Letters & Poems 1 part 5/7

for whom the applauding Quirites, and the prince beloved for his popularity, set up in Trajan's forum a gleaming statue. But do not you attempt to compare with me those whom I, far lesser, myself the more adore—Paulinus, and Ampelius, and Symmachus, Messala of a mind deep enough, and Martius, now second to none, in the new art of speaking a match for the ancients; and Petrus, most astonishing too when he speaks; or him whom the senate rightly sets above the municipal poets, Villicus. Or those eloquent men whom our own soil retains—sweet Anthedion, and my teachers, the sufficiently venerable Muses of the Aponus: keen Lampridius, shrewd Leo, and Severianus outstanding at the trumpet, and one no less able to write in like manner, as Marcus Quintilianus used to.

We entrust these measures of a very barren Muse to rare and to scanty paper, which may deservedly carry mackerel and pepper. For what god will grant this to a rejected thing—that, taking up good odors, it should preserve nard and the rich alabaster-jars anointed with nicerotian juices, the cinnamon sought from an Indian pyre, whereby the phoenix grows young in dying, costus, malobathrum, roses, amomum, myrrh, frankincense, and balsam-oil? Wherefore protect my misdeed, and assert, I pray, the incautious modesty of a fellow-pupil obedient to you; yet before all remember to summon your own brother, the pillar of learning, Probus: he who, being good, can rightly apply the exacting theta to this scribbling. But well I know—I do not refute the fault—an impudent poet does not please the learned.

But neither shall I too greatly dread the swollen countenance of an insulting reader, if—as though graver and more severe, rejecting the jest of our Terpsichore—Cato the grim, with lip turned up, should threaten a rhinoceros-nostril. Let not this over-clever one terrify you: truly, if you wish to prove it, believe me, no man knows so much as he does not know. POEM X. PREFACE TO THE EPITHALAMIUM WRITTEN FOR RURICIUS AND IBERIA. When the wave-dwelling nymphs unfolded their festival, Pagasaean, through the caverns, beneath the Aemathian crag of Pelion, furniture ample enough narrowed the ground for the gods above; they vied with treasures—here the heavens, there the sea. And the father-in-law himself, well-nigh covered with a green mantle, of hue matching the sea-blue robe, led the dances. And each nymph, coming naked from the deep into the bridal chambers, began to fear the limbs of the clothed man.

Then whatever god was present, with terror removed, sported in the office wherein each was strong. Jupiter loosed a tepid thunderbolt without weight, and said: 'Better now does Cytherea grow warm.' Then Pollux was praised at the boxing-glove, Castor at the reins, Pallas then at the crests, the Delian then at the quivers. Alcides at the club, Mavors then sported at the spear, the Arcadian then at the wand, Bromius then in the fawn-skin. Here too the excellent Orpheus had brought in the Pimpleiades—with strings, voice, hand, songs, and reeds. Ambitious Hymen there brought together all the arts: he who pleased not by talent, perchance pleased by genius. Yet no Fescennine verses were admitted before our Apollo had thundered on his wonted lyre. POEM XI. THE EPITHALAMIUM WRITTEN FOR RURICIUS AND IBERIA.

Among the Cyanean rocks, the Ephyraean peaks and crags, where above Idalium the Orithion lifts into the air the summit of a mountain eaten by the brine—where perchance, as he fled the wandering rock, trembling Tiphys fixed the Symplegades, and marked their recoil belched back at hoarse Malea—there the bay goes forth into the Isthmian sea, its recesses closed by the wings of the crags; whereby often in that retreat, just as if the whole day should gather from all the light of heaven, the collected daylight is straitened, and through the tremulous waves pursues the secrets of the shoal; in the deep the liquid is suffused, poured over with a wondrous sheen, and—strange to relate—the water drinks the sun, and, inserted into the thin flowing, the dry light pierces the moisture with an arid ray. The space has profited by its care;

