women} to have
prostituted their bodies,[39] with their beauty, through the anger of
the Goddess. And when their shame was gone, and the blood of their face
was hardened, they were, by a slight transition, changed into hard
rocks."

[Footnote 35: _Amathus._--Ver. 220. Amathus was a city of Cyprus,
sacred to Venus, and famous for the mines in its neighbourhood.]

[Footnote 36: _Jupiter Hospes._--Ver. 224. Jupiter, in his
character of +Zeus xenios+, was the guardian and protector of
travellers and wayfarers.]

[Footnote 37: _Amathusian sheep._--Ver. 227. Amathusia was one of
the names of the island of Cyprus.]

[Footnote 38: _Ophiusian lands._--Ver. 229. Cyprus was anciently
called Ophiusia, on account of the number of serpents that
infested it; +ophis+ being the Greek for a serpent.]

[Footnote 39: _Their bodies._--Ver. 240. The women of Cyprus were
notorious for the levity of their character. We learn from
Herodotus that they had recourse to prostitution to raise their
marriage portions.]

EXPLANATION.

The Cerastae, a people of the island of Cyprus, were, perhaps, said
to have been changed into bulls, to show the barbarous nature and
rustic manners of those islanders, who stained their altars with the
blood of strangers, in sacrifice to the Gods.

An equivocation of names also, probably, aided in originating the
story. The island of Cyprus is surrounded with promontories which
rise out of the sea, and whose pointed rocks appear at a distance
like horns, from which it had the name of Cerastis, the Greek word
+keras+, signifying a 'horn.' Thus, the inhabitants having the name
of Cerastae, it was most easy to invent a fiction of their having
been once turned into oxen, to account the more readily for their
bearing that name.

The Propoetides, who inhabited the same island, were females of very
dissolute character. Justin, and other writers, mention a singular
and horrible custom in that island, of prostituting young girls in
the very temple of Venus. It was most probably the utter disregard
of these women for common decency, that occasioned the poets to say
that they were transformed into rocks.

FABLE VII. [X.243-297]

Pygmalion, shocked by the dissolute lives of the Propoetides, throws
off all fondness for the female sex, and resolves on leading a life
of perpetual celibacy. Falling in love with a statue