240 Gleanings from the 



horrendum, informe, ingens," difappears. " A 

 cave reftrains Scylla with its dark recelTes as fhe 

 thrufts forth her mouths and drags fhips on to the 

 rocks. Above, ihe bears the countenance of a 

 man, and as far as her loins is a virgin, with 

 beautiful breafts; her extremities form a fea- 

 monfter " (piftrix\ " with huge body and the 

 womb of wolves attached to the tails of dolphins." 1 

 A pretty account of the transformation of Scylla 

 into this fea-monfter may be found in Ovid 

 (" Met.," xiv. 60-67). The poetic inftincT:, how- 

 ever, is ftrong with Virgil ; when defcribing the 

 defcent of two Centaurs from fnowy mountains he 

 refrains from particulars, and merely calls them 

 " nubigenas " 2 cloud-fprung. Though primarily 

 denoting their parentage, the epithet is in other 

 ways a happy one from its indefmitenefs. 



Even fifty years before the Chriftian era, not 

 only the monftrous creatures above fpoken of, but 

 alfo the ordinary deities, were only believed in by 

 the vulgar. Philofophers, however, either tacitly 

 endured or treated them with open contempt. 

 " The very children and old women ridiculed 

 Cerberus and the Furies, or treated them as mere 

 metaphors of confcience. In the deifm of Cicero, 

 the popular divinities were difcarded, the oracles 

 refuted and ridiculed, the whole fyftem of divina- 

 tion pronounced a political impofmre, and the 

 geneiis of the miraculous traced to the exuberance 

 of the imagination, and to certain difeafes of the 

 judgment." 3 Comedy at Athens early learnt to 



1 Virgil, ^En.," iii. 426. 2 Virgil, "^En.," vii. 674. 

 3 Lecky's " Hiftory of European Morals," vol. i., p. 165. 



