Servius on Virgil's Æneid speaks of a bearded Venus. The poet Calvus in Macrobius speaks of Venus as masculine. Valerius Soranus among other titles calls Jupiter the Mother of the Gods.
In Suidas is a letter from Dionysius, the Areopagite, dated Heliopolis, in the fourth year of the 202d Olympiad (the year of Christ's crucifixion) to his friend Apollophanes, in which is mentioned a total eclipse of the sun at noon. “Either,” says Dionysius “the author of nature suffers, or he sympathizes with some who do.”
The most particular history of the Deluge, and the nearest of any to the account given by Moses is to be found in Lucian (De Dea Syria.)
The Greeks had no historian prior to Cadmus Milesius, nor any public inscription of which we can be certified, before the laws of Draco.
So great is the uncertainty of ancient history that the epoch of Semiramis cannot be ascertained within 1535 years, for according to