of Moses to settle in Crete, and from thence they made their way into Greece, which was supposed at that time to be inhabited by a race of savages.  The arts and inventions were communicated to the natives, and the blessings of civilization in process of time inspired the inhabitants with admiration.  They, therefore, relinquished worshipping the luminary and heavenly bodies, and transferred their devotion to their benefactors.  Then into existence sprang the most inconsistent and irreconcilable fictions.  The deified mortals, with their foibles and frailities, were transmitted to posterity in the most glorious manner possible, and hence accordingly, in both the Odyssey and the Iliad of Homer, we have a strange and heterogeneous mixture of what is not only mighty in heroes, but also that which is equally mean.

In the Grecian Mythology the labours of Hercules, the expedition of Osiris, the wanderings and transformation of Io, the fable of the conflagration of Phaeton, the rage of Proserpine, the wanderings of Ceres, the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Orgia, or sacred rites of Bacchus, in fine, the ground work of Grecian Mythology is to be traced to the East, from where also all our nursery tales, and also our popular Pantomime subjects; (which is the subject of another chapter) perhaps, with the exception of our own “Robinson Crusoe,” originated.

The nine Muses called Pierides in Grecian Mythology were the daughters of Jupiter and Mnemosyne (Memory), supposed to preside over the liberal Arts and the sciences.  They were Calliope (Heroic Poetry), Clio Euterpe (Music), Erato (Love Poetry), Melpomene (Tragedy), Polyhymnia (Muse of Singing and Rhetoric), Terpsichore (Dancing), Thalia (Comedy), and Urania (Astronomy).  Mount Parnassus, Mount Helicon, and the fountains of Castalia and Aganippe were the sacred places of the Muses.

The Eleusinian Mysteries are of a period that may be likened to the 7th century B.C., and at these Mysteries as many as 30,000 persons, in the time of Herodotus, assembled to witness them.  The attributes of these Grecian Mysteries, like those of the Egyptians, consisted of processions, sacrificial offerings, purifications, dances, and all that the Mimetic and the other Arts could convey; add to this the various coloured lights, and the fairy-like grandeur of the whole, we have something that may be likened to the Transformation, and other fairy-like scenes of English Pantomimes and Extravaganzas.

At the Orgia, or sacred rites of Bacchus, the customary sacrifice to be offered, because it fed on vines, was the goat.  The vine, ivy, laurel, asphodel, the dolphin, lynx, tiger, and ass were all sacred to Bacchus.  The acceptable sacrifice to Venus was a dove; Jupiter, a bull; an ox of five years old, ram or boar pig to Neptune; and Diana, a stag.  At the inception of the Bacchanalian festivals in Greece, the tragic song of the Goat, a sacred hymn was sung, and from which rude beginning sprang the