One more story, and a very strange one, tells of the peopling of Greece. A fair lady, named Europa, was playing in the meadows on the Phœnician coast, when a great white bull came to her, let his horns be wreathed with flowers, lay down, and invited her to mount his back; but no sooner had she done so, than he rose and trotted down with her to the sea, and swam with her out of sight.  He took her, in fact, to the island of Crete, where her son Minos was so good and just a king, that, when he died, Pluto appointed him and two others to be judges of the spirits of the dead.  Europe was called after Europa, as the loss of her led settlers there from Asia.  Europa’s family grieved for her, and her father, mother, and brother went everywhere in search of her.  Cadmus was the name of her brother, and he and his mother went far and wide, till the mother died, and Cadmus went to Delphi—the place thought to be the centre of the earth—where Apollo had slain the serpent Python, and where he had a temple and cavern in which every question could be answered. Such places of divination were called oracles, and Cadmus was here told to cease from seeking his sister, and to follow a cow till she fell down with fatigue, and to build a city on that spot.  The poor cow went till she came into Bœotia, and there fell.  Cadmus meant to offer her up, and went to fetch water from a fountain near, but as he stooped a fierce dragon rushed on him.  He had a hard fight to kill it, but Pallas shone out in her beauty on him, and bade him sow its teeth in the ground.  He did so, and they sprung up as warriors, who at once began to fight, and killed one another, all but five, who made friends, and helped Cadmus to build the famous city called Thebes.  It is strange, after so wild a story as this, to be told that Cadmus first taught writing in Greece, and brought the alphabet of sixteen letters.  The Greek alphabet was really learnt from the Phœnicians, and most likely the whole is a curious story of some settlement of that eastern people in Greece.  Most likely they brought in the worship of the wine-god, Bacchus (Dionysos), for he was called Cadmus’s grandson.  An orphan at first, he was brought up by the nymphs and Mercury, and then became a great conqueror, going to India, and Egypt, and everywhere, carrying the vine and teaching the use of wine.  He was attended by an old fat man, named Silenus, and by creatures, called Fauns and Satyrs, like men with goats’ ears and legs; his crown was of ivy, and his chariot was drawn by leopards, and he was at last raised to Olympus.  His feasts were called orgies; he-goats were sacrificed at them, and songs were sung, after which there was much drinking, and people danced holding sticks wreathed with vine and ivy leaves.  The women who danced were called Bacchanals.  The better sort of Greeks at first would not adopt these shameful rites.  There were horrid stories of women who refused them going mad and leaping into the sea, and the Bacchanals used to fall upon and destroy all who resisted them.