Fabulous History of Greece. 69 



no doubt, it appeared to them unmeaning. Hence, therefore, 

 they imagined it was a retributive punishment inflicted upon 

 these females on account of their cruel murder of their hus- 

 bands. What may, perhaps, add confirmation to this view of 

 the fable, is the fact recorded by Diodorus Siculus respecting 

 the priests of the temple of the false god Osiris in Egypt ; 

 namely, that they filled three hundred and sixty milk bowls 

 every day. Sir Isaac Newton, in his Chronology , imagines 

 that the historian here means that the priests filled each day 

 one bowl out of three hundred and sixty bowls, counting 

 thereby the days of the Egyptian calendar year. Now it is 

 probable that these bowls were clepsydrae, each running for 

 twenty-four hours, thus noting also the time of the day, by 

 being adjusted with something of a graduated scale, according 

 to the descent of the fluid. They would answer, therefore, 

 the double purpose of a diurnal time-piece and of an annual 

 calendar. Taking, however, the historian according to the 

 more obvious meaning of his words, namely, that the priests 

 filled the whole number of the three hundred and sixty bowls 

 every day ; then, if each bowl ran exactly four minutes, and 

 they were filled by these numerous attendants accurately in 

 succession, the entire cycle would be completed just in the 

 twenty-four hours ; so that these four-minute chronometers 

 would give precisely the time of the day. Commencing also 

 every day one bowl lower down, if I may so say, in the order, 

 then the days of a year of three hundred and sixty days would 

 be likewise kept by the number of the bowl with which they 

 began each day. Indeed, were we even unable to assign any 

 probable reason for this custom, still it would serve so far to 

 explain the fable of the Danaides ; inasmuch as, Egyptians 

 as they were by birth, there can be but little doubt but that 

 they carried with them into Greece their Egyptian predilec- 

 tions and Egyptian rites. Hence, therefore, we might natu- 

 rally expect to find some notice, though tinged as it is with 

 fable, of their having adopted this Egyptian custom of pouring 

 a fluid into perforated vessels, and that, no doubt, with the 

 same view, whatever that might be, with which it was origi- 

 nally practised in their native land. 



