Parallels, or a comparison between the Greek and Roman Histories. (22-23)

One Smyrna (to whom Venus owed a shame, it seems) fell passionately in love with her father Cinyras, and made the nurse her confidant. She goes craftily to work with her master, and tells him of a maid there in the neighborhood that loved him above all things in the world, but she could not in modesty appear publicly to him. So the father lay ignorantly with his own daughter. But some time after, having a great mind to see his mistress, he called for a light, and when he saw who it was, he pursued the incestuous wretch with his drawn sword; but by the providence of Venus, she was rescued from that danger, and turned into a myrrh-tree.—Theodorus, in his Transformations.

One Valeria Tusculanaria (for whom Venus had no kindness) fell downright in love with her father Valerius. She told the nurse the secret, who ordered it so that she brought the father and the daughter together, telling him, that a maid there hard by was fallen desperately in love

with him, but that she durst not lie with him for fear of being known. The father was got into his cups, and as he was in bed with his daughter, called for a candle. The nurse waked Valeria, and away she goes wandering up and down the country with her great belly. She had at last a fall from a precipice, but escaped without so much as any miscarriage; for she was delivered at her time, and the child’s name was Sylvanus (or goat-footed Pan). Valerius, in the anxiety of his mind, threw himself from the same precipice.—Aristides Milesius, in the Third Book of his Italian History.

Diomedes, after the destruction of Troy, was cast by stress of weather upon the coast of Libya, where Lycus the son of Mars was king, whose custom it was to sacrifice all strangers to his father; but his daughter Callirrhoe falling in love with Diomede, betrayed her father and set Diomede at liberty; who presently went his way without any regard to his benefactress, and Callirrhoe hanged herself upon it.—Juba, Book the Third of his Libyan History.

Calpurnius Crassus, a famous man bearing arms with Regulus, was sent to the Massyllians to attack the castle of Garaetius, being a very strong place. He was taken in the enterprise, and designed for a sacrifice to Saturn; but Bisaltia, the king’s daughter, out of a passionate kindness to Calpurnius, betrayed her father. Calpurnius left her, and after his departure Bisaltia cut her own throat.—Hesianax’s Third Book of African History.