Book 2

2. C. Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica, Book Two.

Meanwhile, ignorant of the crimes and the grief, Jason cleaves the deep; for Juno does not let him learn his father's misfortunes, lest, burning, he turn aside from the midst of the waves and rush rashly upon Pelias and the king's fates still standing in the way, and abandon the deeds approved by the gods. And now the rowan-clad heights of Pelion, levelled with the straits, and the slanting temples of Tisaean Diana sink from sight; now Sciathos has settled beneath the waters, now long Sepias has receded; the Magnesian plain lifts up its horses cropping the pasture: they think they have seen the Dolopian tombs, and Amyrus entering the seas it had sought along the curving shores, whose returning sails, with the river-wind, they furl; the men bend to the oars. Then they salute Eurymenae; the south wind, turning back, takes again the sail and the strait, and as the Minyans seek the deep once more, Ossa returns into cloud. Behold, the dread of the gods and Pallene, condemned to war, and round about they see the monstrous shapes of earthborn giants who once opposed the sky, whom their mother, pitying, clothed in crags and tree-trunks and ridges and built up into the air, mountains overturned. Each one on his rock still keeps his threats and his battle and his terror; the father himself shakes the storms and hurls from on high thick thunderbolts; but the greatest terror is absent from those rocks, Typhoeus, pressed beneath the Sicilian land. Him, a fugitive, spewing sacred flames from his breast, as they tell, Neptune himself, seizing him by the hair, bore off into the deep and entangled him in the shoals, and as often as he rose again with bloody mass and twisted the waves with his serpents, gave him the Sicanian strait, and Aetna with its cities brought upon him, pressing down his mouth. Fierce, he casts up the gnawed foundations of the ridge; then all Trinacria together gasps, while he stirs the mass flung upon his weary breast, striving, and lays it back with a groan in vain. And now the Hyperionian chariot drives toward the goals of the Iberian sea, and the reins, carried forth, are loosed in the down-sloping sky, when aged Tethys lifted up her palms and her bosom, and the sacred Titan, the deep parted, resounded. The hour had increased their fears, when they saw the face of the turning Olympus, and at once the mountains and the places snatched from their eyes, and round about the heavy darkness. The very rest of things and the silences of the world terrify them, and the stars, and the heaven studded with scattered fires. And as one caught in an unknown region of roads, who takes a night-wandering journey, rests neither with his ear nor with his eyes, and the dark plain on either side increases the fears of night, and the tree meeting him with larger shadows, so the men tremble. But steadying their hearts, the son of Hagnias says: 'Not without a divine power do we steer this pine, nor did Tritonia teach me only the course; often she herself has deigned to handle the keel. Have we not learned by trial, when the day, sudden, the light put to flight, bristled with rain? With what gales, by Jupiter, did we stand fast, how great, and how often, and by Pallas' art, in vain the steep swell of the tenth wave fell away? Come then, O comrades; the sky shines unchanging, and Cynthia has not risen with a swollen horn, no redness on her face, and sure for such signs the Titan, whole, sank into the waves and into unmixed gold. Add that toward night the winds, both on sail and on sea, press the harder, and the ship is swifter in the silent hours. And indeed she shows me not those stars to follow which, fallen from the pole, renew the sea: so great does Orion now set, now Perseus hisses in the angry water: but my guide is the serpent, which, never sunk in forbidden waves, shines on its axis and coils its sevenfold fires.' So he speaks, and recalls which faces of Olympus are sure, the places of Pleione and the Hyades, by what star the Sword may flash and by what light the Attic Bootes shine. When he had said these words, with the gift of Ceres then they restore their weary strength, and their hearts with a little Bacchus. Soon they yielded to sleep; their stars guide the ship.

And now beneath the doubtful fires of the Eastern daughter of Atlas the field grows white, and the fierce bears, driven from the sheepfolds, seek safety and their homes, and the shore sends out to the deep its scattered birds, when first Phoebus with his panting horses drove Athos forth and scattered the day into the midst of the waves. The sea is driven with eager oars, and the prows tremble first in their course, and now Vulcanian Lemnos rises from the topmost waters, dear to you through your various toils, Lord of Fire; nor does the land drive you out for the madness and the crime of its mothers, and it shames you not to remember your former service.

