luto's throne, whose ministers they were, they awaited his orders with
an impatience congenial to their natures.

The Furies are described with snakes instead of hair, and eyes inflamed
with madness, brandishing in one hand whips and iron chains, and in the
other torches, with a smothering flame. Their robes are black, and their
feet of brass, to show that their pursuit, though slow, is steady and
certain. As they attended at the thrones of the Stygian and celestial
Jupiter, they had wings to accelerate their progress through the air,
when bearing the commands of the gods: they struck terror into mortals,
either by war, famine, pestilence, or the numberless calamities incident
to human life.

NOX, _or_ NIGHT, the oldest of the deities, was held in great esteem
among the ancients. She was even reckoned older than Chaos. Orpheus
ascribes to her the generation of gods and men, and says, that all
things had their beginning from her. Pausanias has left us a description
of a remarkable statue of this goddess. "We see," says he, "a woman
holding in her right hand a white child sleeping, and in her left a
black child likewise asleep, with both its legs distorted; the
inscription tells us what they are, though we might easily guess without
it: the two children are Death and Sleep, and the woman is Night, the
nurse of them both."

The poets fancied her to be drawn in a chariot with two horses, before
which several stars went as harbingers; that she was crowned with
poppies, and her garments were black, with a black veil over her
countenance, and that stars followed in the same manner as they preceded
her; that upon the departure of the day she arose from the ocean, or
rather from Erebus, and encompassed the earth with her sable wings. The
sacrifice offered to Night was a cock because of its enmity to darkness,
and rejoicing at the light.

SOMNUS, _or_ SLEEP, one of the blessings to which the pagans erected
altars, was said to be son of Erebus and, Night, and brother of Death.
Orpheus calls Somnus the happy king of gods and men; and Ovid, who gives
a very beautiful description of his abode, represents him dwelling in a
deep cave in the country of the Cimmerians. Into this cavern the sun
never enters, and a perpetual stillness reigns, no noise being heard but
the soft murmur caused by a stream of the river Lethe, which creeps over
the pebbles, and invites to slumber; at its entrance grow poppies, and
other soporiferous herbs. T