must have in memory, that I expiated* you in your distress, took you into my family, and supplied all your necessities. I have now, therefore, to solicit that return of kindness, which my conduct claims. In this proposed hunting excursion, you must be the guardian of my son: preserve him on the way from any secret treachery, which may threaten your common security. It is consistent that you should go where bravery may may be distinguished, and reputation gained: valour, has been the distinction of your family, and with personal vigour has descended to yourself."

XLII." At your request, O king!" replied Adrastus, "I shall comply with what I should otherwise have refused. It becomes not a man like myself, oppressed by so great a calamity, to appear among my more fortunate equals: I have never wished, and I have frequently avoided it. My gratitude, in the present instance, impels me to obey your commands. I will therefore engage to accompany and guard your son, and promise, as far as my care can avail, to restore him to you safe."

XLIII. Immediately a band of youths were selected, the dogs of chace prepared, and the train departed. Arriving in the vicinity of Olympus, they sought the beast; and having found his haunt, they surrounded it in a body, and attacked him with their spears. It so happened, that the stranger Adrastus, who had been purified for murder, directing a blow at the boar,

* If translated literally it should be, I purified you.

missed his aim, and killed the son of Croesus. Thus he was destroyed by the point of a spear*, and the vision proved to be prophetic. A messenger immediately hastened to Sardis, informing Croesus of the event which occasioned the death of his son.

XLIV. Crœsus, much as he was afflicted with his domestic loss, bore it the less patiently, because it was inflicted by him whom he had himself purified and protected. He broke into violent complaints at his misfortune, and invoked Jupiter, the deity of expiation, in attestation of the injury he had received. He invoked him also as the guardian of hospitality and friendship";

*The following singular story of a similar kind occurs in one of Mr. Pennant's entertaining volumes.

Sir Robert de Shurland, on a quarrel with his priest, buried the poor father alive: at that time it happened, that the king lay at anchor under the isle (Shepey). Sir Robert swam, on his horse, to the royal vessel, obtained his pardon, and returned to shore on his trusty steed. He then recollected that a witch had predicted he should owe his death to that horse. To render that void, he drew his sword and ungratefully put his faithful preserver to death.

Long after, passing by the spot, he saw its bones bleaching on the ground; he gave the skull a contemptuous kick; the bone wounded his foot: his foot mortified: the knight died, and the prediction was fulfilled.

58 Guardian of hospitality and friendship.]-Jupiter was adored under different titles, according to the place and ciroumstance of his different worshippers.-Larcher.

The sky was the department of Jupiter; hence he was deemed the god of tempests. The following titles were given him: Pluvius, Pluviosus, Fulgurator, Fulgurum Effector, Descenşor, Tonans. Other epithets were given him, relative to the wants of men, for which he was thought to provide. See Bos, Antiquities of Greece. The above observation is confined to

of hospitality, because, in receiving a stranger, he had received the murderer of his son; of friendship, because the man whose aid he might have expected, had proved his greatest enemy.

XLV. Whilst his thoughts were thus occupied, the Lydians appeared with the body of his son": the homicide followed. He advanced towards Croesus, and with extended hands, implored that he might suffer death upon the body of him whom he had slain. He recited his former calamities; to which was now to be added, that he was the destroyer of the man who had *expiated him: he was consequently no longer fit to live. Crœsus listened to him with attention; and, although oppressed by his own paternal grief, he could not refuse his compassion to Adrastus; to whom he spake as follows: "My friend, I am sufficiently revenged by your voluntary condemnation of yourself. You are not guilty of this event, for you did

the Greeks. The epithets of the Roman Jupiter were almost without number; and there was hardly, as Spence observes, a town, or even hamlet, in Italy, that had not a Jupiter of its own.-T.

59 Body of his son.]-This solemn procession of the Lydians, bearing to the presence of the father the dead body of his son, followed mournfully by the person who had killed him, would, it is presumed, afford no mean subject for an historical painting.-T.

* It was in fact Croesus who expiated Adrastus; but Larcher observes, he might have delegated this office to his son as a compliment on his marriage.

60 Condemnation of yourself]-Diodorus Siculus relates, that it was the first intention of Croesus to have burned Adrastus

(For note 61 see next page.)

it without design. The offended deity, who warned me of the evil, has accomplished it." Croesus, therefore, buried his son with the proper ceremonies: but the unfortunate descendant of Midas, who had killed his brother and his friend, retired at the dead of night to the place where Atys was buried, and, confessing himself to be the most miserable of mankind, slew himself on the tomb.

XLVI. The two years which succeeded the death of his son, were passed by Croesus in extreme affliction. His grief was at length suspended by the increasing greatness of the Persian empire, as well as by that of Cyrus son of Cambyses, who had deprived Astyages, son of Cyaxares, of his dominions. To restrain the power of Persia, before it should become too great and too extensive, was the object of his solicitude. Listening to these suggestions, he determined to consult the different oracles of Greece, and also

62

alive; but his voluntary offer to submit to death, deprecated his anger.-T.

61 You are not guilty of this event.]-See Homer, Iliad 3d, where Priam thus addresses Helen:

No crime of thine our present suff'rings draws;

Not thou, but Heav'n's disposing will, the cause.-Pope. Oracles. On the subject of oracles, it may not be improper, once for all, to inform the English reader, that the Apollo of Delphi was, to use Mr. Bayle's words, the judge without appeal; the greatest of the heathen gods not preserv ing, in relation to oracles, his advantage or superiority. The oracles of Trophonius, Dodona, and Hammon, had not so much credit as that of Delphi, nor did they equal it either in esteem or duration. The oracle at Abas was an oracle of Apollo; but,

that of Libya; and for this purpose he sent messengers to Delphi, the Phocian Abas, and to Dodona: he sent also to Amphiaraus, Trophonius, and the Milesian Branchide. The above-mentioned are the oracles which Crœsus consulted in Greece: he sent also to the Libyan Ammon. His motive in these consultations, was to form an idea of the truth of the oracles respectively, meaning afterwards to obtain from them, a decisive opinion concerning an expedition against the Persians.

XLVII. He took this method of proving the truth of their different communications. He settled with his Lydian messengers, that each should consult the different oracles, on the hundredth day of their departure from Sardis, and respectively ask what Croesus the son of Alyattes was doing: they were to write down, and communicate to Croesus, the reply of each particular

from the little mention that is made of it by ancient writers, it does not appear to have been held in the extremest veneration, At Dodona, as I describe it from Montfaucon, there were sounding kettles; from whence came the proverb of the Dodonean brass; which, according to Menander, if a man touched but once, would continue ringing the whole day. Others speak of the doves of Dodona, which spoke and delivered the oracles: of two doves, according to Statius, one flew to Libya, to pronounce the oracles of Jupiter; the other staid at Dodona: of which the more rational explanation is, that two females established religious ceremonies at the same time, at Dodona, and in Libya; for, in the ancient language of the people of Epirus, the same word signifies a dove and an old woman. At the same place also was an oak, or, as some say, a beech tree, hallowed by the prejudices of the people, from the remotest antiquity.

The oracle of Trophonius's cave, from its singularity, deserves minuter mention. He, says Pausanias, who desired to VOL. I.

L