Note 274 — TAR, TOR, TARIT.

These towers, near the sea, were made use of to form a judgment of the weather, and to observe the heavens: and those which belonged to cities were generally in the Acropolis, or higher part of the place. This, by the Amonians, was named Bosrah; and the citadel of Carthage, as well as of other cities, is known to have been so denominated. But the Greeks, by an unavoidable fatality, rendered it uniformly [274]βυρσα, bursa, a skin: and when some of them succeeded to Zancle [275]in Sicily, finding that Orion had some reference to Ouran, or Ouranus, and from the name of the temple (τριπατωρ) judging that he must have had three fathers, they immediately went to work, in order to reconcile these different ideas. They accordingly changed Ouran to ουρειν; and, thinking the misconstrued hide, βυρσα, no improper utensil for their purpose, they made these three fathers co-operate in a most wonderful manner for the production of this imaginary person; inventing the most slovenly legend that ever was devised. [276]Τρεις (θεοι) του σφαγεντος βοος βυρσῃ ενουρησαν, και εξ αυτης Ωριων εγενετο. Tres Dei in bovis mactati pelle minxerunt, et inde natus est Orion.