for there the Lemnian, as though building a temple, sported for Venus, and, leaving aside his thunderbolt, here ferruginous Pyracmon often sent up smoke. Here the stone is from five places, giving five colors—Ethiopian, Phrygian, Parian, Punic, Lacedaemonian: purple, green, spotted, ivory, and white. The tawny brilliance of chrysolite blazes forth on the doorposts, murrhine, sardonyx, amethyst, Iberian, jasper. Indian, Chalcidian, Scythian, beryl, agate lift the double folding-doors upon a hinge of silver, through which the enclosed shadow of the emerald vomits forth light. Thick onyx crusts the threshold, and hard by, the hyacinth-stones make a concordant color in the azure pools. The outer flint is not adorned, but the pumice juts up high, rough from the ceaseless lash of the waters.

In an inner place Mulciber fashioned in gold crags jutting far and wide, and with masterly art deceived nature's uncultivated with a mighty adornment. Intent upon this work—which she did not yet know—she who, in place of the Lemnian chains, condemned the theft. Hither scaly Triton, where the confines of his double back meet, above the coils of his twisted belly, amid the waters bore Dione with a warm heart. But Galatea presses the side of the half-beast with the added weight of a radiant conch, which with fixed thumb she plucks, and by a secret touch pledges wedlock. Then, rejoicing with tormenting jest, the lover smiles at the wound, and now lashes his own sea-monster, though it spares him. Behind follows the band of Loves in blazing troops.

Here one holds back a dolphin with roses; here another, borne on a green bullock, hangs by the horns, the reins despised; these, standing, stagger with the motion, and slip on the dripping sole, and steady the footprints of their feet with their wings. She had let down her soft face upon her bent-back arm: the violets were fading, and, heavier with sleep, from the rubbing of the flowers her neck had begun to sink down. Alone of the number of brothers, he who is the fairer—Love—was absent, while he prepares the most thronged festival for the Gauls, which the father-in-law Ommatius, greater than his great forefathers and grandson of a patrician line, adorns with auspicious omens for his daughter and his son-in-law. But when that day by chance shone forth, he himself seeks his mother in swift flight. Whose torch, bow, and quiver hung down:

but he, stooping down and hanging at the edge of her left palm, beats his balanced feet through the empty air with his wings, thus plucking his mother's kisses, and with a light feather scratched the half-drowsy eyes of her who had melted back into sleep. Then, first and eager, he began thus: 'I bring new joys of a fortunate prey, mother; that proud Ruricius glows hot with our torches, and, touched by the sweet venom, sighs in his heart a longed-for pain. Were the present age to be, the Lemnian maid would spend an empire on him, the Cretan the thread of the labyrinth, Alcestis her life, Circe her herbs, Calypso her apples, Scylla her locks, Atalanta her feet, Medea her frenzies, Hippodame her wax tablets, the child of Jove by the swan her crown. For him Dido would go upon the sword, Phyllis alike to the noose, Evadne into the flames, and the Sestian maid would go into the waves.' To these things she replies thus.

'We rejoice, my son, that you vanquish the rebel and praise the man; but it is the girl's beauty that—had the Stheneboean hero once beheld it—he would not, out of scorn, have subdued the monsters of Chimaera: or he who, proud of his Thermodontian mother, spurned the reckless desires of the Cretan stepmother, would, had he seen her, have perished, I confess—but by a true charge. And if perchance in judgment I had been fourth, me too the shepherd on Rhoetean Ida would have condemned. Or if you wish to conquer, give that girl to my son—I had bestowed this beauty as a gift in return for beauty: so great is the honor and genius of the peoples.'