At the time when first Jupiter felt the hidden murmurs of the heaven-dwellers rising, swollen by the newness of his reign, and that the silences of celestial peace did not hold, he first hung Juno from winged Olympus, showing her the dreadful chaos and the punishment of the abyss. Soon too, as Vulcan attempted to loose the chains of his frightened mother, he rolled him down from the steep summit of heaven; he fell from the pole through night and day after the manner of a whirlwind, until at last on the shore of Lemnos he crashed. When the sudden voice from there struck the city, they find him leaning on a rock and pity him and warm him, lingering, with alternate steps on his sick knee. Hence, after the father granted him return to the heavenly heights, Lemnos is dear to the god, nor is Aetna better known to fame, nor the home of Lipare: these feasts, these temples, the aegis once perfected and the wings of the dread thunderbolt shaped, glad he visits. Opposite stands the ever-cold altar of Venus in that place, since the goddess shuddered at the deserved wrath of her husband, and silent chains held Mars. Therefore she contrives a crime and stirs against deserving Lemnos a frenzied destruction. For she does not wish to seem kindly only: the same who binds her hair with smooth gold, her starry bosom flowing free, is the same, fierce and vast, her cheeks suffused with spots, most like the Stygian maidens with their hissing pine-torches and their black mantle.

And now the day was here. The leader of Lemnos, who had routed the Thracians in arms, who had dared to weave the ships with slender reed and to cover the wicker frame with stretched hide, brings back glad signs, and they moved the vessels full of herds and of brides. And the barbarian dress and the necklace are the mark of the place. The shout sounds over the sea: 'O homeland, O wife now anxious with various cares, these handmaids we bring you as the prizes of a long war,' when the goddess, troubled, hurls herself down through the clear sky in a pitch-black cloud, and tracks wandering Rumour in the shade. Her the almighty father, as she sings things worthy and unworthy and scatters fears, keeps away from the calm regions of the air: she, roaring, dwells beneath the lowest clouds, goddess neither of Erebus nor of heaven, and wearies the lands that are granted her. The bold first scorn her and then cherish her. Soon she drives them all and shakes the towns with her stirring tongues. Such a minister of crime and guile the goddess seeks for herself, eager. The other sees first, and now flies of her own accord, impatient, and now prepares her mouth, now rouses her ears. Her Venus fires further and fills with these words: 'Go now, maiden, and glide down to sea-girt Lemnos and overturn for me all the houses, as you are wont to run before wars, when you feign a thousand trumpets and armed columns on the plains and the snorting of countless horses. Tell that the men will soon be here, captured by luxury and base desire, and bringing the dear Thracian women to their beds. This is your beginning; from this let grief everywhere goad the raging mothers: soon I myself shall be present and lead them ready.'

She departs, and gladly is carried down into the midst of the city, and seizes first Eurynome, whose threshold is nearest to Codrus, worn out with cares and keeping her chaste bed: she abides for her husband and wearies her handmaids on the shores, who count over the times of the slow war before the bed, and soothe their sleeplessness with long spinning. To her the goddess, with tears and in the well-known dress of Neaera, her cheeks struck, says: 'Would that I were not here a messenger to you, O sister, or that the wave first overwhelm our griefs,' she says, 'since at such a time for you your husband, to one so deserving, whom you seek with vows and weeping, alas, rages and plays slave to a captive's unworthy love. And now they will be here, and a Thracian woman draws near your chamber, not your equal in beauty, nor in skill with the distaff, nor in the praise of modesty, nor the famous offspring of great Doryclus, but a barbarian who pleases with painted hands and branded chin. And yet perhaps you will console these misfortunes with another marriage, and choose by a better fate a household: but your offspring, robbed of a mother and condemned to a concubine, unmans me, whom I see already eyeing the wretched askance and the deadly feasts and the poisoned cups. You know how we are a race like to flames; add that it is their fathers' way for the Dahae to rage with blood. Now she will come hardened with the milk of beasts, now with frost. But me too, driven out by rumour from my husband, the striped one shall hold my bed, and as a bride torn off upon a wagon.' So speaking, she cut short her complaints and left her trembling with cares and tears. She passes to Iphinoe, and fills with the same frenzies the house of Amythaon and of Olenius; then through the whole city she resounds, that they should all stir to drive the women out of Lemnos, that the men and the Thracian women should rule the city. Grief and wrath rise: each woman met tells and hears the same, nor to any is the report unbelieving. Then with their voices they fill the gods and with complaints, and now kisses upon their beds and kisses upon the very doorposts they redouble, and with tears and with looking back they linger again. They leap forth and revisit no more the dwellings of their men and their chambers; they gather themselves together and beneath the bare stars, crowded close, sharpen their lamentations and pray for dreadful marriages and for Stygian torches at an unspeakable covenant.

