22 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



with it. The Peruvians, under the same natural condi- 

 tions, were equally ignorant 1 



The traditions of magnetic attraction, however, date 

 from periods far earlier than the days of Nicander. The 

 iron of antiquity was mined chiefly on the islands and 

 coasts of the <gean Sea, and on Elba and Crete, although 

 some came even from distant Ethiopia. That found on 

 the slopes of Mount Ida or on the Mediterranean islands 

 was famous. Its strange hunger for other iron, which it 

 seized and drew unto itself, was to the superstitious Greek 

 a mystery, concerning which the uninitiated might not 

 even think for fear of the anger of the gods : the anger of 

 Celmis, and Damnamenus and Acnion the irresistible, and 

 later of Azieros, Aziokersa and Aziokersos, whose very 

 names were mystic and dangerous to speak. 



In far-off ages, so said the legend, Rhea, the earth god- 

 dess of Phrygia, sent to Ida, and thence to Samothrace, in 

 the -gean, those of her children who were skillful under- 

 ground, and wise in their knowledge of the ores, and 

 where they lay hidden in the cracks and crevices of the 

 rock. And, because of their skill, these emissaries re- 

 ceived the name of "Dactyls" fingers ; for they were "the 

 fingers of Rhea." Some of them went to Crete ; but 

 wherever they journeyed (and Samothrace became their 

 main abode), they dug into the earth and brought out 

 the iron ore ; and when the people saw them heat this, 

 and melt it and produce the black, hard ringing metal, 

 they believed them to be gods, and their art a mystery. 



As a matter of fact the Idean Dactyls seem to have been 

 merely a roving band of Phrygian miners, 2 who carried 



1 Prescott : History of the Conquest of Mexico. 1865, i., 139, and works 

 there cited. 



Lyell, Sir C. : The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man. 

 London, 1873, 8. 



3 Rossignol, cit. sup., refers to the Scholiast of Apollonius of Rhodes on 

 the Phoronid, an ancient and fragmentary poem which he considers as 

 old as the works of Hesiod and Homer. This, concerning the Idean 

 Dactyls, says, "they first found in the mountain forests the art of the 



