Thus encouraged, the Princess stepped forth with a modest boldness, and, as if assured of no denial, spake as follows:
But before we acquaint you with the purport of her speech, we must premise, that in the land of Lycia, which was at that time pagan, above all their other gods the inhabitants did in an especial manner adore the deity who was supposed to have influence in the disposing of people's affections in love. Him, by the name of God Cupid, they feigned to be a beautiful boy, and winged, as indeed, between young persons these frantic passions are usually least under constraint; while the wings might signify the haste with which these ill-judged attachments are commonly dissolved, and do indeed go away as lightly as they come, flying away in an instant to light upon some newer fancy. They painted him blindfolded, because these silly affections of lovers make them blind to the defects of the beloved object, which every one is quick-sighted enough to discover but themselves; or because love is for the most part led blindly, rather than directed by the open eye of the judgment, in the hasty choice of a mate. Yet, with that inconsistency of attributes with which the heathen people commonly over-complimented their deities, this blind love, this Cupid, they figured with a bow and arrows; and, being sightless, they yet feigned him to be a notable archer and an unerring marksman. No heart was supposed to be proof against the point of his inevitable dart. By such incredible fictions did these poor pagans make a shift to excuse their vanities, and to give a sanction to their irregular affections, under the notion that love was irresistible; whereas, in a well-regulated mind, these amorous conceits either find no place at all, or, having gained a footing, are easily stifled in the beginning by a wise and manly resolution.
This frenzy in the people had long been a source of disquiet to the discreet Princess, and many were the conferences she had held with the virtuous Prince, her brother, as to the best mode of taking off the minds of the Lycians from this vain superstition. An occasion, furnished by the blind grant of the old Duke, their father, seemed now to present itself.
The courtiers, then, being assembled to hear the demand which the Princess should make, began to conjecture, each one according to the bent of his own disposition, what the thing would be that she should ask for. One said, "Now surely she will ask to have the disposal of the revenues of some wealthy province, to lay them out—as was the manner of Eastern princesses—in costly dresses and jewels becoming a lady of so great expectancies." Another thought that she would seek an extension of power, as women naturally love rule and dominion. But the most part were in hope that she was about to beg the hand of some neighbor prince in marriage, who, by the wealth and contiguity of his dominions, might add strength and safety to the realm of Lycia. But in none of these things was the expectation of these crafty and worldly-minded courtiers gratified. For Hidaspes, first making lowly obeisance to her father, and thanking him on bended knees for so great grace conferred upon her—according to a plan preconcerted with Leucippus—made suit as follows:
"Your loving care of me, O princely father, by which in my tenderest age you made up to me for the loss of a mother at those years when I was scarcely able to comprehend the misfortune, and your bounties to me ever since, have left me nothing to ask for myself, as wanting and desiring nothing. But for the people whom you govern I beg and desire a boon. It is known to all nations that the men of Lycia are noted for a vain and fruitless superstition—the more hateful as it bears a show of true religion, but is indeed nothing more than a self-pleasing and bold wantonness. Many ages before this, when every man had taken to himself a trade, as hating idleness far worse than death, some one that gave himself to sloth and wine, finding himself by his neighbours rebuked for his unprofitable life, framed to himself a God whom he pretended to obey in his dishonesty; and, for a name, he called him Cupid. This God of merely man's creating—as the nature of man is ever credulous of any vice which takes part with his dissolute conditions—quickly found followers enough. They multiplied in every age, especially among your Lycians, who to this day remain adorers of this drowsy Deity, who certainly was first invented in drink, as sloth and luxury are commonly the first movers in these idle love-passions. This winged Boy—for so they fancy him—has his sacrifices, his loose Images set up in the land through all the villages—nay, your own sacred palace is not exempt from them—to the scandal of sound devotion and dishonour of the true Deities, which are only they who give good gifts to man—as Ceres, who gives us corn; the planter of the olive, Pallas; Neptune, who directs the track of ships over the great ocean, and binds distant lands together in friendly commerce; the inventor of medicine and music, Apollo; and the cloud-compelling Thunderer of Olympus. Whereas the gifts of this idle Deity—if, indeed, he have a being at all out of the brain of his frantic worshipers, usually prove destructive and pernicious. My suit, then, is, that this unseemly Idol throughout the land be plucked down and cast into the fire; and that the adoring of the same may be prohibited on pain of death to any of your subjects henceforth found so offending."
Leontius, startled at this unexpected demand from the Princess, with tears besought her to ask some wiser thing, and not to bring down upon herself and him the indignation of so great a God.
"There is no such God as you dream of," said then Leucippus, boldly, who had hitherto forborne to second the petition of the Princess; "but a vain opinion of him has filled the land with love and wantonness. Every young man and maiden that feel the least desire to one another, dare in no case to suppress it, for they think it to be Cupid's motion, and that he is a God!"
Thus pressed by the solicitations of both his children, and fearing the oath which he had taken, in an evil hour the misgiving father consented; and a proclamation was sent throughout all the provinces for the putting down of the Idol, and the suppression of the established Cupid-worship.
Notable, you may be sure, was the stir made in all places among the priests, and among the artificers in gold, in silver, or in marble; who made a gainful trade, either in serving at the altar or in the manufacture of the images no longer to be tolerated. The cry was clamorous as that at Ephesus, when a kindred Idol was in danger; for "great had been Cupid of the Lycians." Nevertheless the power of the Duke, backed by the power of his more popular children, prevailed; and the destruction of every vestige of the old religion was but as the work of one day throughout the country.
And now, as the Pagan chronicles of Lycia inform us, the displeasure of Cupid went out—the displeasure of a great God—flying through all the dukedom, and sowing evils. But upon the first movers of the profanation his angry hand lay heaviest, and there was imposed upon them a strange misery, that all might know that Cupid's revenge was mighty. With his arrows hotter than plagues, or than his own anger, did he fiercely right himself; nor could the prayers of a few concealed worshipers, nor the smoke arising from an altar here and there which had escaped the general overthrow, avert his wrath, or make him cease from vengeance, until he had made of the once flourishing country of Lycia a most wretched land. He sent no famines—he let loose no cruel wild beasts among them—inflictions, with one or other of which the rest of the Olympian deities are fabled to have visited the nations under their displeasure—but took a nearer course of his own, and his invisible arrows went to the moral heart of Lycia, infecting and filling court and country with desires of unlawful marriages, unheard-of and monstrous affections, prodigious and misbecoming unions.
The symptoms were first visible in the changed bosom of Hidaspes. This exemplary maiden—whose cold modesty, almost to a failing, had discouraged the addresses of so many princely suitors that had sought her hand in marriage—by the venom of this inward pestilence came on a sudden to cast eyes of affection upon a mean and deformed creature, Zoilus by name, who was a dwarf, and lived about the palace, the common jest of the courtiers. In her besotted eyes he was grown a goodly gentleman. And to her maidens, when any of them reproached him with the defect of his shape in her hearing, she would reply that, "to them, indeed, he might appear defective, and unlike a man, as, indeed, no man was like unto him, for in form and complexion he was beyond painting. He is like," she said, "to nothing that we have seen; yet he doth