There is also a temple of Hercules at Thespia, the priestess is a perpetual virgin. The reason of this is as follows. They say that Hercules in one night had connection with all the fifty daughters of Thestius but one: her he spared and made her his priestess on condition that she remained a virgin all her life. I have indeed heard another tradition, that Hercules in the same night had connection with all the daughters of Thestius, and that they all bare him sons, and the eldest and youngest twins. But I cannot believe this credible that Hercules should have been so angry with the daughter of his friend. Besides he who, while he was among men, punished insolent persons and especially those who showed impiety to the gods, would not have been likely to have built a temple and appointed a priestess to himself as if he had been a god. And indeed this temple seems to me too ancient for Hercules the son of Amphitryon, and was perhaps erected by the Hercules who was one of the Idæan Dactyli, temples of whom I have found among the people of Erythræ in Ionia, and among the people of Tyre. Nor are the Bœotians ignorant of this Hercules, for they say that the temple of Mycalessian Demeter was entrusted to Idæan Hercules. [64] See Sueton. _Calig._ 56, 58. The word was the word for the day given to soldiers. CHAPTER XXVIII. Of all the mountains of Greece Helicon is the most fertile and full of trees planted there: and the purslane bushes afford everywhere excellent food for goats. And those who live at Helicon say that the grass and roots on the mountain are by no means injurious to man. Moreover the pastures make the venom of snakes less potent, so that those that are bitten here mostly escape with their life, if they meet with a Libyan of the race of the Psylli, or with some antidote from some other source. And yet the venom of wild snakes is generally deadly both to men and animals, and the condition of the pastures contributes greatly to the strength of the venom, for I have heard from a Phœnician that in the mountainous part of Phœnicia the roots make the vipers more formidable. He said also that he had seen a man flee from the attack of a viper and run to a tree, and the viper followed after and blew its venom against the tree, and that killed the man. Such was what he told me. And I also know that the following happens in Arabia in the case of vipers that live near balsam trees. The balsam tree is about the same size as a myrtle bush, and its leaves are like those of the herb marjoram. And the vipers in Arabia more or less lodge under these balsam trees, for the sap from them is the food most agreeable to them, and moreover they rejoice in the shade of the trees. Whenever then the proper season comes for the Arabians to gather the sap of the balsam tree, they take with them two poles and knock them together and so frighten off the vipers, for they don’t like to kill them as they look upon them as sacred.