Set beside her blush the pale sea-purple lies hidden, and the flashing pearls upon her bound neck are darkened, their brilliance overwhelmed by the light of her countenance. For you, too, Iberia would have contended in games of every kind: Pelops with the chariot-axle, Hippomenes in the race, Achelous in wrestling, Aeneas in wars, and Perseus, famed for the Gorgon. Nor is this beauty less, for whose sake Jupiter so many times became Delian maid, bull, swan, satyr, serpent, thunderbolt, and gold. Come then, let them be joined; for wealth, beauty, and lineage agree; here your arrow has fixed nothing ill-matched. But why do I delay the vows? So she spoke, and called for her chariot, to which crystals had given the yoke — crystals that, while the city was still tender in the first cold, where the ice heaps up Caucasus, the frost of the Tanais bound fast with Hyperborean rimes, taking on the nature of a gem because it lost that of water.

A shaft of tawny metal pierces this yoke: a river had sent this gift, beneath whose eddying flood the Nymphs cherished Mygdonian Midas — Midas, who though poor amid his gold, enriched Pactolus with the streams turned to his reversed prayers. All along its clear rim it gleams, encircling the rays drawn from the maw of the Marmaric beast, while the monster, its curved tusks torn out, groans that its jaws are disarmed. This gift too was sent by the naked Indian who dwells at the warm Erythrae — of hue like the Aethiopian — or who, dripping with rich balsam, harasses his flowing hair in fragrant huntings. Yet she binds with wreathed myrtle the swans wont to feed throughout Cyprus, whose other parts — their milk-white necks — curve with rosy coral upon taut reins. So they set out upon the journey: the hanging wheel furrows the empty air, and the track is not dissolved in its liquid course.

Here the threefold Grace attends in a single bond; here Fortune's plenty breathes fragrance from her wide-mouthed horn; here Flora scatters from her baskets flowers ever-blooming; here Pharian Osiris accompanies Sicilian Ceres; here Pomona bears her fruit-laden bosom according to the season; here Pallas comes among the presses with dripping olive-mills. Here the Thyad, her flank marked with the spotted fawnskin, whirls the Indian orgies of Bromius with Echionian thyrsus. Here too the Corybas, who sports upon Dindymus in the Sigean caverns, now gashed grows fragrant again, from whose tawny throat the hollow boxwoods sound back fire through their double-cleft caverns. Thus they came to the bridal chambers.

Frankincense, nard, balsam, myrrh are here; here the phoenix yields the cinnamon of its living pyre. Nay more, the very winter, breathed upon by the warmth of the festivities, now feels less cold, and these vows bestow upon this place, holding to a springtime aspect, what the seasons do not grant to the world. Then the Paphian goddess, clasping the young man's right hand and the maiden's right hand, sang a solemn rite in few words, lest even words should cause delay: 'Pass your life happily in concord; may there be children and grandchildren, and may the great-grandsire behold in himself what a great-grandson might wish for.' CARMEN XII. TO CATULLINUS, MAN OF SENATORIAL RANK, THAT BECAUSE OF THE HOSTILITY OF THE BARBARIANS HE WAS UNABLE TO WRITE AN EPITHALAMIUM.

Why do you bid me, even if I could, prepare a song of Fescennine Dione — I who am set amid long-haired hordes, enduring Germanic speech, praising again and again with a grim face whatever the gorged Burgundian sings, smearing his hair with rancid butter? Would you have me tell you what breaks a poem? Driven away by barbarian lyres, Thalia scorns the six-foot verse ever since she has beheld these seven-foot patrons. Happy your eyes and ears, and happy I may call your nose, upon which ten courses do not belch garlic and foul onions at the first light of morn — you whom, as though he were an aged fatherland's parent and the nurse's husband, before day has dawned, so many and such great Giants do not besiege all at once, a thing which the kitchen of Alcinous could scarcely bear.

But now the Muse falls silent, and holds her reins, having jested in a few hendecasyllables, lest anyone should call even these a satire. CARMEN XIII. AN EPIGRAM IN WHICH HE ASKED FROM THE EMPEROR MAJORIAN A REMEDY FOR THREE HEADS. Venerable antiquity relates that the son of Amphitryon, while he relieved the earth, earned the heavens. And though grim he crushed in his bare arm the raucous throats of the Ciconian beast; and though with blazing sword he laid low the hydra, when death by a single wound brought forth twin lives; and bearing captive the monster from the Erymanthian wood, he laughed at its jaws disarmed by his own; and bursting the smoking necks of the flame-born cattle of Cacus, at last he bade the recovered oxen go in a straight line.

