conquest over Israel; whom God himself exposed to those perils, within which they were so speedily folded up. In this miserable estate they continued full eighteen years, under Eglon, king of the Moabites, and his confederates. Yet, as the mercies of God are infinite, he turned not his ears from their crying repentance, but raised up Ehud, the son of Gera, to deliver them; by which weak man, though maimed in his right hand, yet confident in the justness of his quarrel, and fearing that the Israelites were too few in numbers to contend with the head of those valiant nations, he resolved to attempt upon the person of Eglon, whom if he could but extinguish, he assured himself of the following victory; especially giving his nation no time to reestablish their government, or to choose a king to command and direct them in the wars. According to which resolution, Ehud went on as an ambassador to Eglon, loaden with presents from the Israelites, as to appease him; and obtaining private access upon the pretence of some secret to be revealed, he pierced his body with a poniard, made of purpose, with a double edge, and shutting the doors of his closet upon him, escaped.

It may seem that being confident of his good success, he had prepared the strength of Israel in readiness. For suddenly after his return, he did repass Jordan, and invading the territory of Moab, overthrew their army, consisting of 10,000 able and strong men; whereof not any one escaped. After which victory, and that Samgar his successor had miraculously slain 600 Philistines with an ox goad, the land and people of Israel lived in peace, unto the end of fourscore years from the death of Othoniel; which term expired in the world's year 2691.

In the days of Ehud, Naomi, with Elimelech her husband, and with her two sons, travelled into Moab; and so the story of Ruth is to be referred to this time. About the beginning of the fourscore years which are given to Ehud it was that Orcus, king of the Molossians, otherwise Pluto, stale Proserpina, as she walked to gather flowers in the fields of Hipponium in Sicilia; or (according to Pausanias in Att.)

by the river Cephisus, which elsewhere he calleth Chemer, if he mean not two distinct rivers. This stealth being made known to Pirithous, with whom Hercules and Theseus joined themselves, they agreed together to recover her; but Pluto or Orcus (whom others call Aidoneus) had, as they say, a very huge dog, which fastened on Pirithous, and tare him in pieces, and had also worried Theseus, but that Hercules speedily rescued him, and by strength took and mastered the dog Cerberus; whereof grew the fable of Hercules's delivering of Theseus out of hell. But Tzetzes, as I take it, hath written this story somewhat more according to the truth. For Theseus and Pirithous, saith he, attempted to steal Proserpina, daughter to Aidoneus, king of the Molossians, who had Ceres to wife, the mother of Proserpina; Proserpina being a general name also for all fair women. This purpose of theirs being known to Aidoneus, Theseus and Pirithous were both taken; and because Pirithous was the principal in this conspiracy, and Theseus drawn on by a kind of affection or inforcement, the one was given for food to Aidoneus's great dog Cerberus, the other held prisoner; till Hercules, by the instigation of Eurystheus, delivered him by strong hand. The Molossi, which Stephanus writes with a single s, were a people of Epirus, inhabiting near the mountains of Pindus ; of which mountains Eta is one of the most famous, where Hercules burnt himself. The river of Acheron (which the poets describe to be in hell) riseth out of the same hills. There is another nation of the Molossi in Thessaly; but these are neighbours to the Cassiopæi, saith Plutarch in his Greek Questions.

The rape of Orithyia, the daughter of Erichtheus, king of Athens, taken away by Boreas of Thrace, is referred to the time of Ehud. The poets ascribe this rape to the north wind, because Thrace is situate north from Athens. In his time also Tereus ravished Philomela, of which the fable was devised of her conversion into a nightingale. For Tereus, having married her sister Progne, conducting Philomela from Athens to see her sister, forced her in the pas

