riage promise, was transformed to stone; of Scython, who changed
his sex; of Celemis, a nurse of Jupiter, converted to adamant; and of
the nymph Similax, and her lover Crocus, turned into flowers--prefers
the history of the fountain Salmacis, who conceived a violent
attachment for Hermaphroditus, the son of Mercury and Venus. These
sisters, having discontinued their narrating, remained still obstinate
in their contempt of Bacchus, who, in revenge, changed their
implements into vines and ivy, and themselves into bats.

Cadmus, a son of Agenor, king of Ph[oe]nicia, and Telephassa or
Agriope, was ordered by his father to go in search of his sister
Europa, whom Jupiter had carried away, and not to return unless he
found her. His search being unsuccessful, he is said to have consulted
the oracle of Apollo, by which he was commanded to build a city where
he saw a heifer standing on the grass, and call the country B[oe]otia.
Having found the heifer, he sent his men to a fountain for water,
which was at no great distance, that he might offer a sacrifice in
gratitude to the god. But the spring being sacred to Mars, a dragon
guarded it, which devoured all his men. By the art of Minerva, he
overcame the dragon, and sowed its teeth, which grew up armed men,
who, on his throwing a stone amongst them, began to fight, and all
were killed except five, who assisted him in building Thebes. Hence
Pentheus, in addressing the Thebans, calls them Anguigenae, serpent or
snake-descended. The ferocity of the petty tribes who inhabit that
part of Greece, and Cadmus's plan of subduing the natives by artfully
exciting them to fight against each other until the strength and
resources of the contending parties were quite exhausted,
satisfactorily explain the tale of the dragon, the armed men that
sprang from his teeth, and the stone which he threw among them. He
afterwards married Harmonia or Harmonie, the daughter of Mars and
Venus, by whom he had one son and four daughters. In advanced life,
oppressed with sorrow at the fate of his daughter Ino and her two
sons, he fled from Thebes to Illyricum, where he was changed into a
dragon.

Halcyone's husband, Ceyx, a king of Trachinia, was drowned while
attempting to cross to Claros to consult the Oracle. Disconsolate in
consequence of his departure, she incessantly implored the gods for
his safe return. Juno, moved by her constant prayers for her husband
after his death, and compassionating the violenc