Plat. de Legg. l. vii. t. viii. pp. 4. et 11.—During the pregnancy of women great care was taken not to bring into the house the wood of the ostrya or carpinus ostrys, the appearance of which was ominous of difficult births, or even of sudden death. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iii. 10. 3. Footnote 323: Xenoph. de Rep. Laced. i. 3. Perizon. ad Ælian. Var. Hist. x. 13. On this occasion, too, as on all others, the deep-rooted piety of the nation displayed itself. Prayers and sacrifices were habitually offered up by all married persons for children, as afterwards by Christian ladies to the saints;[324] and these of course were not discontinued, when it appeared by unequivocal signs that their desires had begun to receive their fulfilment. What the divinities were whom on these occasions the Athenian matrons invoked under the name of _Tritopatores_, it seems difficult to determine. Demon in Suidas[325] supposes them to be the winds; but Philochoros, the most learned of ancient writers on the antiquities of Attica, imagined them to be the first three sons of Helios and Gaia. According to some they were called Cottos or Coros, Gyges or Gyes, and Briareus; according to others Amalcides, Protocles, and Protocleon, the watchers and guardians of the wind. There are authors, moreover, by whom they have been confounded with the Dii Kabyri of Samothrace. Footnote 324: Theodoret. iv. 921. Footnote 325: _v._ Τριτοπ. t. ii. p. 947. b. seq. Cf. Siebel. ad Frag. Philoch. p. 11. Meurs. Græc. Fer. p. 264. Lect. Att. iii. 1. Vales. in Harpoc. p. 223. seq. During the period of their confinement women were supposed to be under the protection of Eileithyia. This goddess, who by Olen the Lycian was considered older than Kronos,[326] had the honour as certain mythical legends relate, of being the mother of love,[327] though several ancient authors appear to have confounded her with Pepromene or Fate, others with Hera, and others again with Artemis or the moon. The traditions of the mythology respecting this divinity were various. Her worship seems to have made its first appearance among the Greeks in the island of Delos, whither she is said to have come from the country of the Hyperboreans, to lend her aid to Leto, when beneath the palm tree, which Zeus caused to spring up over her,[328] she gave birth to the gods of night and day. From that time forward she was held in veneration by the Delians, who in her honour offered up sacrifices, chaunting the hymns of Olen, whence we may infer she was a Pelasgian deity. Footnote 326: Paus. viii. 21. 3. Footnote 327: Paus. ix. 27. 2. Cf. Cic. de Nat. Deor. iii. 23. Footnote 328: Callim. ii. 4.