Among these, in the midst, in the likeness of mournful Dryope, Venus weeps, and the goddess, burning, presses on with savage laments, and first: 'Would that Fortune had granted us to dwell in the Sarmatian homes and to inhabit the dreary frosts, to follow the wagons, or even to have seen our country's roof driven by fire and the slaughter of its gods; for the rest of war we endure. Does that madman destine me, me, to new slaveries, or shall I, fleeing the city, leave my children behind? Shall we not first arm our hands with the sword and the snatched fire, and while they are silent and draw their sleep with a new bride, shall love breathe some great deed?' Then, rolling her fiery eyes, she shook her headlong children from her breast. At once their minds are roused, and the hallowed groan of Venus seizes the conquered hearts of the mothers: all of them look out to the seas, and feign dances and cover the shrines with festal foliage, and glad stand by for the men coming. And now they seek their homes and tables; they recline in the high porticoes; each man's wife, frenzied and hasty, lies beside him, as beneath the night of the infernal abyss Tisiphone reclines beside stunned Phlegyas and Theseus and tastes the savage feast and the cups, a kind of torment, and embraces them with black water-snakes.

Venus herself, shaking the pine-torch streaming with whirlwind, gathers the darkness, and, girded for the fight, leaps down trembling into Lemnos; with clouds and crashing light the pole attends her, and the father augments her with honouring thunder. Then, frenzied, she redoubles a new cry through the frightened air, at which first Athos and the sea and vast Thrace shuddered, and likewise upon their beds every mother and every child stiffened, their breasts drawn tight. Panic hastens up, and mad Discord from the Getic stalls, and the dark Furies with their pale cheeks, and Guile and Madness and the greater image of Death, seen fierce with bare hands, as soon as at the summons the war-bride of Mavors thundered and gave the signal. Here Venus, beginning another crime and far more dreadful, feigns the groans and the voices of the falling, and bursts into the houses, and bearing a sobbing mouth in her hand, her bosom drenched with fresh gore, and her hair raised: 'Behold, the first I return, having avenged my deserved bed; see, the day presses on.' Then with the lash she drives the conquered into their chambers and finds swords for those who hesitate. Whence shall I trace so many faces of crime, so many fates of the slain? Alas, by what monstrous things has the order brought in the seer, what a sequence opens itself. O who will stop me as I sing the truth, and free our nights from this image. They invade the entrances and the bodies once dear to their own, some as they were, drowsy with feasting and wine, some ready even to join hands and prepared with great torches, certain men sleepless and watching all: but to attempt flight, and to take up arms against them, fear forbids: so vast did the hostile goddess make them appear, and the well-known voice sounds greater than the husband's; they only pressed their eyes with their hands, as if they saw the ranks of the Eumenides, or Bellona flashing her steel above them. This a sister, this a wife, and nearer still a daughter and a savage mother, has power to do, and slaughters and drags those seized on their beds, the womanly race, whom the monstrous Bessi nor the Getic hands nor the wraths of the sea could lay low. The gore flows in the chambers, and the gasping wounds smoke in the breast, and on their beds, in wretched struggle, the trunks roll down. Others fling dreadful torches upon the gables and add the houses. Some flee in haste from the black fires, but the hard wife besets them at the threshold, and at the sight of steel they seek the flames again. But others tear the Thracian women, the blot and the cause of their frenzies; mingled groans and the barbarous cry of those praying, and the unknown voices were filling the air.

