Book 10
3.22
But SophoclesIn a lost play, The Deaf Satyrs. supposes, that the first five were males, who discovered and forged iron,In hoc quoque dissentio, sapientes fuisse, qui ferri metalla et aeris invenerunt, cum incendio silvarum adusta tellus, in summo venas jacentes liquefacta fudisset. Seneca, Epist. 90. and many other things which were useful for the purposes of life; that these persons had five sisters, and from their number had the name of Dactyli.Diodorus Siculus, b. v., says that they obtained the name from being equal in number to the ten fingers or toes (Dactyli). Different persons however relate these fables differently, connecting one uncertainty with another. They differ both with respect to the numbers and the names of these persons; some of whom they call Celmis, and Damnameneus, and Hercules, and Acmon, who, according to some writers, were natives of Ida, according to others, were settlers, but all agree that they were the first workers in iron, and upon Mount Ida. All writers suppose them to have been magicians, attendants upon the mother of the gods, and to have lived in Phrygia about Mount Ida. They call the Troad Phrygia, because, after the devastation of Troy, the neighbouring Phrygians became masters of the country. It is also supposed that the Curetes and the Corybantes were descendants of the Idaean Dactyli, and that they gave the name of Idaean Dactyli to the first hundred persons who were born in Crete; that from these descended nine Curetes, each of whom had ten children, who were called Idaean Dactyli.Groskurd proposes Corybantes for these latter Idaean Dactyli.
3.23
Although we are not fond of fabulous stories, yet we have expatiated upon these, because they belong to subjects of a theological nature.
