V. It is highly probable, that some of the subaltern deities, were formed upon the idea that was entertained by the populace, of some particular persons, eminent either for their heroic virtues, or for having been the inventors of some arts, that were found to be exceedingly useful to the public. This is the account Pliny gives of the matter in chap. 1. of his twenty-fifth book. _At herculè, singula quosdam inventa deorum numero addidere._ VI. Saturn devouring his children, according to Mr. Rollin, is derived from a part of the Carthaginian history, which speaks of a king of Carthage, who buried his sons alive as a sacrifice to the gods; and this agrees in substance, with the account given of the thing by Mons. Bonamy, in his History of the Royal Academy of Inscriptions, _tom._ 7. p. 29. But, as we shall see in the sequel, it is much more probable, that the fabulous Saturn of paganism was derived from the true Abraham of scripture. VII. The Cretans considered Jupiter as their countryman; and even in the time of Lucian, as appears by this author in his Dialogue of _Jupiter Tragicus_, shewed his tomb in that island; and although they allowed he was dead, it without doubt had been handed down to them by tradition, that he was some eminent man, and had peradventure been king of the country. VIII. In the fiction of the Stygian Lake, and of the boatman Charon, is contained a mixture of natural and civil history. There is in Arcadia a lake, which not only was called Stygia at the time when the poets first began to make it famous by their inventions, but many ages after that æra, preserved this name; for even in the days of Pliny it retained it; and I don’t know whether it does not retain it with very little alteration, at this period. The deadly quality of its waters, gave occasion to the poets, to feign that it was of infernal derivation, and to place the source, both of the lake, and the river which runs into it, in the region of the dead. Pliny says, that the waters of it, by being drunk, kill in an instant; and adds upon the authority of Theophrastus, that there are little fish bred in it, which poison whoever eats them. Some antient authors, attribute a faculty to its waters so intensely corrosive, that it can’t be contained in any vessel, but one made of a wild ass’s hoof, as it gnaws and tears to pieces, those made of any other materials; and the disciples of Aristotle formerly pretended, that this secret was revealed by their master to Antipater, to instruct him how he might send some of this poisonous water to Babylon, for the destruction of Alexander.