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One Smyrna (to whom Venus owed a shame, it
seems) fell passionately in love with her father Cinyras, and
made the nurse her confidant. She goes craftily to work
with her master, and tells him of a maid there in the
neighborhood that loved him above all things in the world,
but she could not in modesty appear publicly to him. So
the father lay ignorantly with his own daughter. But
some time after, having a great mind to see his mistress,
he called for a light, and when he saw who it was, he
pursued the incestuous wretch with his drawn sword; but
by the providence of Venus, she was rescued from that
danger, and turned into a myrrh-tree.—Theodorus, in
his Transformations.
One Valeria Tusculanaria (for whom Venus had no
kindness) fell downright in love with her father Valerius.
She told the nurse the secret, who ordered it so that she
brought the father and the daughter together, telling him,
that a maid there hard by was fallen desperately in love
[p. 465]
with him, but that she durst not lie with him for fear of
being known. The father was got into his cups, and as
he was in bed with his daughter, called for a candle. The
nurse waked Valeria, and away she goes wandering up and
down the country with her great belly. She had at last
a fall from a precipice, but escaped without so much as
any miscarriage; for she was delivered at her time, and
the child's name was Sylvanus (or goat-footed Pan). Valerius, in the anxiety of his mind, threw himself from the
same precipice.—Aristides Milesius, in the Third Book
of his Italian History.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 5.
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