es Magnus thinks the Samoeids and
Laplanders to have been the Pygmies of Homer. Gesner and others fancy
that they have found their originals in Thuringia; while Albertus
Magnus supposed that the Pygmies were the monkeys, which are so
numerous in the interior of Africa, and which were taken for human
beings of diminutive stature. Vander Hart, who has written a most
ingenious treatise on the subject, suggests that the fable originated
in a war between two cities in Greece, Pagae and Gerania, the
similarity of whose names to those of the Pygmies and the Cranes, gave
occasion to their neighbors, the Corinthians, to confer on them those
nicknames. It is most probable, however, that the story was founded
upon the diminutive stature of some of the native tribes of the
interior of Africa.

As to the fable of Pygas being changed into a crane, Banier suggests,
that the origin of it may be found in the work of Antoninus Liberalis,
quoting from the Theogony of Boeus. That poet, whose works are lost,
says, that among the Pygmies there was a very beautiful princess,
named Oenoe, who greatly oppressed her subjects. Having married
Nicodamas, she had by him a son, named Mopsus, whom her subjects
seized upon, to educate him in their own way. She accordingly raised
levies against her own subjects; and that circumstance, together with
the name of Gerane, which, according to AElian, she also bore, gave
rise to the fable, which said that she was changed into a crane; the
resemblance which it bore to 'geranos,' the Greek for 'a crane,'
suggesting the foundation of the story.

FABLE II. [VI.146-312]

The Theban matrons, forming a solemn procession in honor of Latona,
Niobe esteems herself superior to the Goddess, and treats her and her
offspring with contempt; on which, Apollo and Diana, to avenge the
affront offered to their mother, destroy all the children of Niobe;
and she, herself, is changed into a statue.

All Lydia is in an uproar, and the rumor of the fact goes through the
town of Phrygia, and fills the wide world with discourse {thereon}.
Before her own marriage Niobe had known her,[31] at the time, when still
single, she was inhabiting Maeonia and Sipylus.[32] And yet by the
punishment of her countrywoman, Arachne, she was not warned to yield to
the inhabitants of Heaven, and to use less boastful words. Many things
augmented her pride; but yet, neither the skill of her h