But for you what mouth worthy of your mighty daring shall I bring, glory and one praise of your falling country, Hypsipyle? No ages shall steal you, named in my song, away, if only the centuries endure in the Latin annals and the Trojan household gods and the palaces of so great a realm. Daughters and brides alike had rushed in, driven, and now the whole island had blazed with the monsters scattered abroad. She, arming her pious hands: 'Flee at once the city and me, father; no enemy,' she says, 'no Thracians who have wronged us hold the walls: this is our crime; do not ask who its author. Flee now, now snatch this gift of a wavering mind, and the sword, do you rather, take pity, hold yourself.' Then she takes up his limbs and veils his head, and silent to the temple privy to Bacchus hurries him, and stretching her hands from the first threshold: 'Free us from crime, father, and pity the pious again,' she says. Then in the silent seat she set the trembling man beneath the feet and the right hand of the god; he lies hidden, received in the sacred robe; the choir and the triennial bronze return their voices and their sound, and the lynxes fixed at the threshold roar. When the queen saw Aurora rise on her rosy car and the houses, wearied at last by the sleepless whirl, fall silent, since the best deeds give a steadfast spirit and greater daring for pious undertakings, she put upon her father the garlands and the youthful hair and the garments of Lyaeus, and set him in the midst of the car, and round about the bronze and the drums and the chests full of silent dread. She herself binds her bosom and her limbs with the servant's ivy and shakes the vine-clad spear with windy blows, looking back, that, veiled, he may hold the green reins like the father, that the horns may swell from his snowy mitre, and that the sacred cup may show forth Bacchus. Then with sharp shriek she drove the strong doors, and is borne through the city singing such things with her voice: 'Leave, O Bacchus, for me the house dripping with slaughter; let the sea expiate you, defiled with death, and I shall bring back the lotus-eaters to the temples as dragons.' So she went forth amid the terrors; for the god himself makes her revered, and, not unknowing, swells with panting breath. And now the old man, far removed from the savage city in the silent woods she had hidden, but Panic, conscious of the deed, and the cheated Fury, trouble her by night and day. She dares no longer to bear like dances (once the rites deceive), nor to approach her father's groves by stealth, and flight must be sought for the wretched man by various arts. A ship was seen, worn out by the labours of the savage wave, which a distant day had stored up for Thetis and Glaucus, and the moon was scorching it with the suns and the hoary frosts. Hither, through the dark silences of deep night, she snatches her father headlong from the woods, and thus, mournful, she speaks: 'What a homeland, father, what great houses now you leave empty of their youth. O dread plague, O ruin of the bitter night. Can I entrust you to such a vessel, dear parent? Can I keep you back amid such great perils? Late, alas, we pay our crime to the Furies. Grant my prayers, goddess, who now draw the sleep-bringing car over the sea. Not peoples, not rich soil, not any realms do I ask for my father; let it be allowed to depart from our native land. When, my father saved, shall I be borne glad through the midst of the city? When shall I see tears and beatings of the breast here?' She had spoken. He, anxious, flees afar in the cut alder, and comes to the groves of the Tauri and the savage shrine of Diana. Here you, goddess, set him over the grim altar, the sword given; nor is the delay long for you in the bloody lands: soon the grove of Egeria, soon lofty Jupiter from Alba calls you, and Aricia, not gentle to the one king alone.

His daughter seeks the citadel, where now the bristling band of mothers had gathered. With hoarse roar they sit in the places of fathers and of sons, and in the empty city upon the walls they make new laws; they grant her, as deserving, the throne and the paternal sceptre, and to the pious mind its own rewards return. Behold, far off they mark arms making for Lemnos with strong oars; the queen is hurried by a sudden tumult and calls a council. They would not have lacked the wicked frenzy to bear opposing weapons and hostile fires, had not Mulciber broken the savage wraths of Venus. Then too the seer Polyxo, beloved of Phoebus— not her country, not her race is certain, but the greatest . . . . . . and ambiguous Proteus feigns himself from the Pharian caves to have steered his ways hither over the seas with his yoked seals; often he hides himself in the lowest waters, and, lingering a little, rises as if reporting in the flood the voices he has heard— 'Let us give them harbour,' she says, 'this ship, believe me, comes by fate, and a kindlier god has turned hither over the sea, easier than Lemnos, the Minyans; Venus herself, willing, grants that bodies be joined, while the womb has strength and the maternal age suffices.' The words please, and Iphinoe carries the prayers to the shore to the Greeks; nor is the throng harmful, and they show no signs of the recent crime, and Cytherea takes away the place's fear. . . . At once a huge bull, under the name of the chiefs, she throws down, and now renders pious gifts to the unaccustomed temples, and at this first altar of Venus the heifer grows warm.

