5

. t
OF THE DRUIDS. 173
mis'd, now follows one of the passages, wherein a
Gaul being said simply to sacrifice, 1 think fit to
relate the whole story.
'Tis the eigth of Parihenius
of Niceas Love-stories, related before him (as
he says) in the first book of the history written by
Aristodemus of Nysa, now lost. This Parthenius
addresses his book to Cornelius Gallus, for
whose use he wrote it, being the same to whom
Virgil inscrib'd his tenth JEclog. The story runs
thus. " When the Gauls * had made an incursion
into Ionia, and sack'd most of the cities, the Thesmophorian
festival was celebrated at Miletus;
which occasioning all the women to
assemble together
in the temple, that was not far
city:
from the
part of the barbarian army, which separated
from the rest, made an irruption into the Milesian
territory, and seiz'd upon those women; whom the
Milesians were -forc'd to ransom, giving in exchange
a great sum of gold and silver.
Yet the
barbarians took some of them away for domestic
use, among whom was Erippef, the wife of Xanthus
(a man of the first rank and birth in Miletus)
leaving behind her a boy onely two years olde.
Now Xanthus, passionately loving his wife, turn'd
part of his substance into money, and having
amass'd a thousand pieces of gold, hecross'd over
with the soonest into Italy, whence being guided
hj some whom he had intertain'd in Gi'eece, he
* 'OTf Js ii raXarai )!ttTtJpa|iuv tdv limay, et qiJiE seqnBntur,
Aristodemus calls her Gythimia.