OF REMOTE AGES. 339 
as ‘sons of Neptune, one-eyed, homicides, and 
Cannibals ;* and all the other notices we have of 
them, are equally wild and unsatisfactory, with 
two exceptions. Strabof calls them yasrgoxsgas, 
or professional artificers—men who lived by the 
labour of their hands ;—but that he also consi- 
dered them to be giants, may, I think, be con- 
cluded from his statement, that only seven were 
employed in the fortification of Zyrins. Pliny 
speaks of them as the inventors of iron.{ 
On the whole, we may, I think, venture to con- 
clude that these fortifications are the work of a 
people who flourished before the historical era, 
probably thirty-two centuries ago ; who had made 
great advances in the mechanical arts, and who 
were, in consequence, employed in constructing 
fortresses for the Greek chieftains, before the 
siege of Troy; and that subsequently, (as the 
annotator upon Statius§ observes, ) whatever was 
distinguished by magnitude or grandeur, was 
attributed to them, and that out of these simple 
* Cyclopes, v. 20. v. 93. 
{ B. viii. 540. 
{ Fabricam ferream invenere Cyclopes. Nat. Hist. vii. c.56. 
We learn from Pausanias, that a temple was erected to 
them on the isthmus of Corinth. ii. ¢. 2. 
§ Lib.i. “ Quidquid magnitudine sua nobile est, Cyclopum 
manu fabricatum dicitur.” 