They had come to the cliff, whose hanging rocks smoke on the black ridges, and the air is cooked with vapours. The son of Aeson halted, and here the queen urges them to pray, and teaching the reasons: 'These caverns you see, and behold the homes of Vulcan,' she says; 'give wine and prayers. Perhaps this deed the thunderbolt now keeps silent in the cavern: the night itself will give proof, when, stranger, you will marvel at the murmurs of the enclosed flame and the sound of the beaten mass.' Then she boasts the walls and the strength of the place and the ancient wealth of her forebears. In the midst of the halls the handmaids make ready the feasts; the fiery couch shimmers with Tyrian purple. The Thracian band stands mourning their ancestral kings and their kingly husbands, all those believed to have feared the marriage torches and not to have touched the lady's holy bed. Now the son of Aeson, now the queen took her place in the midst, then the other chiefs; while their first hunger is conquered by the sacred entrails, Bacchus goes round in the bowls, and all the hall is silent; soon, the feasts begun, they beguile the hours of night, and prolong them with talk into the late shadows, and especially Hypsipyle, marvelling, asks of the leader's fortunes, what fates draw him, what force of a king drives him, or whence the mass of the Haemonian ship: she clings to the talk of one alone, and little by little gathers the gentle fires, no longer hard to love nor unkind to it returning, and the god himself indulges the delays and the space for love.

Jupiter, rolling his eternal work, had moved the Pleiad by the law of the sky with its cloudy star, and at once all things rush upon the waves, and at one stroke of the god Pangaea and Gargara and the mournful groves stood still in dread. No fiercer at any other time does terror drive the mortal nations; for then Astraea presses, then demands wrath against the peoples from Jove, and, the lands left behind, Saturnia invokes the stars with ceaseless complaint. The black East wind follows, and with his great brothers thunders on the Aegean, and the sea stretches toward the shores; and on the fourth rising the daughter of Thespius sees the moon thick with rains, and a long fear restraining the men's undertakings and the waves. Still toward the new fires of the kinder goddess the Minyans sit glad in the city, and free of care they indulge the widowed chambers, and to draw out the storms in luxury and now to wish no journeys, and they pretend not to hear the Zephyrs calling, until the Tirynthian hero could not endure their idleness, keeping watch himself over the ship and untouched by the city: 'The gods have envied us,' he says, 'merely for attempting the sea's expanse, and our homes deserted, and the vows of fathers cheated by sluggish time. And shall I myself stand by the men as they linger? 'O wretched, all of us who have joined ourselves to your deeds. Give back Phasis and Aeetes and the perils of the Scythian sea,' he says, 'son of Aeson: with you alone into the deep the love of great things drew me, while there is hope for me to halt the Cyanean mountains and to spoil another sleepless dragon. If it is settled to dwell on the cliffs of the deep Aegean, this my Telamon shall accomplish with me.' When these words were said, not otherwise the son of Aeson, kindled by the bitter warnings, as a warhorse, whom the cold earth in long peace delights, sluggish, is vexed in idle circles to the left, yet would wish the reins and the master, if the warlike cry and the crash of the bronze, forgotten, should again fill his ears. Then he calls Argus and Tiphys, and hastens that all be made ready for the sea; the master with a mighty shout seeks arms, men alike, and the oars scattered on the shore.

