e, was substituted for one of piracy; which gave
occasion for the saying, that Minerva had overcome Neptune.

With reference to the intrigues and lustful actions attributed to the
various Deities by Arachne in the delineations on her embroidery, we
may here remark, by way of elucidating the origin of these stories in
general, that, in early times, when the earth was sunk in ignorance
and superstition, and might formed the only right in the heathen
world, where a king or petty chieftain demanded the daughter of a
neighbor in marriage, and met with a refusal, he immediately had
recourse to arms, to obtain her by force. Their standards and ships,
on these expeditions, carrying their ensigns, consisting of birds,
beasts, or fabulous monsters, gave occasion to those who described
their feats of prowess to say, that the ravisher had changed himself
into a bull, an eagle, or a lion, for the purpose of effecting his
object. The kings and potentates of those days, being frequently
called Jupiter, Apollo, Neptune, etc., and the priests of the Gods so
named often obtaining their ends by assuming the names of the
Divinities they served, we can account the more easily for the number
of intrigues and abominable actions, attended by changes and
transformations, which the poets and mythologists attribute to many of
the Deities.

Palaephatus suggests a very ingenious method of accounting for these
stories; founded, however, it must be owned, on a very low estimate of
female virtue in those times. He says, that these fabulous narratives
originate in the figures of different animals which were engraved on
the coins of those times; and that, when money was given to buy over
or to procure the seduction of a female, it was afterward said that
the lover had himself taken the figure which was represented on the
coin, by means of which his object had been effected.

Ovid, in common with many of the ancient historians, geographers, and
naturalists, mentions the Pygmies, of which, from the time of Homer
downwards, a nation was supposed to exist, in a state of continual
warfare with the Cranes. Aristotle, who believed in their existence,
placed them in AEthiopia; Pliny, Solinus, and Philostratus in India,
near the source of the Ganges; others again, in Scythia, on the banks
of the Danube. Some of the moderns have attempted to explain the
origin of this prevalent notion. Olau