in caves), and their scions and coadjutors Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Mercury,
Apollo, Diana, Bacchus, Minerva, or Pallas, Ceres, Proserpine, Pluto,
and Neptune furnish by far the greatest part of the Mythology of Greece.
Tradition says that they left Phoenicia about the time of Moses to
settle in Crete, and from thence they made their way into Greece, which
was supposed at that time to be inhabited by a race of savages. The arts
and inventions were communicated to the natives, and the blessings of
civilization in process of time inspired the inhabitants with
admiration. They, therefore, relinquished worshipping the luminary and
heavenly bodies, and transferred their devotion to their benefactors.
Then into existence sprang the most inconsistent and irreconcilable
fictions. The deified mortals, with their foibles and frailities, were
transmitted to posterity in the most glorious manner possible, and hence
accordingly, in both the Odyssey and the Iliad of Homer, we have a
strange and heterogeneous mixture of what is not only mighty in heroes,
but also that which is equally mean.

In the Grecian Mythology the labours of Hercules, the expedition of
Osiris, the wanderings and transformation of Io, the fable of the
conflagration of Phaeton, the rage of Proserpine, the wanderings of
Ceres, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Orgia, or sacred rites of Bacchus,
in fine, the ground work of Grecian Mythology is to be traced to the
East, from where also all our nursery tales, and also our popular
Pantomime subjects; (which is the subject of another chapter) perhaps,
with the exception of our own "Robinson Crusoe," originated.

The nine Muses called Pierides in Grecian Mythology were the daughters
of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory), supposed to preside over the liberal
Arts and the sciences. They were Calliope (Heroic Poetry), Clio Euterpe
(Music), Erato (Love Poetry), Melpomene (Tragedy), Polyhymnia (Muse of