CASTOR and POLLUX (kas'tifir and piil'Ins). (AtOcncoupot), the Dioscuri, twin sons : in heathen mythology the twin sons of Jupiter by Leda. They had the special province of assisting persons in danger of shipwreck (Theocrit. Id. xxn:1; Xenoph. S•nft. viii:29. Comp. Horat. Ca TM. i:3, 2; iv:8, 31); and hence their figures were often adopted for the sign (To wapacrnp.ov, insigne), from which a ship de rived its name, as was the case with that 'ship of Alexandria' in which fit. Paul sailed on his jour ney tor Rome (Acts xxviii:t CAT (kat), (Gr. a(Xoupos, alt-ee'loo-ros).
It might be assumed that the cat was a useful, if not a necessary, domestic animal to the Hebrew people in Palestine, where corn was grown for exportation, as well as for consumption of the resident population, twenty or thirty fold more than at present, and where, moreover, the condi tions of the climate required the precaution of a plentiful store being kept in reserve to meet the chances of scarcity. The animal could not be unknown to the people, for their ancestors had witnessed the Egyptians treating it as a divinity. Yet we find the cat nowhere mentioned in the canonical books as a domestic animal. And in Baruch it is noticed only as a tenant of Pagan temples, where no doubt the fragments of sacri ficed animals and vegetables attracted vermin and rendered the presence of cats necessary. This
singular circumstance, perhaps, resulted from the animal being deemed unclean, and being thereby excluded domestic familiarity, though the He brews may still have encouraged it. in common with other vermin-hunters, about the outhouses and farms, and corn stores, at the risk of some loss among the broods of pigeons which, in Pal estine. were a substitute for poultry.
With regard to the neighboring nations just named, they all had domestic cats, it is presumed, derived from a wild species found in Nubia and first described by Ruppel under the name of Fclis Maniculata. The typical animal is smaller, more slender and more delicately limbed than the European. The fur is pale, yellowish gray, with some dark streaks across the paws and at the tip of the tail. In the domesticated state it varies in colors and markings, for the ancient monuments of Egypt contain many painted figures which show them cross-barred like the wild species in Eu rope.