several circumstances which render it probable that she had once enjoyed this privilege before the festival had acquired its subsequent celebrity; and that Hercules, to whom a very ancient wooden statue had been erected at Pisa,(1835) was, even at this early period, regarded as the founder: to which facts the story of a war against Elis was easily subjoined. The combat with Augeas, a son of Helius, seems to have been in great part borrowed from some Epirotan fable respecting Geryon. 4. In tracing the various steps which led to the formation of the Peloponnesian mythology of Hercules, it has by no means been our aim to enter minutely into the details of the subject, which would carry us far beyond the limits of the present inquiry; the distinction between the ancient and recent parts of the tradition being so undefined that an accurate separation of the two is almost impossible. Enough has been said to show how frequently the same legend reappears in different shapes; and consequently that some original version was variously modified in different places. We shall once for all remind those who imagine the northern legend of Hercules to have been of later date than the Peloponnesian because the latter is mentioned by the early epic poets, that some higher source must be sought for than a few passages of those poets which have been accidentally preserved: that it should be looked for (if anywhere) in some connected mythological tradition, to which the particular fables owed their rise and development. The task is comparatively easy to examine the history of fables, the scene of which lies in colonies or countries with which the Greeks did not become acquainted till a late period, as the events on which they are founded took place within the era of our historical knowledge. At the same time the analogy of these facts, sufficiently ascertained, enables us to conjecture as to those which are enveloped in fabulous obscurity; we can reason from what we know to what we do not know.