PARENTAL JOY.

Berenice, daughter, sister, and mother of some persons who carried the prize at the Olympian games, obtained by reason of such a singularity leave to assist

at those games, which had been forbidden other women by a public decree. Some say she obtained that privilege before her son was conqueror; they were satisfied to know that her father and her brothers had obtained that advantage, and to see her, accompanied by her victorious brothers, present her son ready to dispute those sorts of crowns. Pausanias’s narrative differs from this, and is perhaps better. He Pausan. lib. 5. pag. 153. ² says that the inhabitants of Elis made a law, whereby all the women that should dare to creep into the Olympic games, or to pass over the Alpheus on any occasion whatsoever, during the time that was forbidden them, were condemned to be cast headlong from a rock. There was but one who disobeyed that order, and her name was Callipatira according to some, and Pherenice according to others. After the death of her husband she pretended to be one of those that instructed young men in the exercises of the Olympic games, and under that disguise she presented herself in the field of battle with her son, whom she brought thither as an Athleta whom she had instructed, and who prepared himself for the combat. Having seen her son obtain the victory, she leaped over a barrier that served for an inclosure to the masters of the combatants, and discovered her sex by that action. She would have been proceeded against according to the laws, were it not that the judges thought they ought to acquit her, because they found that her father and her brothers, and now her son, had obtained the prizes of those games; so much glory for one family was the cause of that woman’s pardon; but they made a law that for the future the masters of the Athletæ should come naked to those shews. It must not be forgotten that this Berenice was the daughter of that Diagoras the Rhodian, who was so famous in the public games of Greece.

Art. Berenice.