Bull, hind, giant, host, wrestler, Amazon, Cretan beast, dog, and the Hesperides — let these be the memorials of the hero. Yet no battle is greater than that with slain Geryon, upon whom alone he inflicted a threefold head. These things once did Alcides; but you are another Tirynthian, yet a prince, the greatest care of great God — you whom the serpent, the stag, the boar felt with matching arrows, when tooth, when venom, when antlers availed nothing. Suppose that I am Geryon, and the monster is a tribute: take from me these heads, three of them, that I may live. These prayers a suppliant servant offered, awaiting a pious and healing answer — that you restore his fatherland and his life together, unburdening Lugdunum of its ruins. This your own Sidonius entreats of you. So may the purple, steeped anew in Sidonian dye, clothe you for many years.

So, when a lustrum of your everlasting reign is accomplished, may the quinquennial games be proclaimed to your fasces. So, when the swelling of the twofold bank is broken, may the shorn Sygambrian drink the Vahalis. But if you grant this to your poet, I will commit to be read in the perpetual annals whatever glorious triumphs you achieve. For now the talkative Muse is silent for a tribute — she who, in place of Virgil and Terence, gathers up the sixths and twelfths of the treasury, and files the hand and the rope of Marsyas, who out of an ancient hatred for Phoebus now threatens hangings to the poets. Sidonius to his own Polemius, greeting.

While after your departure, my Polemius, most beloved brother, I was pondering deeply within myself in what manner I might, according to your wishes, sing Fescennine verses for a philosopher, a theme crept upon me, from the running of which it can readily be discerned that I had regard rather to your learning than to your cause. And so, setting aside the tenderness of an epithalamium, I drew my pen through the roughest and most rugged rules of philosophy. Their order is such that, without very many new words which — with the leave of many eloquent men be it said — are specially known to you and to your friends, these trifles themselves could not have been unfolded. You must see whether some, through their inexperience, rashly think that the mention of a centre, of proportion, of intervals, of climes, or of wonders, is not suited to an epithalamium.

This at least I boldly affirm, with those leaders as witnesses — the truly great consular Domnulus, the man of quaestorian rank, and the respectable Leo — that music and astrology, which are members of philosophy subordinate to arithmetic, can by no means be expounded without these terms. And if anyone should despise these as Greek and foreign words — as indeed they are — let him know that he must either forbear to make mention of an art of this kind, or that he can discourse on this matter in the Latin tongue not at all, or at least not to the full. But if anyone should judge the matter to stand otherwise than I assert, I, being absent, indeed yield my hands to the detractors.

But let those who hold a differing opinion know that my judgement cannot be condemned without Marcus Varro, without Serenus — not Septimius, but Sammonicus — without Censorinus, who composed a distinguished volume on the natal day. You will also read here a new word, that is, essentia (essence): but know that Cicero himself used this very word. For he named both essentia and indoloria (freedom from pain), adding, 'For it is permitted to impose new names upon new things' — and rightly did he say it. For just as from that which is 'to be wise' and 'to understand,' verbi gratia, we name wisdom and intelligence, so regularly from that which is 'to be' we do not keep silent about essence.

Therefore, since I, a Gaul, led on by zeal for your love, have introduced the matter of the sophistic school, I seek you above all as the intercessor for my deed. Let Venus, or the feigned figments of the Loves, be assigned to him who has lacked the means of being thus praised. Farewell. CARMEN XIV. PREFACE TO THE EPITHALAMIUM ADDRESSED TO POLEMIUS AND ARANEOLA. A prosperous day gleams for the marriage, a day which kindly Clotho marks with snow-white spinning, which the white pebble of the pitch-dark Indian marks, which the tree of peace and of youth together, and the ever-green olive, mark. Come, Calliope, with shining palm, grant the eloquence of the sacred stream which Pegasus dug with flying hoof, his mane dripping with kindred venom. Here is no impiety, nor does the rivalry of suitors deliver up this maiden to deaths.

