is possible that the story of Byblis and Caunus may have originated
in the disgust which the natives felt for their conquerors, and as a
covert reproach to them for sanctioning alliances of so incestuous a
nature. While Ovid enters into details in the story, which trench on
the rules of modesty and decorum, the moral of the tale, aided by
some of his precepts, is not uninstructive as a warning to youth to
learn betimes how to regulate the passions.

FABLE VI. [IX.666-797]

Ligdus commands his wife Telethusa, who is pregnant, to destroy the
infant, should it prove to be a girl; on which, the Goddess Isis
appears to her in a dream, and, forbidding her to obey, promises her
her protection. Telethusa is delivered of a daughter, who is called
Iphis, and passes for a son. Iphis is afterwards married to Ianthe,
on which, Isis, to reward her mother's piety, transforms her into a
man.

The fame of this new prodigy would, perhaps, have filled the hundred
cities of Crete, if Crete had not lately produced a nearer wonder {of
her own}, in the change of Iphis.

For once on a time the Phaestian land[65] adjoining to the Gnossian
kingdom produced one Ligdus, of obscure name, a man of the freeborn
class of common people. Nor were his means any greater than his rank,
but his life and his honour were untainted. He startled the ears of his
wife in her pregnancy, with these words, when her lying-in was near at
hand: "Two things there are which I wish for; that thou mayst be
delivered with very little pain, and that thou mayst bring forth a male
child. The other alternative is a cause of greater trouble, and
providence has denied us means {for bringing up a female}. The thing I
abominate; but if a female should, by chance, be brought forth at thy
delivery, (I command it with reluctance, forgive me, natural affection)
let it be put to death." {Thus} he said, and they bathed their faces
with tears streaming down; both he who commanded, and she to whom the
commands were given. But yet Telethusa incessantly urged her husband,
with fruitless entreaties, not to confine his hopes within a compass so
limited. {But} Ligdus's resolution was fixed.

And now was she hardly {able} to bear her womb big with the burden ripe
for birth; when in the middle of the night, under the form of a vision,
the daughter of Inachus, attended by a train of her votaries, either
stood, or seemed to stand, before her bed. The horns of the mo