An example of such vengeance is afforded by Pasiphaë, of whom the Scholiast on the passage of Lucian cited below relates how, Ἡλίου οὖσα ἐκ μήνιδος Ἀφροδίτης ταύρου ἠράσθη, (being a daughter of the Sun, she became enamoured of a bull through the influence of angry Aphrodité), a fable which might very well be explained—for ταύρος (a bull), like κένταυρος (a Centaur), occurs in the sense of paederast—as meaning that she had become a female pathic. So Theomnestus says in _Lucian_:[319] “So lecherous a look resides in the eyes, that compelling all beauty to its will, it can find no satiety. And often was I uncertain whether this were not some spite of Aphrodité. Yet am I none of the children of Helios, neither a natural heir of the Lemnian women, nor puffed up with the scornful insensibility of Hippolytus, that I could have provoked against me such an implacable hatred on the part of the goddess)”. _Philo Judaeus_[320] also represents paederastia as a punishment of such men as married a woman legally repudiated, and the like: πρὸς δὲ συμβάσεις εἴ τις ἐθέλοι χωρεῖν ἀνὴρ τῇ τοιαύτῃ γυναικὶ, _μαλακίας καὶ ἀνανδρίας ἐκφερέσθω δόξαν_, ὡς ἐκ τετμημένος τῆς ψυχῆς τὸ βιωφελέστατον μισοπόνηρον πάθος.... δίκην οὖν τινέτω σὺν τῇ γυναικί. (But if any man should wish to enter into contracts with such a woman, let him bear the _ill-repute of softness and effeminacy_, as having eradicated from his soul that sentiment of hatred for ill-doers which is most useful for life,—So let him pay his penalty along with the woman). In _Athenaeus_ one of the speakers exclaims (Deipnos., XIII. p. 605 D.): Ὁρᾶτε οὖν καὶ ὑμεῖς, οἱ φιλόσοφοι _παρὰ φύσιν τῇ_ Ἀφροδίτῃ χρώμενοι, καὶ _ἀσεβοῦντες εἰς τὴν θεὸν_, μὴ τὸν αὐτὸν διαφθαρῆτε τρόπον. (Beware then ye too, philosophers who indulge the pleasures of Aphrodité _against nature, and act impiously towards the goddess_, that ye be not destroyed in the same way). According to _Diodorus_ (V. 55) the sons of Neptune in consequence of the wrath of Venus plunged into such madness that they violated their mother. The Propontides, who had denied the godhead of Venus, were cast by her into such an amorous phrenzy that they publicly gave themselves to men, and they were subsequently turned into stones.[321] Myrrha, whose mother proclaimed herself to be fairer than Venus, was driven by the goddess into unchastity with her own father.[322] In later times this idea was even transferred to the Star of Venus. The following appears in _Firmicus_ “In octavo ab horoscopo loco, Mercurius cum Venere, si vespertini ambo, inefficaces et apocopos reddent, et qui nihil agere possint.” (In the eighth place of the horoscope, Mercury in conjunction with Venus, if both are evening stars, will make men impotent eunuchs and such as can effect nothing.)—a notion that first arose perhaps from the name Hermaphroditus[323].