Ver. 645. Cragos was a mountain of
Lycia.]

[Footnote 64: _Lymira._--Ver. 645. This was a city of Lycia, near
Cragos.]

EXPLANATION.

This shocking story has been also recounted by Antoninus Liberalis
and both he and Ovid have embellished it with circumstances, which
are the fruit of a lively imagination. They make Byblis travel over
several countries in search of her brother, who flies from her
extravagant passion, and they both agree in tracing her to Caria.
There, according to Antoninus Liberalis, she was transformed into a
Hamadryad, just as she was on the point of throwing herself from the
summit of a mountain. Ovid, on the other hand, says that she was
changed into a fountain, which afterwards bore her name.

It is, however, most probable, that if the story is founded on
truth, the whole of the circumstances happened in Caria; since we
learn, both from Apollodorus and Pausanias, that Miletus, her
father, went from the island of Crete to lead a colony into Caria,
when he conquered a city, to which he gave his own name. Pausanias
says, that all the men of the city being killed during the siege,
the conquerors married their wives and daughters. Cyanea, the
daughter of Maeander, fell to the share of Miletus, and Caunus and
Byblis were the offspring of that marriage. Byblis, having conceived
a criminal passion for her brother, he was obliged to leave his
father's court, that he might avoid her importunities; upon which
she died of grief. As she often went to weep by a fountain, which
was outside of the town, those who related the adventure, magnified
it, by stating that she was changed into the fountain, which, after
her death, bore her name. We are informed by Photius, on the
authority of the historian Conon, that it was Caunus who fell in
love with Byblis, and that she hanged herself upon a walnut tree.
Ovid also, in his 'Art of Love,' follows the tradition that she
hanged herself. 'Arsit et est laqueo fortiter ulta nefas.' Miletus
lived in the time of the first Minos, and, according to some
writers, married his daughter Acallis; but, having disagreed with
his father-in-law, he was obliged to leave Crete, and retired to
Caria.

The Persians had certain state ordinances, by which their monarchs
were enjoined to marry their own sisters; and, as Asia Minor was
overrun by them at the time when Croesus was conquered by Cyrus, it