Note 176 — Chapter XII · THE STONE OF HERCULES.

One of the recent flippant writers on ancient things says, “The most famous bowl of antiquity was that of Hercules, which served its illustrious owner in the double capacity of drinking-cup and canoe; for, when he had quenched his thirst, he could set it afloat, and, leaping into it, steer to any part of the world he pleased. Some, indeed, speak of it as a borrowed article, belonging originally to the sun, and in which the god used nightly to traverse the ocean from west to east.”—St. John’s Ancient Greece, vol. ii. p. 114.