sage, and withal cut out her tongue, that she might not complain; persuading Progne his wife that Philomela died in the midway all which her brother-in-law's merciless behaviour towards her, Philomela expressed by her needle upon cloth, and sent it to Progne. In revenge whereof, Progne caused her only son Itys to be cut in pieces, and set before Tereus her husband, so dressed, as it appeared to be some other ordinary food; of which when he had eaten his fill, she caused his head, hands, and feet to be presented unto him; and then fled away with such speed towards Athens, where her father Pandion yet lived, as the poets feigned that she was turned into a swallow. The place where it was performed Strabo finds to be Daulis in Phocis; and the tomb of Tereus, Pausanias hath built near the rocks Mergi, in the territory of Athens. By which, as also by the name Daulis, where these things are supposed to have been done, (whence also Philomela is called Daulias ales,) it appears that it is true which Thucydides notes by way of digression in his y Peloponnesian war, that this Tereus was not king in that which is now called Thracia, or in Odrysæ, (as the poets call him Odrysius,) but that Phocis, a country in Greece not far from Attica, a city whereof is called Daulia, was in Pandion's time inhabited by Thracians, of which this Tereus was king; whence Pandion, to have amity with his neighbours, made him his son-in-law; as it is good to believe, saith Thucydides, that Pandion, king of Athens, made that alliance with a neighbour king, from whom he might have succour, rather than with any Tereus that should have held the kingdom of Odrysæ, which was greatly distant from thence. The occasion that the poets chose a swallow for Progne to be turned into, may seem to have been partly because, as Pausanias says, Daulide nec nidificant, nec habitant in tota circum regione hirundines; "as "if a swallow, remembering the wrong that was there done "to her and to her sister, did for ever hate that place." Near this time Melampus (who is said to have understood the voices of birds and beasts) flourished, being also Lib. 9. Pau. in Att. y Thuc. 1. 2. Ꮓ esteemed for an excellent physician. He restored to their former health the daughters of Prætus, king of the Argives, who (as the poets please) were made mad by Juno; and, thinking themselves to be kine, fled into the woods, fearing to be constrained to the plough; for in those countries, where the ground was light, they did use often to plough with kine. In the 47th year of Ehud, Tros began to reign in Dardania, and gave it his own name; about which time Phemone, the chief priest of a Apollo in Delphos, devised the heroical verse. Of the same date was Tantalus, king of Lydia; whom Eusebius makes king of Phrygia, and also of that part of which the people were anciently Mæones. Of Tantalus was devised the fable that some poets have applied to the passion of love, and some to the covetous, that dare not enjoy his riches. bEusebius calls this Tantalus the son of Jupiter by the nymph Pleta; Diaconus and Didymus, in Zezes, give him another mother. He was said to be the son of Jupiter, as some will have it, because he had that planet in his ascendent, betokening wisdom and riches. It is said that when he made a feast to the gods, having nothing more precious, he caused his own son to be slain and dressed for the banquet; of whom Ceres eat part of one of the shoulders; whereby was signified, that those men which seek after divine knowledge, prefer nothing on earth before it, no not the care of their own children, of all else the most dearest. And where it was devised that he had always water and fruit offered to his lips, and yet suffered the torment of hunger and thirst, it was meant thereby, that though he abounded (by reason of his riches) in all delicacy of the world, yet his mind being otherwise, and to higher desires transported, he enjoyed no pleasure at all by the rest. whom Ovid: Quærit aquas in aquis, et poma fugacia captat z Paus. 1. 1. Homer. Odyss. 11. a Paus. Of b Euseb. Præp. Evang. 1. 