in fabulous history, a king of Cyprus, who, being disgusted at the dissolute lives of the women of his island, resolved to live in perpetual celibacy; and making a statue of ivory, he fell so passionately in love with it, that the high festival of Venus being come, he fell down before the altar of that goddess, and besought her to give him a wife like the statue he loved. At his return home, he embraced, as usual, his ivory form, when he perceived that it became sensible by degrees, and was at last a living maid, who found herself in her lover's arms the moment she saw the light. Venus blessed their union; and, at the end of nine months, she was delivered of a boy, who was named Paphos.