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Tarquitius relates that AEsculapius was born of doubtful parents, and
that on this account he was exposed; and being taken up by hunters, and fed by
the teats of a hound, was given to Chiron for instruction. He lived at
Epidaurus, and was buried at Cynosurae, as Cicero says, when he had been killed
by lightning. But Apollo, his father, did not disdain to take charge of
another's flock that he might receive a wife; and when he had unintentionally
killed a boy whom he loved, he inscribed his own lamentations on a flower.
Mars, a man of the greatest bravery, was not free from the charge of adultery,
since he was made a spectacle, being bound with a chain together with the
adulteress. Castor and Pollux carried off the brides of others, but not with
impunity, to whose death and burial Homer bears witness, not with poetical, but
simple faith. Mercurius, who was the father of Androgynus by his intrigue with
Venus, deserved to be a god, because he invented the lyre and the paloestra.
Father Bacchus, after subduing India as a conqueror, having by chance come to
Crete, saw Ariadne on the shore, whom Theseus had forced and deserted. Then,
being inflamed by love, he united her in marriage to himself, and placed her
crown, as the poets say, conspicuously among the stars. The mother of the gods herself,
while she lived in Phrygia after the banishment and death of her husband,
though a widow, and aged, was enamoured of a beautiful youth; and because he
was not faithful, she mutilated, and rendered him effeminate: on which account
even now she delights in the Galli as her priests.
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