CETUS, among ancient poets, a fine embroidered girdle said to be worn by Venus, to which Homer ascribes the power of charming and conciliating love. The word is also written cetum and cetion: it comes from κῆτος, a girdle, or other thing embroidered or wrought with a needle; derived, according to Servius, from κῆτος, pungere; whence also incestus, a term used at first for any indecency by undoing the girdle, &c. but now restrained to that between persons near akin. See INCEST.