What the big dog was they were not prepared to say. We
know. It was the night goddess, represented by the dog, who was thus
shrouding the world at midday. The ancient Romans sacrificed dogs to
Hecate and Diana, in Egypt they were sacred to Isis, and thus as
traditionally connected with night and its terrors, the Prince of
Darkness, in the superstition of the middle ages, preferably appeared
under the form of a cur, as that famous poodle which accompanied
Cornelius Agrippa, or that which grew to such enormous size behind the
stove of Dr. Faustus. In a better sense, they represented the more
agreeable characteristics of the lunar goddess. Xochiquetzal, most
fecund of Aztec divinities, patroness of love, of sexual pleasure, and
of childbirth, was likewise called _Itzcuinan_, which, literally
translated, is _bitch-mother_. This strange and to us so repugnant title
for a goddess was not without parallel elsewhere. When in his wars the
Inca Pachacutec carried his arms into the province of Huanca, he found
its inhabitants had installed in their temples the figure of a dog as
their highest deity.
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