A new grief arises in the city, and lamentation through all the houses, and the ancient look. That the walls are left to them, behold, again; and when will be the time for sons, a race to renew them, to wield the sceptres? Now the sad deed of the unspeakable night, now those silences of the widowed dwelling are more savage, because they dared to enter the chambers and the broken bonds, and again to admit such cares. Hypsipyle herself too, when she saw the sudden runnings along the shore and the men departing from all Lemnos, groans and addresses Jason with such a complaint: 'Does it now please to launch the sails at the first calm, O head dearer to me than my father? Just now the savage seas have grown quiet. So would the ship flee the harbour, if the harsh Pleiad had held you on the shore of opposing Thrace. Did we then owe delays to the sky and the course-holding waves?' she said, weeping, and brings out gifts to cling to the dear leader: a cloak and labours woven into it. There she had pressed with the needle the rites privy to her saved father, and the pious car: the savage ranks of the fearful stand and give place; round about, in the green wood, the bristling weapons tremble; in the midst the anxious father flees through the shadows. A part had also rendered the rape from leafy Ida and the glorious flight of the boy; soon, glad in the heaven, he stood by the tables, nay, the very armour-bearer of Jove receives the charming cups from the Phrygian attendant now. Then, bearing a sword and the well-known emblem of Thoas: 'Receive it,' she says, 'that in wars and in the dust of mid-battle I may be a companion, the flaming gifts which the father of the Aetnaean god once wore, now worthy to be joined to your arms. Go, remember, go, the land which embraced you in its quiet lap first, bring back, and from the subdued shores of Colchis the sails, by this Jason whom you leave in our womb.' So she speaks, sinking upon the neck of her Haemonian husband. And no less sad upon your neck, Orpheus, and on yours, son of Aeacus, and the bride hangs upon either Castor. Amid these tears the sluggish anchor is gathered from the sands. Now the oars have snatched the ship away, now the breezes carry it; the foamy track of the fleeing rudder follows after. Then slender Lemnos and the Electrian land pass by, hidden by Thracian rites. Here is the vast dread of the deity and the atonements decreed for heedless tongues. This land the storm, sent down by Jove, never dares to harm with the wave. Of his own accord the god himself then roughens the waters, when he forbids faithless sailors to touch his shores. But meeting the Minyans on the land and at the shrines, the priest Thyotes receives the guests, unbarring the secrets. Thus far to the peoples, Samothracian rites, will I speak: the rest, depart, and let us keep the dread for the hidden mysteries. They, glad at the new sun and full of the gods, sit at the benches. Now the cities the sailor had foreseen he was leaving behind, and Imbros had drawn near the prow, and the sun in mid-course had climbed the heavenly heights. Then first the Thessalian ship touched the Dardanian sands and by fate settled on the Sigean shore. They leap down: here some lift the gleaming camp with light sails, some break the spelt of the grain with a dragged stone, another shows swift fire from the struck cliffs with leaves, and feeds it with friendly sulphur. Alcides, with Telamon for companion, while along the curving shore in its winding bay they wander, a voice reaches their ears, coming up plaintively, when the broken wave murmurs back. Astonished, they checked their step and follow the empty path of the voice. Now it sounds sure, and what man or god did the maiden, abandoned to cruel death, not call upon? The more keenly for this the men press on, resolved to help; just as when a bull has filled the trackless place with bitter groaning, bearing on his high back the lion breaking him with its bite, a band of countrymen, roused, gathers from the scattered hut, and the farmers with blind shouting. Alcides halted, and straining his gaze upon the high rock, sees the cruel manacles and the maiden's fainting face and her eyes swelling at the first bendings of grief; just as mournful ivory, lifeless yet shaped with much art, or Parian marble takes on marks and names, or the liquid colours render their wonders. The leader says: 'What name and race are yours, maiden, what is this lot, tell me; why do chains bind your hands?' She, trembling, her eyes cast down with sad shame, 'I am not worthy of these ills,' she says; 'the last gifts of my parents you see, the cliffs thronged with purple and gold. We are the once-happy race of Ilus, until envious Fortune fled from the house of Laomedon. At the beginning a plague, and the balance of the air, driven from the clear sky, the fields blazed with rival pyres, when a sudden crash, and a flood moving the Idaean woods together with the stalls: behold, suddenly there rose from the sea a beast, a monstrous thing; this you could measure neither by any mountains nor by our sea. To it, raging, amid the embraces and lamentations of my parents, the first of youth is given. This the oracles, this horned Hammon commands, to condemn a maiden soul and bodies allotted to Lethe; the cruel urn destines me to the cliffs. But O, if now the powers return to the Phrygians, and you are he, promised by the auguries and the lot of the gods, he for whom now in the votive grass my father pastures white-shining steeds, the appointed gifts of our deliverance, grant it, and me, I pray, and Pergamum, failing before the monsters, snatch away, for you can. For I saw no chest so broad, when Neptune was joining the walls to the stars, nor did Apollo bear such shoulders and a quiver.' This the place and the most mournful face of the captive shore had increased, and the mounds, and the sky that broods over the city, such as the path of toiling Nemea, or of Erymanthus, he saw, and pitied the rivers of infected Lerna.

