[438] _Natalis Comes_, Mythologia bk. III. p. 383., Deinde dicta (Cyprus) _Cerastia_, ut inquit Xenagoras in libro secundo de insulis, quod illam homines habitarent, _qui multos tumores, tanquam cornua quaedam in capitibus habere_ viderentur, cum cornua κέρατα dicta sint a Graecis et κεράσται cornuti. (Then it (Cyprus) was also named _Cerastia_, as Xenagoras says in his second Book “On Islands”, because its inhabitants _often had protuberances that looked like horns on their heads_, for horns are called κέρατα in Greek, and those having horns κεράσται. Comp. _Stephanus_, De urbibus, under word Κύπρος, and Σφήκεια. _Tzetzes_, in Lycophron. Cassandr. 474. p. 173., ἐκαλεῖτο δὲ καὶ Κεραστία, ὡς μὲν Ἀνδροκλῆς ἐν τῷ περὶ Κύπρου λέγει, διὰ τὸ _ἐνοικῆσαι αὐτῇ ἄνδρας, οἳ εἶχον κέρατα_· ὡς δὲ Ξεναγόρας ἐν τῷ περὶ Νήσων, διὰ _τὸ ἔχειν πολλὰς ἐξοχὰς_, ἃς κέρατα καλοῦσι, Κεραστία ὠνομάσθη. (And it was also called Κεραστία, according to Androcles in his Book “On Cyprus”, _because men lived in it who had horns_; but according to Xenagoras in his “On Islands”, because they had many protuberances, which they call horns, for this reason it was named Κεραστία). Even supposing the etymology to be a fable, is the fact therefore on which it was based bound to be mythical too? Again _Pollux_, Onomast. bk. IV. ch. 25., says, Κέρατα, ἐν τῷ τόπῳ τῶν κεράτων περὶ τὸ μέτωπου _πωρώδεις ἐκφύσης_, (horns,—_a sort of callous outgrowths_ at the place where horns grow on the forehead). The words succeeding περὶ τὸ δέρμα (on the skin) are no doubt more appropriately taken with ἕρπης (creeping eruption) that comes next after them. In _Sextus Placitus Papyriensis_, ch. XI. 5. we read: Elephantis stercus illitum omnes tumores emendat, et _duritias, quae in fronte nascuntur_, mire tollit, (Elephant’s dung rubbed on cures all swellings, and removes in a wonderful way the _callosities that grow on the forehead_), but this really and truly can only be held applicable to cutaneous tubercles.) End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Plague of Lust, Volume II (of II), by Julius Rosenbaum