops, and furiously fighting with their beaks and claws, with their own blood appeased the ghost of Memnon, from whom they sprung.

There was a statue of this Memnon, made of black marble, and set up in the temple of Serapis at Thebes, in Egypt, of which they relate an incredible story: for it is said, that the mouth of this statue, when first touched by the rays of the rising sun, sent forth a sweet and harmonious sound, as though it rejoiced when its mother Aurora came; but at the setting of the sun, it sent forth a low melancholy tone, as though it lamented it's mother's departure.

And thus I have told you, Paleophilus, all things which I thought useful concerning the celestial gods and goddesses.

P. How much am I indebted to you for this, my most kind friend! But what now? Are you going away? Will you not keep your word? Did you not promise to explain all the fabulous images in the Pantheon?

u Ovid. Met. 13. Tzetzes Chil. 6,

* Ovid. Met. 13. y Lucian. in. Philo.