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If ever you see Orpheus pictured in mosaick stones or in pigment, he sitteth in the centre, in the simili- tude of one that sings, holding in his hands the harp, and about him stand numberless creatures, among which a bull, a man, a lion, and others after their kind. When you see these, bethink you, pray, what his song was, what his harp, and what the bull or the lion that giveth ear to him. And if you would know the originalls that I speak of, you may behold each of them in the heavens.
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They say, moreover, that Tiresias, a Boeotian man, whose fame as touching prophecie is greatly cried up, declared, unto the Greeks that of the errant stars some are masle, some female, and that they do not engender like effects; wherefore they fable that Tiresias himself was bisexous and amphibious, now masle, now female.Here again we have “indepeniiont thought.” A widely variant explanation of the myth had previously been offered by Cephalio (cf. J. Malalas, Chron., p. 40, 1, in the Bonn ition), according to which Tiresias was a student of medicine who concerned himself with the mysteries of parturition.