like other monarchs,
it was but reasonable that Jupiter too should have his fool. We have an
instance of Momus's fantastic humor in the contest between Neptune,
Minerva, and Vulcan, for skill. The first had made a bull, the second a
house, and the third a man. Momus found fault with them all. He disliked
the bull because his horns were not placed before his eyes, that he
might give a surer blow: he condemned Minerva's house because it was
immovable, and could not therefore be taken away if placed in a bad
neighborhood; and in regard to Vulcan's man, he said he ought to have
made a window in his breast, by which his heart might be seen, and his
secrets discovered.

CHAPTER IV.

_Terrestrial Goddesses._

CYBELE, _or_ VESTA _the elder_. It is highly necessary, in tracing the
genealogy of the heathen deities, to distinguish between this goddess
and Vesta the _younger_, her daughter, because the poets have been
faulty in confounding them, and ascribing the attributes and actions of
the one to the other. The elder Vesta, or Cyb{)e}le, was daughter of
Coelus and Terra, and wife of her brother Saturn, to whom she bore a
numerous offspring. She had a variety of names besides that of
Cyb{)e}le, under which she is most generally known, and which she
obtained from Mount Cyb{)e}lus, in Phrygia, where sacrifices to her were
first instituted. Her sacrifices and festivals, like those of Bacchus,
were celebrated with a confused noise of timbrels, pipes, and cymbals;
the sacrificants howling as if mad, and profaning both the temple of the
goddess, and the ears of their hearers with the most obscene language
and abominable gestures.

Under the character of Vesta, she is generally represented upon ancient
coins in a sitting posture, with a lighted torch in one hand, and a
sphere or drum in the other. As Cyb{)e}le, she makes a more magnificent
appearance, being seated in a lofty chariot drawn by lions, crowned with
towers, and bearing in her hand a key. Being goddess, not of cities
only, but of all things which the earth sustains, she was crowned with
turrets, whilst the key implies not only her custody of cities, but also
that in winter the earth locks those treasures up, which she brings
forth and dispenses in summer: she rides in a chariot, because
(fancifully) the earth hangs suspended in the air, balanced and poised
by its own weight; and that the chariot is supported by wheels, because
the earth is a voluble body and tur