e to the stories of the Titans found
in caves), and their scions and coadjutors Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Mercury,
Apollo, Diana, Bacchus, Minerva, or Pallas, Ceres, Proserpine, Pluto,
and Neptune furnish by far the greatest part of the Mythology of Greece.
Tradition says that they left Phoenicia about the time 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 offerin