HARPOCRATES  , originally an

Egyptian deity, adopted by the Greeks, and worshipped in later times both by Greeks and Romans . In Egypt, Harpa-khruti, Horus the child, was one of the forms of Horus, the sun-god, the child of Osiris . He was supposed to carry on war against the powers of darkness, and hence Herodotus (ii . 144) considers him the same as the Greek Apollo . He was represented in statues with his finger on his mouth, a symbol of childhood . The Greeks and Romans, not understanding the meaning of this attitude, made him the god of silence (Ovid, Metam. ix . 691), and as such he became a favourite deity with the later mystic schools of philosophy . See articles by G . Lafaye in Daremberg and Saglio's Dictionnaire des antiquites, and by E . Meyer (s.v . Horos ") in Roscher's Lexikon der Mythologie .