not entirely imaginations. For the half-man and half-horse we have
abundant explanation in the various wild riding tribes of men,
especially the Tartars. The half-bird appears to have been distinguished
for only a singing reason, and is therefore, as it were, a piece of
heraldry. For the wild man of the sea, and the half-man and half-fish,
what have we?

Let us see.

Apparently the earliest presentation to men's eyes of that form under
which the mermaid is still figured was the image, in very ancient days,
of Derceto, goddess of the Philistines of Ascalon, in a temple of that
city. She was woman above and fish below. She had been a beautiful
virgin, but had excited that all-prevalent passion since irregulated by
Aphrodite. It proved her ruin, she cast herself into the sea, and
suffered the partial metamorphosis. So was it fabled in that land: but
it is much more plausibly thought that the combination of woman and fish
declared, hieroglyphically, some dim knowledge that those ancients had
of certain relations between the moon and the sea, of which things the
respective parts were typical.

Half-fishy also was the form of that Dagon which in Ashdod, or Azotus,
another city of the Philistines, fell down upon his face before the ark
of the Lord. This Dagon was the god, apparently, in whose honor the
Philistines were gathered together on that day when blind Samson "took
hold of the two middle pillars," and let down the roof, and caught so
many swallows.

According to an ancient fable, preserved by Berosus, this is what was
known of Dagon. In the first year, there appeared, coming out of that
part of the Erythraean Sea which borders upon Babylonia, an animal whose
whole body was that of a fish; but under the fish's head he had another
head, with feet below similar to those of a man, subjoined to the fish's
tail. His voice was articulate and human, and he taught men to construct
cities, to found temples, compile laws,--indeed, taught them everything
that could tend to soften them from a state of natural barbarism; and
hence he was called Oannes, a name that signified "the Enlightener"; and
this name journeying westward became contracted into _On_, and had
prefixed to it the _Dag_, signifying _a fish_, and so became Dagon.

An image of Oannes is mentioned by Berosus as preserved in his time, and
one has been found on the walls of Nimroud. In the ruins near Khorsabad
was found another of Dagon in his final Phoenician form.