From these originals it came into fashion among the _Greeks_, κτεριζειν, _parentare_, to celebrate the funerals of dead parents with festivals and invocations and sacrifices offered to their ghosts, and to erect magnificent sepulchres in the form of temples, with altars and statues, to persons of renown; and there to honour them publickly with sacrifices and invocations: every man might do it to his ancestors; and the cities of _Greece_ did it to all the eminent _Greeks_: as to _Europa_ the sister, to _Alymnus_ the brother, and to _Minos_ and _Rhadamanthus_ the nephews of _Cadmus_; to his daughter _Ino_, and her son _Melicertus_; to _Bacchus_ the son of his daughter _Semele_, _Aristarchus_ the husband of his daughter _Autonoe_, and _Jasius_ the brother of his wife _Harmonia_; to _Hercules_ a _Theban_, and his mother _Alcmena_; to _Danae_ the daughter of _Acrisius_; to _Æsculapius_ and _Polemocrates_ the son of _Machaon_, to _Pandion_ and _Theseus_ Kings of _Athens_, _Hippolytus_ the son of _Theseus_, _Pan_ the son of _Penelope_, _Proserpina_, _Triptolemus_, _Celeus_, _Trophonius_, _Castor_, _Pollux_, _Helena_, _Menelaus_, _Agamemnon_, _Amphiaraus_ and his son _Amphilochus_, _Hector_ and _Alexandra_ the son and daughter of _Priam_, _Phoroneus_, _Orpheus_, _Protesilaus_, _Achilles_ and his mother _Thetis_, _Ajax_, _Arcas_, _Idomeneus_, _Meriones_, _Æacus_, _Melampus_, _Britomartis_, _Adrastus_, _Iolaus_, and divers others. They Deified their dead in divers manners, according to their abilities and circumstances, and the merits of the person; some only in private families, as houshold Gods or _Dii Pænates_; others by erecting gravestones to them in publick, to be used as altars for annual sacrifices; others, by building also to them sepulchres in the form of houses or temples; and some by appointing mysteries, and ceremonies, and set sacrifices, and festivals, and initiations, and a succession of priests for performing those institutions in the temples, and handing them down to posterity. Altars might begin to be erected in _Europe_ a little before the days of _Cadmus_, for sacrificing to the old God or Gods of the Colonies, but Temples began in the days of _Solomon_; for [187] _Æacus_ the son of _Ægina_, who was two Generations older than the _Trojan_ war, is by some reputed one of the first who built a Temple in _Greece_. Oracles came first from _Egypt_ into _Greece_ about the same time, as also did the custom of forming the images of the Gods with their legs bound up in the shape of the _Egyptian_ mummies: for Idolatry began in _Chaldæa_ and _Egypt_, and spread thence into _Phœnicia_ and the neighbouring countries, long before it came into _Europe_; and the _Pelasgians_ propagated it in _Greece_, by the dictates of the Oracles. The countries upon the _Tigris_ and the _Nile_ being exceeding fertile, were first frequented by mankind, and grew first into Kingdoms, and therefore began first to adore their dead Kings and Queens: