The Cappadocians were proud of treading in the same path.[XXV-3] The Egyptians offered prayers and homage to water.[XXV-4] The Nile, in particular, received their adorations under the name of _Ypeus_, or _Siris_, and they offered to it--as a sacrifice--barley, wheat, sugar, and fruit.[XXV-5] The Scythians honoured the Danube on account of its vast extent; the Thessalians prostrated themselves before the majestic shores of the Peneus; the ancient combat of Achelous with Hercules made it sacred to the Ætolians; by a special law, the Lacedæmonians were compelled to implore the Eurotas; and a religious precept forced the Athenians to incense in honour of the Ilissus.[XXV-6] The Greeks and Romans did not fail to follow such good examples. The fountains and rivers had their altars. The Rhine was called a god; and when Æneas arrived in Italy, he prayed it might be favourable to him.[XXV-7] However strange such superstition may appear, it is, nevertheless, conceivable that Paganism, struck with wonder at the flux and reflux of the sea, and at the phenomena presented by several celebrated springs, and seduced by the charming fictions of doubtful poesy, should have deified an element both beneficial and terrible, since it could not cry out with the prophet king: “The Lord on high is mightier than the noise of many waters, yea than the mighty waves of the sea.”[XXV-8] Thence came the innumerable number of tutelary gods to which the Ocean alone gave an asylum. By Thetis it became the father of the seventy-two Oceanides, and the fifty Nereides called it their grandfather. Hesiod numbered three thousand nymphs, and he probably forgot a few of them. We say nothing of the Naiades, the Napææ, the Limnades, and so many others whom fable was pleased to recognise, and whom it described as joyfully disporting in the water. Greece exhausted the treasures of its poetical imagination to embellish her fountains, beloved retreats of the timid Naiades. Several were remarkable for the beauty of their architecture and the extreme delicacy of their execution. Megara, in Achaia, possessed one celebrated for its magnificence. That of Pirene, at Corinth, was surrounded with white marble, in which were placed grottoes which unceasingly supplied a vast and superb basin. Another fountain of Corinth, named Lerna, offered to loungers an elegant portico, under which some very commodious seats allowed them to enjoy, during summer, the freshness which the water communicated to the atmosphere. In the sacred wood of Æsculapius, at Epidaurus, a splendid fountain was seen whose marvellous beauty attracted all eyes.[XXV-9] Lastly, those of Messina, known under the names of Arsinoe and of Clepsydra, yielded nothing in richness of material and finish of details to the most renowned monuments of Greece.