According to the Baron de Zach, in his “Correspondance Astronomique,” the Lybian appellation for these towers was _tar_, or _tor_.[2] As _is_ signifies “fire,” we thus obtain the compound _Tor-is_, or “fire-tower;” whence the Greeks derived their τύῤῥις, and the Latins their _turris_. In like manner, the Latin _columna_ comes, it is said, from _Col-On_, the “pillar of the sun.” [2] _Tor_ is Celtic for a height, as in the _tors_, or granite hills, of Dartmoor. [Illustration: THE BEACON FIRE.] Some authorities boldly carry this etymological diversion a little further. When the fire-towers were situated upon eminences outside the boundaries of cities, and constructed of a circular form, they were called _Tith_. The mythological Tithonus, so celebrated for his longevity, seems, they assert, to have been one of these edifices dedicated to the sun; and Thetis, the ancient ocean-goddess, simply a fire-tower near the sea, called _Thit-is_. Nor have ingenious theorists been wanting to maintain that the massacre of the Cyclops, who, according to the old legend, were stricken by Apollo’s arrows, was nothing but a poetical version of the manner in which the fires of the Cyclopean towers, planted on the eastern coasts of Sicily, were extinguished by the rays of the rising sun.[3] [3] As Mr. Stevenson says (in his “Treatise on Lighthouses”), a notion so fanciful as this deserves little consideration. The impression which the light-tower produced on the popular imagination is, however, more beautifully, as well as more certainly, described by Homer in a well-known passage of the “Iliad” (bk. xix. 375):— “As to seamen o’er the wave is borne The watch-fire’s light, which, high among the hills, Some shepherd kindles in his lonely fold.” In our English Bible the word _beacon_ occurs but once—namely in the Prophecies of Isaiah (xxx. 17), who lived about two centuries later than Homer; but in the Septuagint version, the same word is rendered as a “flagstaff” or “perch,” and unquestionably refers to a _land_-signal rather than to a maritime light. * * * * * The first pharos which performed its duties in a regular manner seems to have been that which Lesches, the author of the “Little Iliad” (who flourished about the 9th Olympiad), erected on the promontory of Sigeum, at the entrance of the Hellespont. It is figured in the Iliac Table.