250 History of Nature. [ BOOK VII. 



Pater appointed buying and selling ; he also devised the 

 Diadem, the Ornament of Kings, and the Triumph. Ceres 

 shewed the use of Corn, whereas before Men lived on Mast. 

 She taught also how to grind Corn, to knead Dough, and 

 make Bread of it, in Attica, Italy, and Sicily ; for which she 

 was reputed a Goddess. She it was that began to make 

 Laws ; but others have thought that Rhadamanthns was the 

 first Lawgiver. I am of opinion, that Letters ever were in 

 Assyria ; but some think, as particularly Gellius, that they 

 were invented by Mercury in Egypt, and others will have it 

 that they came first from Syria. True it is, that Cadmus 

 brought into Greece from Phcenice to the Number of sixteen; 

 to which Palamedes, in the Time of the Trojan War, added 

 four, in these characters, 0, 3, <, X. And after him Simon- 

 ides Melicus 1 produced the same Numbers, z, H, T, a : the 

 Force of all which Letters we acknowledge among ourselves. 

 Aristotle is rather of opinion, that there were eighteen an- 

 cient Letters : A, B, r, A, E, z, i, K, A, M, N, o, n, p, 2, T, r, $, 

 and that the other two, and X, were added by Epicharmus, 

 and not by Palamedes. Anticlides writeth, that one in Egypt 

 named Menon was the Inventor of Letters, fifteen Years be- 

 fore the Time of Phoroneus, the most ancient King of Greece : 

 and he endeavoureth to prove the same by Monuments. On 

 the other Hand, Epigenes, an Author as renowned as any, 

 sheweth, that among the Babylonians there were found 

 Observations of the Stars for 7*20 Years, written on Bricks ; 

 and they who speak of the least, as Berosus and Critodemus, 

 report the like for 480 Years. Whereby it appeareth that 

 the use of Letters was eternal. The Pelasgi brought their 

 use into Latium. Euryalus and Hyperbius, two Brothers at 

 Athens, invented the first Manufacture of Bricks and the 

 Formation of Houses ; for before their Time Caves were used 

 for Houses. Gellius is of opinion that Doxius, the Son of 

 Ccelus, devised the first Houses that were made of Clay ; 

 taking his Pattern from the Nests of Swallows. Cecrops 

 called a Town after his own Name, Cecropia ; which at this 



1 Some copies read Medicus, " a physician." Wern. Club. 



