LI. As the beforenamed queen was so unhappy as to have imputed to her some gross amours, which she never was guilty of; Penelope, the wife of Ulysses, has been so fortunate as to have nobody at this time dispute her honesty, because of late days it has been much the fashion to celebrate it; but this was not the case formerly. Franciscus Floridus Sabinus says, “that Homer’s representing Penelope chaste was no less a fiction, than Virgil’s representing Dido lewd.” In opposition to the pretended virtue of Penelope, he quotes the poet Lycrophon, and the historian Duris of Samos: which second describes Penelope to have been a most vile prostitute; and Thomas Dempster adds, to corroborate this, the authority of an ancient historian, called Lysander, who says the same with Duris of Samos. SECT. XIX. _The labyrinth of Crete._ LII. Pliny gives an account of four famous labyrinths, that of Egypt, that of Crete, that of Lemnos, and that of Italy. The first was esteemed the most compleat as well as the most ancient and magnificent. That of Crete, although exceedingly inferior in grandeur to that of Egypt (for it was only so diminutive an imitation of the Egyptian one, that, according to the author before quoted, it was not a hundredth part so big), had the lot to make more noise in the world than the eminent original. This, without doubt, proceeded from the fanciful imaginations and loquacity of the Greeks, who, as it was nearer their neighbourhood, talked more of it than they did of the others; and, according to their genius and custom, transformed the truth of some immaterial facts into portentous fables: the amour of Pasiphaë with Taurus, for example, who according to some was general of Minos’s army, and according to others his secretary, they converted into a lascivious bestiality with a bull, and they metamorphosed the first of the two sons that were the offspring of this princess, who was begotten by the adulterer Taurus, into a monster, which was half man and half ox, which they called a minotaur; for whose confinement the labyrinth of Crete was destined, where, with the threads of Ariadne, he was enjoined to weave in tapestry the adventures of Theseus. I say, that these fictions, promulged to all the world by the loquacity of the Greeks, made that labyrinth so famous and so much talked of, that the name of it is familiar to people of the lowest class, although they never mention, nor have the least idea of any other.