sage, and withal cut out her tongue, that she might not complain; persuading Progne his wife that Philomela died in the midway: all which her brother-in-law's merciless behaviour towards her, Philomela expressed by her needle upon cloth, and sent it to Progne. In revenge whereof, Progne caused her only son Itys to be cut in pieces, and set before Tereus her husband, so dressed, as it appeared to be some other ordinary food; of which when he had eaten his fill, she caused his head, hands, and feet to be presented unto him; and then fled away with such speed towards Athens, where her father Pandion yet lived, as the poets feigned that she was turned into a swallow. The place where it was performed Strabo finds to be Daulis in Phocis; and the tomb of Tereus, *Pausanias hath built near the rocks Mergi, in the territory of Athens. By which, as also by the name Daulis, where these things are supposed to have been done, (whence also Philomela is called Daulias ales,) it appears that it is true which Thucydides notes by way of digression in his y Peloponnesian war, that this Tereus was not king in that which is now called Thracia, or in Odrysæ, (as the poets call him Odrysius,) but that Phocis, a country in Greece not far from Attica, a city whereof is called Daulia, was in Pandion's time inhabited by Thracians, of which this Tereus was king; whence Pandion, to have amity with his neighbours, made him his son-in-law; as it is good to believe, saith Thucydides, that Pandion, king of Athens, made that alliance with a neighbour king, from whom he might have succour, rather than with any Tereus that should have held the kingdom of Odrysæ, which was greatly distant from thence. The occasion that the poets chose a swallow for Progne to be turned into, may seem to have been partly because, as Pausanias says, Daulide nec nidificant, nec habitant in tota circum regione hirundines; "as "if a swallow, remembering the wrong that was there done "to her and to her sister, did for ever hate that place."

Near this time Melampus (who is said to have understood the voices of birds and beasts) flourished, being also * Lib. 9. Pau. in Att.

Y Thục. I. 2.

esteemed for an excellent physician. He restored to their former health the daughters of Prætus, king of the Argives, who (as the poets please) were made mad by Juno; and, thinking themselves to be kine, fled into the woods, fearing to be constrained to the plough; for in those countries, where the ground was light, they did use often to plough with kine.

In the 47th year of Ehud, Tros began to reign in Dardania, and gave it his own name; about which time Phemone, the chief priest of a Apollo in Delphos, devised the heroical verse.

Of the same date was Tantalus, king of Lydia; whom Eusebius makes king of Phrygia, and also of that part of which the people were anciently Mæones. Of Tantalus was devised the fable that some poets have applied to the passion of love, and some to the covetous, that dare not enjoy his riches. Eusebius calls this Tantalus the son of Jupiter by the nymph Pleta; Diaconus and Didymus, in Zezes, give him another mother. He was said to be the son of Jupiter, as some will have it, because he had that planet in his ascendent, betokening wisdom and riches. It is said that when he made a feast to the gods, having nothing more precious, he caused his own son to be slain and dressed for the banquet; of whom Ceres eat part of one of the shoulders; whereby was signified, that those men which seek after divine knowledge, prefer nothing on earth before it, no not the care of their own children, of all else the most dearest. And where it was devised that he had always water and fruit offered to his lips, and yet suffered the torment of hunger and thirst, it was meant thereby, that though he abounded (by reason of his riches) in all delicacy of the world, yet his mind being otherwise, and to higher desires transported, he enjoyed no pleasure at all by the rest. whom Ovid:

Quærit aquas in aquis, et poma fugacia captat
Tantalus, hoc illi garrula lingua dedit.

Of

b Euseb. Præp. Evang. 1. 2. Zezes Hist. 10. Chil. 5.

Here Tantalus in water seeks

For water, and doth miss

The fleeting fruit he catcheth at :

His long tongue brought him this.

This punishment, they say, was inflicted upon him for that he discovered the secrets of the gods; that is, because he taught wisdom and virtue to mortal men: which story Cornelius Gallus hath elegantly expressed in verse. Others expound this fable otherwise, and say, that Tantalus, though he excelled in riches, yet being thirsty of more abundance, was never satisfied. Of whom Horace against covetous

ness:

Tantalus a labiis sitiens fugientia captat

Flumina. Quid rides? mutato nomine de te
Fabula narratur.

The thirsting Tantalus doth catch

At streams that from him flee.

Why laughest thou? the name but chang'd,

The tale is told of thee.

Others conceive, where it is feigned of Tantalus that he gave the nectar and ambrosia of the gods to vain and unworthy men, that he was therefore by them in that sort punished. Of which Natalis out of Pindarus:

Immortalitatem quod furatus,
Coætaniis convivis

Nectar ambrosiamque dedit.

Because that stealing immortality,

He did both nectar and ambrosia give

Το guests of his own age, to make them live.

Whereby it was meant, that the secrets of divinity ought not to be imparted to the unpure vulgar. For as the cleanest meats in a foul stomach are therein corrupted, so the most high and reserved mysteries are often perverted by an unclean and defiled mind.

To you it is given (saith Christ in St. Mark iv. 11.) to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all things be done in parables. So is it said of him in Mark iv. 34. that he expounded all things to his disciples