2. Zezes Hist. 10. Chil. 5. Here Tantalus in water seeks For water, and doth miss The fleeting fruit he catcheth at: His long tongue brought him this. This punishment, they say, was inflicted upon him for that he discovered the secrets of the gods; that is, because he taught wisdom and virtue to mortal men: which story Cornelius Gallus hath elegantly expressed in verse. Others expound this fable otherwise, and say, that Tantalus, though he excelled in riches, yet being thirsty of more abundance, was never satisfied. Of whom Horace against covetous ness: Tantalus a labiis sitiens fugientia captat The thirsting Tantalus doth catch At streams that from him flee. Why laughest thou? the name but chang'd, The tale is told of thee. Others conceive, where it is feigned of Tantalus that he gave the nectar and ambrosia of the gods to vain and unworthy men, that he was therefore by them in that sort punished. Of which Natalis out of Pindarus: Immortalitatem quod furatus, Coætaniis convivis Nectar ambrosiamque dedit. Because that stealing immortality, He did both nectar and ambrosia give To guests of his own age, to make them live. Whereby it was meant, that the secrets of divinity ought not to be imparted to the unpure vulgar. For as the cleanest meats in a foul stomach are therein corrupted, so the most high and reserved mysteries are often perverted by an unclean and defiled mind. To you it is given (saith Christ in St. Mark iv. 11.) to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all things be done in parables. So is it said of him in Mark iv. 34. that he expounded all things to his disciples C apart. And therefore doth Gregory Nazianzen infer upon a place of St. Paul, Quod si Paulo licuisset effari ea, quorum ipsi cognitionem cœlum tertium et usque ad illud progressio suppeditavit, fortasse de Deo nobis aliquid amplius constaret; "If Paul might have uttered the things, the "knowledge whereof the third heavens, and his going thi"ther, did bring unto him, peradventure we might know "somewhat more of God." 66 Pythagoras, saith Reuclin, thought it not the part of a wise man, asino lyram exponere, aut mysteria, quæ ita reciperet, ut sus tubam, et fidem graculus, et unguenta scarabæus; quare silentium indixit discipulis, ne vulgo divinorum arcana patefacerent, quæ meditando facilius, quam loquendo apprehendantur; "to set an ass to a harp, or to "learn mysteries, which he would handle as a swine doth a trumpet, or a jay a viol, or scarabees and unclean flies "sovereign ointment: wherefore he commanded silence to "his disciples, that they should not disclose divine myste"ries to the common sort, which are easier learnt by medi"tation than by babbling." And therefore did the Egyptians communicate their mysteries among their priests in certain hieroglyphic letters, to the end that their secrets might be hidden from the vulgar; and that they might bestow the more time in the contemplation of their covered meanings. But to proceed with the contemporaries of Aod, or Ehud, with him it is also said that Tityus lived, whom Apollo slew, because he sought to force his mother Latona. Euphorion hath it thus, that Tityus was the son of Elara, the daughter of Orchomenus; which Elara being beloved of Jupiter, to avoid Juno's revenge he hid Elara in the earth, where she was delivered of Tityus; whose mother dying, and himself therein nourished, he was therefore called the son of the earth. Pausanias, speaking of the grave of this giant, affirms, that his body occupied the third part of a furlong. But Tibullus hath a louder lie of his stature out of Homer: Greg. in Orat. de recta ratione dis. de Deo. 2 Cor. xii. a Porrectusque novem Tityus per jugera terræ, Assiduas atro viscere pascit aves. Nine furlongs stretch'd lies Tityus, who for his wicked deeds The hungry birds with his renewing liver daily feeds. This Strabo doth thus expound; that Apollo killing this cruel and wicked tyrant of Panopea, a city in Phocis, it was feigned by the poets, to the terror of others, that he was still eaten in hell by birds, and yet still lived, and had his flesh renewed. Admetus, king of Thessaly, lived also in this age, whom it is said that Apollo first served as a herdman, and afterwards, for his excellent wit, was by him advanced; but having slain Hyacinthus, he crossed the Hellespont, and fled into Phrygia; where, together with Neptune, he was entertained by Laomedon, and got his bread by working in brick, for building of the walls of Troy, not by making the bricks leap into their places by playing on his harp, according to him in Ovid, which saith, Ilion aspicies, firmataque turribus altis, Strong Ilion thou shalt see with walls and towers high, Thus the poets; but others, that he laboured with his hands, as hired in this work. And that he also laboured at the building of the labyrinth in Greece all the Megarians witness, saith Pausanias. In these days also of Ehud, or (as some find it) in the days of Deborah, lived Perseus, the son of Jupiter and Danae, by whose soldiers (as they sailed out of Peloponnesus to seek their adventure on Africa side) Medusa, the daughter and successor of Phorcus, being weakly accompanied as she hunted near the lake fTriton, was surprised and slain; whose beauty when Perseus beheld, he caused her d Hom. Odyss. II. e Paus. in Att. f Triton, a lake of Africa, which Pliny calleth Pallantias. Didym. in |