Not here does Pelops hear the bloody covenants of Oenomaus in the circus, nor does pale Hippomenes at the turning-post's edge delay the pursuing daughter of Schoeneus with the apple falling thrice. Not here does Aetolian Calydon, amazed from its citadel, behold the wrestlings of Hercules, when Alcides pressed the horn of the proud river-god, then, refreshing his weary breast time and again from the watery foe. But a learned youth and a comely maiden, holding the heights of Eastern Gaul, are joined: quickly, Goddess, weave the strings; nor, because a greater muse has thundered, compel our poverty to be silent. Yet the torches of Thetis, with Phoebus approving, Chiron too sang with a lesser quill: nor did the pious throng laugh at his rusticity, though the twiform old man there often broke off his song with a neighing chant. CARMEN XV. THE EPITHALAMIUM ADDRESSED TO POLEMIUS AND ARANEOLA.

By chance, returning from the storm-swept height of Caphareus, having sufficiently avenged the ravished honour of the Ilian Phoebas, Pallas was exchanging Xanthus for Erechthean Hymettus: her head flashes with gilded bronze, and she takes on a greater serenity from her terror; for, having laid aside the thunderbolt, she had not yet gladdened her fierce limbs with the Cinyphian Triton. The Gorgon holds the middle of her breast, destined to make the beholder both truncated and delayed; the treacherous image gleams haughtily, and its beauty lives on though the soul perishes. Another heap of gold makes her head rough with the coils of horned serpents; the biting hair twists its spotted windings, and the angry locks give forth foul hissings. The scaly cuirass does not reach to the middle of her belly, the robe hanging behind the steel.

A robe covers the extremities of her feet, which, when they move beneath the garment, cause the stiff folds to crackle in the crinkled train. Her left hand a shield covers, full of the tumult of Phlegra. Here Enceladus, brandishing it, whirls uprooted Pindus into the stars, while swift Typhoeus hurls Ossa as a missile. Porphyrion snatches up Pangaeus, and Adamasthor raises Rhodope with the Strymonian spring, and coming from above, quenches with the twisted river the burning thunderbolt. Here Pallas seeks Pallania, for whom, once the Gorgon was seen, the tardy lance finds a body already turned to solid corpse. Here Mimas, in his brother's stead, hurls Lemnos against the aegis, and the island, driven by the throwing-slings, shakes the smitten sky.

Here Briareus in great numbers fights with his populous body, bearing a kindred battle-line, so that from one summit you might behold palms sprouting into branching arms. Nor did Mulciber give shapes alone to the monsters, but by his art gave them frenzy too, and himself feared the very rages he had fashioned. In her right hand she holds the spear which lately Pallas herself drew forth for herself from the vale of Aracynthus, once the olive was set in its place. It had stood there as a portent, that above the goddess's footprints it might hold the Marathonian olive as it fell, gliding upon the presses. Here two eminences gleam, of which one surpasses the other in position as in merits, holding on high those men who search out by reason what the machine of heaven is, what the earth, what the trench of the sea, what the turbid air, what the alternations of night and light, what the monthly waxings of the moon prepare, and why as many losses follow.

Straightway here reside the seven Sages, the first beginnings of countless philosophers. Thales, born of Miletus, condemns the giving of pledges; you, Cleobulus of Lindus, bid that measure is best; you, Periander, meditating, adorn all Corinth; then Attic Solon approves the one maxim, 'Nothing in excess'; Bias of Priene, you say the wicked are the majority; you, Pittacus of Mitylene, safety, come to know the right time; you, Chilon of Sparta, used to teach men to know themselves. Here too the Samian Pythagoras asserts, after the learned silences of a five-year period, as chief principle that music tempers the solid world and renders concord from the fixed stars, and that the signs which the circle of the Zodiac, in the highest axle, holds thrice four, do not run by their own motion, yet are set at equal distances from one another.

