Numerous ancient and some modern statues of this goddess grace the various art galleries, but among them all the most perfect is the world-renowned Venus de Milo.
Venus’ festivals were always scenes of graceful amusements; and her votaries wore wreaths of fresh, fragrant flowers, the emblem of all natural beauty.
CHAPTER VIII.
MERCURY.
Birth of Mercury.
As already repeatedly stated in the course of this work, Jupiter was never a strictly faithful spouse, and, in spite of his wife’s remonstrances, could not refrain from indulging his caprice for every pretty face he met along his way. It is thus, therefore, that he yielded to the charms of Maia, goddess of the plains, and spent some blissful hours in her society. This divine couple’s happiness culminated when they first beheld their little son, Mercury (Hermes, Psychopompus, Oneicopompus), who was born in a grotto on Mount Cyllene, in Arcadia,—
“Mercury, whom Maia bore,
Sweet Maia, on Cyllene’s hoary top.”
Virgil (Cowper’s tr.).
This infant god was quite unlike mortal children, as will readily be perceived by the numerous pranks he played immediately after his birth. First he sprang from his mother’s knee, grasped a tortoise shell lying on the ground, bored holes in its sides, stretched strings across its concavity, and, sweeping his hands over them, produced strains of sweetest music, thus inventing the first lyre.
“So there it lay, through wet and dry,
As empty as the last new sonnet,
Till by and by came Mercury,
And, having mused upon it,
‘Why here,’ cried he, ‘the thing of things
In shape, material, and dimension!
Give it but strings, and, lo, it sings,
A wonderful invention.’”
Lowell.
Mercury’s theft.