FOUNDLING HOSPITALS.

269

t( Which she expos’d in the same close recess,

“ Where first the god had stol’n her maiden truit;

“ In a round box, she there the infant left“ To perish, as the cruel ancient custom“ Was t’ have been experienc’d by Ericthonius .”

Potter's Greece , Jon. act v. 15.

Instances without number occur in the Greek and Romanpoets, of the practice of similar transactions, as well intheir poets as historians; Romulus and his brother havingbeen exposed in the same manner on the banks of theTyber, with this difference in the circumstance, that theiruncle meant such exposition to have been their destruc-tion. In the same manner did Decreto, the mother ofSemiramis, expose her, whilst an infant, who was fed bymeans equally miraculous as was Romulus, as the storygoes, which Diodorus records in the 1st chapter of his2d book. 1

At Rome , the usual place for exposition of infants, wasthe market for vegetables, by the column called ColumnaLactaria; the name of which column implied its utility.

At length the practice had become so very common, thatlegislators took notice of it, and condemned the exposureas unlawful; however, we find no measures taken to preventa continuance of this practice until after the time of thefirst Christian Emperors. In their time even, the laws onlyendeavoured to render it less common, and their humanitytaught them to provide for th6 maintenance of the children;

x There is in Syria , a place called Asculon, near which is a deep lake, abound-ing wilh fish ; not far off stands a temple dedicated to the famous Syrian goddessDecreto, She represents a woman in the face, and a fish in all other parts ofher body ; which strange production is thus accounted for by some of the mostjudicious of the inhabitants of those parts : they say, that Venus, being angry withthis goddess, caused her to fall into a vehement pang of love with a beautiful youngman, who, among her worshippers, was sacrificing to her,—she was got with child byhim, and delivered of a daughter; being ashamed afterwards of what she had done,she killed the young man, and exposed the child among the rocks of the desert, andthrough sorrow aud shame cast herself into the lake, and was afterwards transformedinto a fish ; whence it came to pass, that at this very day, the Syrians eat no fish, butadore them as gods. They say that the infant so exposed, was preserved andnourished by a wonderful Providence, by means of a large flock of pigeons thatnestled near where the young child lay; for with their wings they cherished itand kept it warm ; observing when the herdsmen left their milk at the neigh-bouring cottages, took it up in their bills and brought it to the child, then thrusttheir beaks into its lips, and thus supported itforaytfar. When the child re*quired stronger nourishment these JittJe nurses, the pigeons, fed it with pieces ofcheese, which they also look from the herdsmen; who, observing their cheeseplucked, they watched, and discovering the cause, found the child, who theypresented to Sima, the King’s superintendent, who named her .S'emiiawt*, a namederived from pigeons in the Syrian tongue. Pigeons the Syrians afterwardsadored as goddesses, &c.