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Philonome, the daughter of Nyctimus and Arcadia,
went many times to the chase with Diana. Mars lay with
her in the shape of a shepherd, and fetched up her belly.
She was delivered in time of twins, which for fear of her
father she threw into the river Erymanthus. By a strange
fatality of providence they were driven safe into a hollow
oak, which happening to be the kennel of a wolf, this
wolf threw her whelps into the river, and suckled the
children. Tyliphus a shepherd, that had seen this with
his own eyes, took these children and brought them up as
his own, calling one of them Lycastus, and the other Parrasius, which reigned successively in Arcadia.—This is
reported by Zopyrus Byzantius, in the Third Book of his
Histories.
Amulius dealing very tyrannically with his brother
Numitor, killed his son Aenitus as they were a hunting,
and made his daughter Sylvia . . . a priestess of Juno.
Mars got her with child, and when she had laid her belly
of twins, she confessed the truth to the tyrant; which put
him in such an apprehension, that he exposed them both
on the side of the river Tiber, where they were carried
by the stream to a place where a she-wolf had her whelps.
The wolf cast away her own, and gave suck to these children. Faustus a shepherd, observing this, took the children to himself, and called them by the names of Romus
[p. 474]
and Romulus, which came afterwards to be the founders
of Rome.—Aristides's Italian Histories.
Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals. Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. 5.
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