Meanwhile from afar Neptune gives the signal, and at once the monster-bearing bays bellow, and the Sigean pest gathers the strait, whose starry eyes tremble in a grey-green cloud, and in order its curved mouth, with triple-forked, lightning-like crash shakes, and, the sea remeasured, the tail returns, and the lofty neck snatches up the opened bays. That one, as it bears down through a thousand coils, the sea attends, leaping at its side, and its own storm drives it rushing to the trembling shores. Not with equal waves comes the surge of the cloud-bringing South wind, nor does the African, so great upon the deep, exult, nor when, full, with the reins of his fathers, Orion lifts the sea with the blast of his two-footed horses. Behold, the son of Aeacus is stunned that the leader grows fierce with the frenzy of the longed-for fight, and rises from the couch, huge in his array, and that the heavy quivers beat his back. He, having prayed to his father and the gods of the sea and his own arms, leapt upon the cliff, and shuddered at the sea moved from its seats and the spacious coils of the lofty monster. As when from the cold valleys of Hebrus Boreas is lifted and hurls the flying clouds through the Riphaean heights, and does not yet hold all in a pitch-black sky, so that one at once thrusts forward its horrific mass and rocky back, and comes on with a vast shadow. Ida trembles, and the ships are dashed, and the prone towers rise again. Alcides seizes his bow and presses it with the whole cloud of his quiver. That one is no more moved than from its seat is great Eryx, though the rains should wish to bring it down to the valleys. Now the air is short and useless for the flying shaft. Then indeed a roar, and the madness of his vain attempt, and silent shame, and again the maiden growing pale. He flings the arms from his hand, looks back at the cliffs and the neighbouring rocks, and as much as antiquity, aided by the winds, had thrust forward, or the sea's crash, so much he tears off from the lowest seat of the sea, shaking it. And now with all its company the monster is at hand, and now, nearest, gapes for the wretched prey. Lifted up in the midst of the waters he stands, and Alcides receives it as it rushes, and first with the rock the rising neck he overwhelms; hence the vast blows of the knotted oak he redoubles, until it is carried down to the lowest waves, now wholly dissolved in the shoals; and the Idaean mother and the choir and the River-gods howled on the topmost hills. At once from the cliffs and the dark valley the shepherds rise again and seek the city with great shouts. Hence Telamon as messenger calls the comrades, and at once they themselves shudder and suddenly see the ship in blood. And no less to the cliffs and the peaks of the rough rock Alcides darts, and, the holding bonds removed, takes away the maiden's hands from the crag, and fits the arms to his proud shoulders. Then making for the king he was passing the safe shores with exulting step, as through the pastures a victor a bull advances, now swelling in the neck, now taller in the shoulders, when he revisits the high stalls of his accustomed herd and his native grove and the loves he has avenged in war.

Against him, sent out from the long darkness, a throng of Phrygians, and drawing his little son with his wife, Laomedon; now he groans for his horses, now that the owed gifts are demanded. A part rings the heights of the airy wall and marvels at the youth in unknown arms. Him, eyeing grimly, and slippery with sharp cunning, the king approaches, and, ill-glad with a father's love, speaks: 'Greatest of the Greek-born, whom not seeking the Sigean shores nor pitying the deaths of our Troy chance itself has brought to these places, if true is the report that your father is Jove and your race that of the highest Thunderer, you are present as ours and come as one joined to us: one and the same is the begetter and the honour of the stock, though by long shores we are sundered. After how many tears for me, after how great atonements of fathers you come late, how small now is the glory for your deeds. But come now, bring your comrades within the brotherly walls; let tomorrow's light show the yoked steeds from the open stalls.' He had said these things, and silently turns over guile and dread crime in his heart, that, shut in the chamber and heavy with sleep, he might slay him, and mock the oracles, the quiver snatched away; for he had heard that Pergamum was twice owed to the Herculean shafts. But who could now overturn from Priam's realms the fates? There abides, with unmoved courses, the . . . night, and the race of the Aeneadae, and the honours of a better Troy. 'Us,' says the Tirynthian, 'to the mouths of the Scythian sea the journey snatches; soon we shall be borne back hither to your shores and I shall bring the promised gifts.' Then indeed to the gods he called the more, and assented to them. The faithless promises of the tyrant the Phrygians now, and the perils of wretched Troy, were weeping.

