Mercury's Net
Vulcan created a net out of unbreakable steel so that he could catch Venus, the goddess of beauty, and Mars, the god of war, in the act of making love. He was jealous of their relationship, because Venus was his wife. Vulcan managed to catch them but, afterwards, Mercury stole the net from the blacksmith god so that he could catch Cloris, a nymph whom he admired. Cloris was tasked with flying after the sun while it rose and scattering lilies, roses and violets behind it. Mercury lay in wait for at least several days until he caught her wing in the net over an unnamed great river in Ethiopia. Mercury then gave the net to the temple of Anubis at Canopus to protect the sacred spot. In Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, the net is stolen 3,000 years later by Caligorant, who goes on to destroy the temple and the city.
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Famous quotes containing the words mercury and/or net:
“The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.”
—W.H. (Wystan Hugh)
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)