[146] Philo _Περὶ Ἀρετῶν_. sub fin. [147] Carr’s Northern Summer. [148] This sketch of Paul’s life is chiefly taken from Masson, Mémoires Sécrets sur la Russie. Several of the anecdotes rest on Dr. Clarke’s authority. [149] Hist. of Greece, p. 18. [150] The Furies. These goddesses were worshipped with mysterious veneration by the Athenians, who held it an ill omen to call them by their proper name, and spoke of them as the venerable goddesses (_σεμνὰι θεὰι_), or the Eumenides, because they had been propitious (_ἐυμενεῖς_) to Orestes after his acquittal by the court of Areopagus. This was owing partly to a general dislike of alluding to gloomy subjects, which led them, among other things, to avoid speaking openly of death or the dead (hence the phrases _ὁι καμόντες, ὁι κατοιχόμενοι_, those who are worn out, the departed, &c.); partly to wishing to propitiate an object of dread by fair words, as the Highlanders called fairies “men of peace,” especially on a Friday, when their power was greatest, and the Lowlanders entitled them “good neighbours,” and the devil himself the “goodman,” keeping reverentially out of sight his territorial designation. [151] See Greece, p. 55. [152] _Ἐκ τῶνἀλιτηρίων σἐ φημὶγ εγονέναι τῶν τῆν θεοῦ._ _Ιππ. 445._ [153] Gyges. Candaules, whom he murdered, was one of the Heraclidæ, or descendants of Hercules. The story is told in Herodotus, i. 8. [154] Herod, i. 91. [155] Hesiod., Theog., 220. [156] Æsch., Sept. c. Theb., 832, 951. Eurip., Phœnissæ, 1518. [157] Some modern historical instances of a similar superstitious feeling are given lower down in the text. Its nature, however, cannot be better illustrated than by reference to the legend attaching to the family of Redgauntlet in the novel of that name. The downfall of the house of Ravenswood, in the admirable tale of the Bride of Lammermoor, though foretold and fated, is not sufficiently identified with the story of the Mermaid’s Well, to be quoted on this occasion. If it were so, that work, from the severe grandeur of its serious parts, and the singularly impressive way in which all events, and all agency, human and supernatural, combine from the outset to bring about a catastrophe, foreseen and prophesied, but not the less inevitable, would offer to the English reader an excellent example of the spirit of the superstitions and tragedies here alluded to, though widely differing from them in form. [158] Potter’s Æschylus: Agam., 1157; ed. Blomf. We give the translation as we find it, and are not answerable for the rendering of _Κῶμος ... ξυγγόνων Ἐρινύων_. [159] Symmons’ Agamemnon; 1414, ed. Blomf. [160] A similar belief existed in England with respect to the alienations of church property at the Reformation, of which the following is a remarkable instance.