Poseidon. I perceive. Stand still, Island, and rise again from the deep, and no longer be borne along under the waves, but remain firm and motionless, and receive and harbour, O most highly-favoured one! the two children of my brother, the most beautiful of the Gods. And do you, Tritons, convey the lady across to it, and let a universal calm prevail. But as for the dragon, which now terrifies and goads her to madness, the infants, as soon as they are born, shall pursue it immediately and avenge their mother. Now, do you carry word to Zeus that everything is in good order. Delos stands immovable: let Leto come

at once and lie in.

THE RIVER XANTHUS

XI.

SUPPLICATES THALASSA (THE SEA) TO RECEIVE HIM, AND CURE HIS BURNS INFLICTED UPON HIM BY HEPHASTUS ON BEHALF OF ACHILLEUS.

Xanthus and Thalassa.1

Xanthus. Receive me, O Thalassa, in my terrible sufferings, and quench my fiery wounds.

Thalassa. What's this, Xanthus? Who burnt you up ? Xanthus. Hephaestus. Yes, I am all burned to a cinder, ill-fated wretch that I am, and I am at boiling pitch.

Thalassa. Why, pray, did he throw fire upon you?

Xanthus. On account of the son of Thetis here. For when I approached him as a suppliant as he was murdering the Phrygians, and I could not make him cease from his rage, but he kept blocking up my stream under the weight of the corpses; out of pity for the poor wretches, I rushed upon him, intending to immerse him, that he might be frightened and abstain from slaughter of the men. Hereupon Hephaestus-for he happened to be somewhere near —with all the fire, as I imagine, he had in his forge and all he had in Etna, and wherever else he may have any,

1 See 'IX. xxi. for the Homeric story, which Lucian here holds up to ridicule, with his accustomed mercilessness. Known to the Gods as Xanthus, this once heroic River (now, under the name of Mendere, any. thing but aggressive or formidable) had the earthly name of Skamander. It forms one of the Eixoves of Philostratus.

attacked me, and burned up all my elms and tamarisks, and roasted, too, the unfortunate fish and eels; and, causing myself to boil over, all but entirely dried me up. You perceive, then, how I am affected by these marks of the conflagration.

Thalassa. You are turbid, and feverish and hot, as might be expected. Blood flows from dead bodies; heat, as you say, from fire; and not unreasonably, my friend Xanthus, did this happen to you, for making an assault upon my grandson, without respecting the fact of his being a Nereid's son. Xanthus. Should I not, then, have had pity on the Phrygians, my neighbours ?

Thalassa. And should not Hephaestus have shown pity to Achilleus, who is the son of Thetis ?

XII.

THETIS RELATES TO DORIS THE STORY OF THE EXPOSURE OF DANAE AND HER INFANT, PERSEUS.

Doris and Thetis.

Doris. Why do you weep, Thetis ?

Thetis. I saw just now a most beautiful girl' cast into a chest-herself and her newly-born babe; and the father gave orders to the sailors to take away the chest, and, when they had got out some distance from the land, to let it drop into the sea, so that the wretched girl might perish, both she and her baby.

Doris. For what reason, my sister? know it at all, the whole story exactly.

Tell me, if you

Thetis. Her father, Akrisius, incarcerating her in a certain brazen chamber,2 kept her a virgin, most beautiful though she was. Then if it be true, I can't say-but they do say that Zeus, transformed into gold, flowed in a

1

Kópn, like the Latin puella, is often applied to married women as well as to virgins.

2 Cf. Ov. Metam. iv. 9; Hor. Car. iii. 16; Pausanias (ii. 23). The Greek traveller informs us that this brazen prison underground was visible down to the historical age, and, indeed, had been seen by himself. "As some sager sing," the golden Zeus was no other than Protus, the young lady's uncle.

stream through the roof to her, and that she received the fluid God into her arms, and became pregnant. Her father, a savage and jealous sort of old fellow, learning this, was in a great rage, and, suspecting she had been debauched by some mortal, thrust her into the chest as soon as ever she had been delivered.

Doris. And she-what did she do, when she was dropped into the sea?

Thetis. As regarded herself, Doris, she was silent, and was content to endure her sentence; but, for the babe, she kept entreating that it might not die, weeping, and showing it—most beautiful babe that it was to its grandfather, while the infant itself, in its ignorance of its misfortunes, actually smiled at the sight of the sea. I feel my eyes fill with tears again in recounting them. Doris. You made me shed tears, too. now dead?

