So Endymion
established the motions of the moon, We are indebted to Germanicus, in his commentary on Aratus, for the information that Mnaseas of Sicyon credited Endymion with the discovery of the course of the moon. Having found the key to the flight-legends, it was easy for Lucian to supply a pendant to Endymion in Phaethon. 
 
so Phaeton
inferred the course of the sun; yet not strictly, but
left the theory incompleat at his death. Ignorant
of this, men believe that Phaeton was Helius his son,
and they relate a story of him that is not at all
credible. Going, say they, unto Helius, his father,
he asked to drive the car of light; whiche he suffered
him to do, and also instructed him in the manner
of its governance. But when Phaeton mounted the
car, because of youth and inexpertness he drove
now close to earth, now at a vast remove; and men
were being destroyed both by cold and by heat that
passed endurance. Thereupon, Jupiter in wrath smote
Phaeton with a great bolt of lightning. After his
fall his sisters surrounding him made great dole until
they transmuted themselves, and now they are trees
of black poplar and distil amber over him in place of
tears. These things were not so, and it consisteth
not with piety to believe in them; Helius begat no
son, and no son of his perished.



 
 
But the Greeks relate many other fabulosities—
which I do not credit at all. For how doth it consist
with piety to believe that Aeneas was the’son of
Venus, Minos of Jupiter, Ascalaphus of Mars, or
Autolycus of Mercury? Nay, these were each and
all divinely favoured, and at their birth one of them
was under the regard of Venus, another of Jupiter,
another of Mars. For what powers soever are in
their proper houses at the moment of birth into this
life, those powers like unto parents make men
answerable to them in all respects, in complexion,
in figure, in workes, and in humour. So Minos
became a king because Jupiter was in his ascendancy,
Aeneas fair by the will of Venus, and Autolycus a
theef, whose theevery came to him from Mercury.
 
Moreover, it is not true, neither, that Jupiter put
Saturn in chaines or threw him into Tartarus or otherwise mistreated him as men credit. Nay, Saturn
moveth in the extream orbe, far away from us, and
his motion is sluggish and not easy to be apprehended
ocularly by human kind, whence they say that he
holdeth still as if fettered ; and the vast abyss of the
ayr is called Tartarus.