Chapter 16 - Page 2

my mouth in the
dust. "Finding that I was no match for him in the warrior's art, I
resorted to others, and glided away in the form of a serpent. I
curled my body in a coil, and hissed at him with my forked
tongue. He smiled scornfully at this, and said, 'It was the
labor of my infancy to conquer snakes.' So saying he clasped my
neck with his hands. I was almost choked, and struggled to get
my neck out of his grasp. Vanquished in this form, I tried what
alone remained to me, and assumed the form of a bull. He grasped
my neck with his arm, and, dragging my head down to the ground,
overthrew me on the sand. Nor was this enough. His ruthless
hand rent my horn from my head. The Naiades took it, consecrated
it, and filled it with fragrant flowers. Plenty adopted my horn,
and made it her own, and called it Cornucopia. The ancients were fond of finding a hidden meaning in their
mythological tales. They explain this fight of Achelous with
Hercules by saying Achelous was a river that in seasons of rain
overflowed its banks. When the fable says that Achelous loved
Dejanira, and sought a union with her, the meaning is, that the
river in its windings flowed through part of Dejanira's kingdom.
It was said to take the form of a snake because of its winding,
and of a bull because it made a brawling or roaring in its
course. When the river swelled, it made itself another channel.
Thus its head was horned. Hercules prevented the return of these
periodical overflows, by embankments and canals; and therefore he
was said to have vanquished the river-god and cut off his horn.
Finally, the lands formerly subject to overflow, but now
redeemed, became very fertile, and this is meant by the horn of
plenty. There is another account of the origin of the Cornucopia.
Jupiter at his birth was committed by his mother Rhea to the care
of the daughters of Melisseus, a Cretan king. They fed the
infant deity with the milk of the goat Amalthea. Jupiter broke
off one of the horns of the goat and gave it to his nurses, and
endowed it with the wonderful power of becoming filled with
whatever the possessor might wish. The name of Amalthea is also given by some writers to the mother
of Bacchus. It is thus used by Milton, Paradise Lost, Book IV.:

"That Nyseian isle,
Girt with the river Triton, where old Cham,
Whom Gentiles Ammon call, and Libyan Jove,
Hid Amalthea and her florid son,
Young Bacchus, from his stepdame Rhea's eye."

ADMETUS AND ALCESTIS Aesculapius, the son of Apollo, was endowed by his father with
such skill in the healing art that he even restored the dead to
life. At this Pluto took alarm, and prevailed on Jupiter to
launch a thunderbolt at Aesculapius. Apollo was indignant at the
destruction of