them to one base department, and considered them as so many blacksmiths. And as they resided near Etna, they have made the burning mountain their forge:

19 Ferrum exercebant vasto Cyclopes in antro, Brontesque, Steropesque, et nudus membra Pyracmon.

OF

TEMPLE RITES

IN THE

FIRST AGES.

I Must continually put the reader in mind how common it was among the Greeks, not only out of the titles of the Deities, but out of the names of towers, and other edifices, to form personages, and then to invent histories to support what they had done. When they had created a number of such ideal beings, they tried to find out some relation: and thence proceeded to determine the parentage, and filiation of each, just as fancy directed. Some colonies from Egypt, and Canaan, settled in Thrace; as appears from numberless memorials. The parts which they occupied were upon the Hebrus, about Edonia, Sithonia,

and Mount Hæmus. They also held Pieria, and Peonia, and all the sea coast region. It was their custom, as I have before mentioned, in all their settlements to form puratheia; and to introduce the rites of fire, and worship of the Sun. Upon the coast, of which I have been speaking, a temple of this sort was founded, which is called Torone. The naine is a compound of Tor-On, as I have before taken notice. The words purathus, and puratheia, were, in the language of Egypt, Pur-Ath, and Por-Ait, formed from two titles of the God of fire. Out of one of these the Grecians made a personage, which they expressed Пporos, Prœtus, whose daughters, or rather priestesses, were the Protides. And as they followed the Egyptian rites, and held a Cow sacred, they were, in consequence of it, supposed to have been turned into cows; just as the priestesses of Hippa were said to have been changed into mares; the Enotrope and Peleiadæ into pigeons. Proteus of Egypt, whom Menelaus was supposed to have consulted about his passage homeward, was a tower of this sort with à purait. It was an edifice, where both priests and pilots resided to give information; and where

* Prœtides implerunt falsis mugitibus auras. Virgil. Eclog. 6.

v. 48.