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The story of Icarius who entertained Dionysus :
Eratosthenes in his Erigonê.1
Saturn, when once he was entertained by a farmer2
who had a fair daughter named Entoria, seduced her
and begat Janus, Hymnus, Faustus, and Felix. He
then taught Icarius the use of wine and viniculture,
[p. 273]
and told him that he should share his knowledge with
his neighbours also. When the neighbours did so and
drank more than is customary, they fell into an unusually deep sleep. Imagining that they had been
poisoned, they pelted Icarius with stones and killed
him ; and his grandchildren in despair ended their
lives by hanging themselves. When a plague had
gained a wide hold among the Romans, Apollo gave
an oracle that it would cease if they should appease
the wrath of Saturn and the spirits of those who had
perished unlawfully. Lutatius Catulus, one of the
nobles, built for the god the precinct which lies near
the Tarpeian Rock. He made the upper altar with
four faces, either because of Icarius's grandchildren
or because the year has four parts ; and he designated a month January. Saturn placed them all
among the stars. The others are called Harbingers
of the Vintage,3 but Janus rises before them. His
star is to be seen just in front of the feet of Virgo. So
Critolaüs in the fourth book of his Phaenomena.
1 Cf. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina, pp. 64 ff., for the fragments of the Erigonê. Powell is no doubt right in ignoring this passage, of which Wyttenbach remarks ‘ Noster tenebrio omnia turbavit. ’
2 Presumably Icarius.
3 Cf. Aratus, Phaenomena, 138, who mentions only one star of this name, the Vindemiator, which ushers in the autumn.
Plutarch. Moralia. with an English Translation by. Frank Cole Babbitt. Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. 1936. 4.
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