Dionysos, with its appropriate sacrifices and phallic processions. Here again he historicizes various features of the old legend in a manner not unworthy of notice.[196] [194] Apollod. 1. c.; Pherekyd. ap. Schol. Hom. Odyss. xv. 225; Hesiod, Fragm. Marktsch. Fr. 36, 37, 38. These Fragments belong to the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women: Apollodôrus seems to refer to some other of the numerous Hesiodic poems. Diodôrus (iv. 68) assigns the anger of Dionysos as the cause. [195] Odyss. xv. 240-256. [196] Herod. ix. 34; ii. 49: compare Pausan. ii. 18, 4. Instead of the Prœtides, or daughters of Prœtos, it is the Argeian women generally whom he represents Melampus as having cured, and the Argeians generally who send to Pylus to invoke his aid: the heroic personality which pervades the primitive story has disappeared. Kallimachus notices the Prœtid virgins as the parties suffering from madness, but he treats Artemis as the healing influence (Hymn. ad Dianam 235). But Danaê, the daughter of Akrisios, with her son Perseus acquired still greater celebrity than her cousins the Prœtides. An oracle had apprized Akrisios that his daughter would give birth to a son by whose hand he would himself be slain. To guard against this danger, he imprisoned Danaê in a chamber of brass under ground. But the god Zeus had become amorous of her, and found means to descend through the roof in the form of a shower of gold: the consequence of his visits was the birth of Perseus. When Akrisios discovered that his daughter had given existence to a son, he enclosed both the mother and the child in a coffer, which he cast into the sea.[197] The coffer was carried to the isle of Seriphos, where Diktys, brother of the king Polydektês, fished it up, and rescued both Danaê and Perseus. The exploits of Perseus, when he grew up, against the three Phorkides or daughters of Phorkys, and the three Gorgons, are among the most marvellous and imaginative in all Grecian legend: they bear a stamp almost Oriental. I shall not here repeat the details of those unparalleled hazards which the special favor of Athênê enabled him to overcome, and which ended in his bringing back from Libya the terrific head of the Gorgon Medusa, endued with the property of turning every one who looked upon it into stone. In his return, he rescued Andromeda, daughter of Kêpheus, who had been exposed to be devoured by a sea-monster, and brought her back as his wife. Akrisios trembled to see him after this victorious expedition, and retired into Thessaly to avoid him; but Perseus followed him thither, and having succeeded in calming his apprehensions, became competitor in a gymnic contest where his grandfather was among the spectators. By an incautious swing of his quoit, he unintentionally struck Akrisios, and caused his death: the predictions of the oracle were thus at last fulfilled. Stung with remorse at the catastrophe,