There are various conjectures concerning the name _Hecăte_, which is supposed to come from a Greek word signifying an _hundred_, either because an hundred victims at a time used to be offered to her, or else because by her edicts the ghosts of those who die without burial, wander an hundred years upon the banks of the Styx. Mythologists say that Hecăte is the _order_ and _force_ of the Fates, who obtained from the divine power that influence which they have over human bodies; that the operation of the Fates are hidden, but descend by the means and interposition of the stars, wherefore it is necessary that all inferior things submit to the cares, calamities, and death which the Fates bring upon them, without any possibility of resisting the divine will. Hesiod relates of Hecate, to show the extent of her power, that Jupiter had heaped gifts and honors upon her far above all the other deities; that she was empress of the earth and sea, and all things which are comprehended in the compass of the heavens; that she was a goddess easy to be entreated, kind, and always ready to do good, bountiful of gold and riches, which are wholly in her power; that whatever springs from seed, whether in heaven, or on earth, is subject to her, and that she governs the fates of all things. PALES was a rural goddess of the Romans. She was properly the divinity of shepherds, and the tutelar deity and protectress of their flocks. Her votaries had usually wooden images of her. A feast called Palilia or Parilia was celebrated on the twenty-first of April, or, according to some, in May, in the open fields. The offerings were milk and cakes of millet, in order to engage her to defend their flocks from wild beasts and infectious diseases. As part of the ceremony, they burned heaps of straw, and leaped over them. Some make Pales the same with Vesta or Cybĕle. This goddess is represented as an old woman. FLORA, the goddess of flowers, was a Roman deity. The ancients made her the wife of Zephyrus, to intimate that Flora, or the natural heat of the plant, must concur with the influence of the warmest wind for the production of flowers. Varro reckons Flora among the ancient deities of the Sabines, which were received into Rome on the union of the Sabines with the Romans. Ovid says, that her Greek name was Chloris, and that the Latins changed it into Flora.