Hence the canvas is spread with all its wings into the night, and glides past the shores and the mounds of ancient Ilus and the Dardanian father; with wakeful sport at once they see all the festivities; here from the wave, here from sacred fires Ida flashes, and the horror-sounding Gargara answer the boxwood pipe. Then, when now they had held the silences of the mid-sea and the whistling breezes help, they were approaching the Phrixean waters and the narrow throat once without a name. But behold, at first light, gaping, the swift wave terrified the ship, and Helle stood forth with her fillets, now the sister of Panope and Thetis, and now in her left hand holding a golden sceptre. While she smooths the waters, she beholds the chiefs and the leader, and addresses Jason with calm words: 'You too from the Haemonian lands across unknown seas the fates bear to a realm hostile to your house and most like to our fate; again Fortune scatters the grandsons of Aeolus, and, unhappy race, you seek the Scythian river. A vast land beyond, a long sea (fail not in your undertakings), and Phasis himself far off, but true, will give you the mouth. Here is a secret grove, and twin altars stand on green mounds; here first bear with your hand the pious offerings to Phrixus, and to his ashes, I pray, render my words: not, brother, through the silences of the Stygian bank, as you think, am I driven; in vain you search, dear one, the ways of empty Avernus; for me, driven by the cliffs and the waves, the storm does not break: at once Cymothoe and Glaucus came beneath me with swift hand as I rushed down; the father of the deep himself gave me these very seats, these realms with even-handed power, nor does our bay envy the waves of Ino.' She had spoken, and bore her mournful face beneath the calm seas with a groan, as her ancestral griefs returned. Then, pouring wine upon the sea, the leader thus begins: 'Glory of the waves and of your race, Cretheian maid, open the way and drive my course, goddess, with a favouring passage,' and he sends in the ship, and flies between the cities in the midst, where the tide rages with shallow waters, and Europe, more monstrous with its broken shores, escapes Asia pressing upon it. These lands too, and the fields linked to the nations, thus with the sea beating, I think, Neptune's spear once and the long toil of opposing time cut away, as it cut the Sicilian and the Libyan flank, and Janus was stunned at the crash, and Atlas, ruler of the western mountains. Now they pass the heights of Percote and Parium, infamous for its broken shallows, and Pitya, and Lampsacus is left behind by the ship, which neither the triennial rites of Ogygian Bacchus nor the Phrygian frenzy brings in from secret caves, but its own god snatches it to Venus. Its altars above the city and the veils of the lofty temple they see. Hence the land is rarer, and on every side the vast sky again, and the prospect beginning into another world. A land lies with its middle bay between the Pontus and Helle, as if brought forth from the bottom of the sea; for, wicked, it has thrust forth its fields into the blind shallows, and over the seas with a long ridge drives the shore: here on one side, with bordering coasts, a part holds old Phrygia, on the other the pine ridges of the divided mountain. Nor far off, at the confines of the narrow sea, rises a city, set on gentle ridges; king of the rich land is Cyzicus. He, when he saw the new signs of the Haemonian keel, himself of his own accord runs forth to the first waves and marvels at the men, and embracing the right hand and clinging begins: 'O band of Aemathia, now first known to our lands, and an image to me greater than the report. Yet not so far removed nor steep is this land, nor long impassable to the peoples of the Eastern light, since I behold such leaders entered, so many strong men. For though the bristling land here nourish savage races, and the roaring Propontis flow about me with its swollen mouth, your good faith and like rites and gentle in worship are the hearts in these places too for me; far off the savage valour of the Bebrycian, far off the harshness of the Scythian rite.' So he speaks, and snatches them glad, and at once bids the hospitable roofs be opened, and grants to the temples sacred honours. The couches stand with gems and gold, and the tables with kingly array, and a hundred matched attendants, young of body; some bear the feasts in their hands, some the golden cups, graven with the chances of recent wars. And as he first offers the bowls to the Greek leader, Cyzicus says: 'This harbour the enemy terrifies for me, this army it brings back by night, these turned backs of the Pelasgians you see, this is my fire that feeds upon the ships.' The son of Aeson rejoins: 'Would that now wrath might bring the Pelasgians and attempt to clash with their wonted thefts, and all the band pour itself upon the ships: you will see the friendly arms, nor after this night any more battles for you.' So he speaks, and amid these, with various words, the long night snatched its turns, and likewise the following day in a like course.