alas, phakois. 60 The persons of heralds were held inviolable, and they were at liberty to travel whither they would without fear of molestation. Pollux, Onom. viii. p. 159. The office was generally given to old men, and they were believed to be under the especial protection of Jove and Mercury. 61 His mother, Thetis, the daughter of Nereus and Doris, who was courted by Neptune and Jupiter. When, however, it was known that the son to whom she would give birth must prove greater than his father, it was determined to wed her to a mortal, and Peleus, with great difficulty, succeeded in obtaining her hand, as she eluded him by assuming various forms. Her children were all destroyed by fire through her attempts to see whether they were immortal, and Achilles would have shared the same fate had not his father rescued him. She afterwards rendered him invulnerable by plunging him into the waters of the Styx, with the exception of that part of the heel by which she held him. Hygin. Fab. 54 62 Thebe was a city of Mysia, north of Adramyttium. 63 That is, defrauds me of the prize allotted me by their votes. 64 Quintus Calaber goes still further in his account of the service rendered to Jove by Thetis: "Nay more, the fetters of Almighty Jove She loosed"--Dyce's "Calaber," s. 58. 65 --_To Fates averse._ Of the gloomy destiny reigning throughout the Homeric poems, and from which even the gods are not exempt, Schlegel well observes, "This power extends also to the world of gods-- for the Grecian gods are mere powers of nature--and although immeasurably higher than mortal man, yet, compared with infinitude, they are on an equal footing with himself."--'Lectures on the Drama' v. p. 67. 66 It has been observed that the annual procession of the sacred ship so often represented on Egyptian monuments, and the return of