e; and that the Corinthians offered
sacrifices there every year, to appease their ghosts, as the oracle
had commanded them.

Apollodorus relates this story in a different manner. He says, that
Medea sent her rival a crown, dipped in a sort of gum of a combustible
nature; and that when Glauce had put it on her head, it began to burn
so furiously, that the young princess perished in the greatest misery.
Medea afterwards retired to Thebes, where Hercules engaged to give her
assistance against Jason, which promise, however, he failed to
perform. Going thence to Athens, she married AEgeus.

The story of her winged dragons may, perhaps, be based on the fact,
that her ship was called 'the Dragon.' In recounting the particulars
of her flight, Ovid makes allusion to several stories by the way, the
most of which are entirely unknown to us. With regard to these
fictions, it may not be out of place to remark here, as affording a
key to many of them, that where a person escaped from any imminent
danger, it was published that he had been changed into a bird. If, to
avoid pursuit, a person hid himself in a cave, he was said to be
transformed into a serpent; and if he burst into tears, from excess of
grief, he was reported to have changed into a fountain; while, if a
damsel lost herself in a wood, she became a Nymph, or a Dryad. The
resemblance of names, also, gave rise to several fictions: thus,
Alopis was changed into a fox; Cygnus into a swan; Coronis into a
crow; and Cerambus into a horned beetle. As some few of the stories
here alluded to by Ovid, refer to historical events, it may be
remarked, that the account of the women of Cos being changed into
cows, is thought by some to have been founded on the cruel act of the
companions of Hercules, who sacrificed some of them to the Gods of the
country. The inhabitants of the Isle of Rhodes were said to have been
changed into rocks, because they perished in an inundation, which laid
a part of that island under water, and particularly the town of
Ialysus. The fruitfulness of the daughter of Alcidamas occasioned it
to be said, that she was changed into a dove. The rage of Maera is
shown by her transformation into a bitch; and Arne was changed into a
daw, because, having sold her country, her avarice was well depicted
under the symbol of that bird, which, according to the popular
opinion, is fond of money. Phillyra, th