ISBN: 9781437140170

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: APH… More...

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: APHRODITE AND ERYX 9 sweet voices, tried to drown them in the heavenly music of his own lyre. He succeeded in saving all the Argonauts but one, named Butes, a son of the great ruler of the sea, Poseidon (Neptune). To him the dulcet tones of the Sirens proved irresistible, and he threw himself into the Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www. million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: APHRODITE AND ERYX 9 sweet voices, tried to drown them in the heavenly music of his own lyre. He succeeded in saving all the Argonauts but one, named Butes, a son of the great ruler of the sea, Poseidon (Neptune). To him the dulcet tones of the Sirens proved irresistible, and he threw himself into the sea. But Aphrodite (Venus) took pity on him, and bore him in her arms to Lilybseum in Sicily, where she bare him a son, and called him Eryx, He founded a temple to his mother on Mount Eryx, where a number of slaves, called Hierodules, were given to the goddess and made to increase the treasures of the temple by their labour. Thousands of doves were kept there, but disappeared during a part of the year while the great goddess was in Africa. After nine days of absence they returned to Eryx, led by a red dove, which was Aphrodite herself. Doves still swarm there, and the Christian priests have tried in vain to banish these " Pagan devils." Artemis (Diana), too, as guardian of herds and flocks, and a great huntress in field and forest, was loved and devoutly worshipped by the Sicilians, especially in the centre of the island, whose inhabitants were devoted to pastoral pursuits and to the pleasures of the chase. Her influence pervades the charming pastoral idylls of the sweet singer, Theocritus. Of course the other great Olympian gods-Zeus (Jupiter), Hera (Juno), Poseidon (Neptune), Phoebus Apollo, Hephaistos (Vulcan), and Hermes (Mercury)- were also worshipped; but I have spoken more atlarge of the above, because they were more specifically Sicilian deities. One of the earliest cults, however, and by far the strangest, was that of the TlatKol (Palici), who were chiefly worshipped in the neighbourhood of Mount./Etna, and are peculiar to Sicily. They were the sons of Books, Law~~Essays, Sicily-in-Fable-History-Art-and-Song~~Walter-Copland-Perry, 999999999, Sicily in Fable, History, Art, and Song (1908), Walter Copland Perry, 1437140173, Kessinger Publishing Company, , , , , Kessinger Publishing Company<