2 io CURIOUS CREATURES. 



The Greeks worshipped her as Astarte, and later on as 

 Venus Aphrodite she was perfect woman, still, how- 

 ever, born of the Sea-foam, and attended by Tritons or 

 Mermen. 



These Tritons and Nereids, male and female, were 

 firmly believed in by both Greek and Roman who both 

 depicted them alike the Triton, sometimes having a 

 trident, sometimes without, but both Triton, and Nereid, 

 perfect man and woman, of high types of manly and femi- 

 nine beauty, to the waist below which was the body of 

 a fish of the Classical dolphin type. So ingrained have 

 these forms become in humanity, that it would seem 

 almost impossible to realise a Merman, or Mermaid, other 

 than as usually depicted. 



Pliny, of course, tells about them: "A deputation 

 of persons from Olisipo (Lisbon) that had been sent for 

 the purpose, brought word to the Emperor Tiberius 

 that a Triton had been both seen and heard in a certain 

 cavern, blowing a Conch shell, and of the form they are 

 usually represented. Nor yet is the figure generally 

 attributed to the nereids at all a fiction, only in them 

 the portion of the body that resembles the human figure, 

 is still rough all over with scales. For one of these 

 creatures was seen upon the same shores, and, as it died, 

 its plaintive murmurs were heard, even by the inhabi- 

 tants, at a distance. 



"The legatus of Gaul, too, wrote word to the late 

 Emperor Augustus, that a considerable number of nereids 

 had been found dead upon the sea-shore. I have, too, 

 some distinguished informants of equestrian rank, who 

 state that they themselves once saw, in the Ocean of 

 Gades, a sea-man, which bore in every part of his body, 

 a perfect resemblance to a human being, and that during 