He says too that they are fixed and likewise borne downward with the sign-bearer, and that above all the seven wandering stars give their pre-eminent song from this, because each is held a perfect number; affirming that by this number, in this order, all things are turned about. That scythe-bearing Cronos, an old man, passes over the summits of the poles; the star of Mars, next to it, goes on with Jupiter between; after these, the sun now bends itself in a fourth track; thus placid Venus keeps the fifth interval, the Arcadian the sixth, and thus the moon in the highest orb runs its thrice-ten climes near the tropic circle. If, then, any modes the lyre, or the harp, or the flute has produced together with the voice, according to this pattern, the weights being set down, as far as proportion counsels, the intervals of the seven stars follow suit, he declares.

Speaking of harmony too, he says that the four elements are so seated in these modes that the place of the great by weight is the lowest; but because the earth is perfectly in the middle, it is clear that the base of the round is lowest; hence it comes that the lighter earth gleams forth above the waters; higher than these too is the air, which stands forth purer; heaven encloses all with the lightness of the topmost, and this whole hangs together from the origin of the centre. This Thales also inquires by numbers and stars, so as to announce beforehand the eclipse of Phoebus and likewise the labouring of the moon; but he sets a principle useless for things, in that he believes the world subsists upon the waters. The opinion of his disciple is reversed, saying that each several thing is always created from its own principles.

This one decrees that individual things have certain springs, everlastingly flowing and full of the seed of things. Him also follows one who thought that this air begets all things, and likewise asserts that the gods thus arose. The fourth, Anaxagoras, keeps the Thaletic dogmas, but perceives a divine mind that made the world. A younger colleague sits joined to him; yet he, believing air to be the matter of all created things, judges therefrom that God, from which he brought forth all things, made it. After these, Arcesilaus conjectures that this mass was prepared by a divine mind, made up of those parts which he himself calls light atoms. After him the Socratic sect gleams, which, migrating from the weight of nature, transferred its practice to the polishing of men's morals. This sect they relate that supreme Plato most cultivated.

But he shaped it in a threefold mode, being first and one, joining physics either to logic, or logic to ethics. This chief discovered how far the first essence differs from the supreme and sixth good: since at last stones merely are, and are proved to be nothing at all save existent; next succeed those to which it is granted to be and to live — you can add nothing further to tree and herb; the third is of cattle, whose being and living do not lack motion and sense; the fourth regards its own creation, mortals, to whom being, moving, and living are given, together with sense, and there rises pre-eminent that which they know, and are able by the truth to discern the false.

Let the fifth substance bring forth the higher creatures, which some have called gods, because they assume bodies to be contemplated by man, and a little after leave them, and return into their own — if any is the most tenuous, once formed: so that it may be made clear that the supreme substance is creator. The sixth, however, and above it nothing, but all things beneath it. In this gymnasium the wisdom of Polemius cultivates life, and cherishes it joined to her own Plato. And although the Academy may withstand it with all its dogmas, and deny the truth, yet with true praises she adorns him. After these the Stoics — but with them in agreement — Chrysippus and Zeno teach to hold their precepts. The Cynics are almost shut out, but they remain upon the threshold, while virtue banishes the Epicureans on every side. But on the other part, at the first loom of Minerva.

The robe of Jupiter glows red, whose threads, twice boiled in a cauldron, the Sidonian murex had dyed as silken warp. Nor does the crimson breathe forth only the sea-purple: it has lightning inwoven, and upon the stiffening thread the heavy sea-purple blazed from a fragment of the thunderbolt. Here green Glaucus hung in his ancestral cloak; here the folds waved with art, and with feigned swelling the tempest, woven into the cloth, sank the curved keels. For the son of Amphitryon a third garment rose: here the little infant, girt with the stepmother's twin serpents, smiles unknowing at the monsters, and, deeming their treachery to be play — for he knows not the ambush — he loves it, and with a grieving face weeps that they should be extinguished, the snakes which he himself slays.

Moreover, these figures are set beneath, scattered about: the sow, lion, hind, giant, bull, antlers, Cerberus, hydra, the host, Nessus, Eryx, birds, the Thracian, Cacus, Amazon, the Cretan, rivers, the Libyan, apples, Lycus, the maiden, the pole, Oeta. This work, and whatever remains that knows no name, virgin hands set in place; but in the whole company, among the Cecropian and Ephyrean maidens, Araneola gleams: Minerva herself labours to match her own hands with hers, and, outdone, withdraws from the wool-baskets, since, when the one holds the webs, the other wishes rather to hold the weapons. Here, then, imitating her forefather's stiff robes of state, she herself prepares a palm-embroidered robe for her father, whereby, as consul and also as Agricola, he may touch his grandfather, and teach his descendants to join the fasces not of a great-great-grandfather alone, but of a grandfather too.

Yet she had woven also the cloaks in which that master, conspicuous throughout the cities of Tartessus, shone in splendour, and in which, distinguished at the time of his imposed prefecture, he rendered the holy laws himself as their protector. Nevertheless upon the robe she had sported in a lofty border, which was illustrious for its ancient couches. First the Ithacan tale and the Dulichian household are figured, and Penelope herself unweaving her slow-woven webs. Here in vain does the Thracian, his wife twice snatched away, beat upon Taenarus with the lyre, after he violated the law of Avernus, and thinking it profitable, does not again look back upon the shade. Here Alcestis vows to break off her life, her husband preferred before it — whom you may behold, in the very fleece of the Fates, not yet fully spun, safety being granted by fate.

Here the night of Danaus's daughters shone in gold, wherein the impious father fits fifty swords, and discord's command grants a concordant fury. Alone by the gift of Hypermnestra was Lynceus saved and escaped — you might behold her fearing little for herself, and turning pale only for the husband she had let go. And now she changes Jupiter into the forms in which he was wont to hold Mnemosyne, Europa, Semele, Leda, Cynosura — serpent, bull, thunderbolt, swan, Dictynna. And now the work went on to the tower of Danae and the shower of metal, and here Jupiter dripped with alien gold. When the maiden, looking on, beheld the Tritonian goddess with turned eye more willingly gazing at the learned arts.

Moved, she changes her hands, and with skilful thumb she began to depict Lais, victress over the philosopher, who, through the chin and wrinkled neck of the Cynic, tore his perfumed beard with a fragrant tweezer. Pallas smiled, and with chaste lips added these words: 'No longer, maiden, shall you laugh at our teachings, you who are to wed my philosopher; rather, taking up the bridal veil, let your mother weave this work without you. Rise up, illustrious glory of the sages, Polemius's ornament, and now at last lay aside the Stoic eyebrows, and, imitating the Cynic lovers, begin once more to bear for me a little Plato.' The master addresses the lingering one with such a voice: 'Go gladly, and do not condemn the joining you were shaped for, which our old man bids — he who, not slothful, drank in the divinities, condemning Anytus while the poison paled him.' He had spoken.

At once he rises, and with modest countenance commends the stern cloaks to the knotted torch. Then the goddess binds the hair of both with peace of the greening olive, joins their right hands, and enjoins the covenants, which Nymphidius the grandsire beholds, Atropos approves the omen, and the tawny Sisters wove together the concordant threads. CARMEN XVI. THE EUCHARISTICON TO FAUSTUS, BISHOP OF RIEZ. Phoebus and the thrice-three Muses with Pallas the tenth, and Orpheus, and the feigned stream of the horse's spring, and the Ogygian lyre, which, bending the following rocks with its songs, raised the walls that had ears by its chant — spurn these on the strings.