But are they

Thetis. By no means, for the chest is still floating about Seriphus, preserving them alive.

1

Doris. Why, then, don't we save it by putting it into the nets of those Seriphian fishermen ? And they, no doubt, will draw it out and save their lives.

Thetis. You say well. So let us do; for neither must she herself perish, nor must the infant, seeing it is so bonny.

Enipeus. This is no honourable conduct, Poseidon-for the truth shall be told. Having made yourself like me, you stealthily approached my mistress, and debauched the

1 Modern Serpho, a rocky island of the Greek Archipelago, some hundred miles from the head of the Gulf of Nauplia.

2 See Hyginus, Fab. lx.; 'Od. xi. 234-250; Strabo, viii. "Haud sane multum conqueritur de injuriâ sibi a Neptuno factâ, videturque pudi

girl, while she supposed she underwent this at my hands, and for that reason she yielded herself up.

Poseidon. Yes, for you were disdainful and dilatoryyou who neglected so good-looking a girl (who paid you daily visits, dying for love) and took pleasure in causing her pain; while she, wandering along your banks, and even entering your stream, and sometimes bathing, was dying to have your embrace: but you would give yourself airs towards her.1

Enipeus. What then? Ought you, on that account, to have forestalled my love, passed yourself off as Enipeus instead of Poseidon, and cheated a simple-minded girl like Tyro?

Poseidon. It is now too late for you to be jealous, Enipeus, supercilious before. But as for Tyro, she has not suffered anything very dreadful, since she thinks that she has lost her virginity to you.

Enipeus. Not so, indeed; for you declared, at your leaving her, you were Poseidon, a fact which grieves her above everything. And I have been injured in this-that you were then enjoying my privileges; and, by raising a sort of dark wave all around, which concealed you together, you enjoyed the girl in my place.

Poseidon. Yes, for you, my friend Enipeus, had no desire to have her.

bunda virgo non nimis indigne tulisse personæ mutatæ fraudem," remarks Hemsterhuis, in regard to the interview of Tyro's ghost with the son of Laertes in Hades.

1 He had some right to be supercilious—

“Ος πολὺ κάλλιστος ποταμῶν ἐπὶ γαῖαν ἵησι.”—Όδ. xi. 238.

XIV.

A TRITON RELATES TO THE NEREIDS THE STORY OF THE RESCUE OF ANDROMEDA BY PERSEUS.

Triton and Nereids.1

Triton. That sea-monster' of yours, Nereids, which you sent against Andromeda, the daughter of Kepheus, did no harm to the girl, as you imagine, while itself has now perished."

Nereids. At whose hands, Triton? Did Kepheus expose the girl as a bait, and rush upon and slay it, lying in ambush with a large force?

Triton. Not so. But you, Iphianassa, know, I suppose, Perseus, Danae's baby, whom with his mother you saved out of pity, when she was cast into the sea in the chest by his maternal grandfather.

Iphianassa. I know whom you speak of, and likely enough he is now a young man, and very noble and handsome to look at.

Triton. He has killed the monster.

Iphianassa. Why, Triton ? Surely it did not become him to repay us such reward for saving him.

Triton. I will explain to you the whole matter as it hap

1 Those who wish to learn the names of the Nereides, the charming divinities of the sea, will find them displayed by Hesiod, Otoy. 240-261; 'Iλ. xviii. 38-50; Apollod. i. 26, and by Spenser, in the Faerie Queen, iv. 11. They presided over the Greek Sea, Kar' óxny, the Mediterranean, at the bottom of which they dwelt in beautiful grottos and caves. Their number was limited to fifty. The most famous of them was the wife of Peleus and mother of Achilleus. Cf. the " orca marina" of the Orlando Furioso.

2 Kйros. In the Homeric epics vaguely used of any marine mammalia. By Aristotle (Z. I.), and succeeding naturalists, applied to the whale and cetacea proper. Here it signifies some huge sea-monster, the prototype, probably, of the monster in Raffaelle's "St. Margaret."

3 For the story of the deliverance of Andromeda, the prototype of most of the "distressed damsels " of mediæval and later romance, see Ov. Metam. iv. 10; Hyginus, Fab. lxiv.; Apollod. ii. 3. For the celestial immortalization of the "starred Æthiop queen," see Aratus, Daivoμ. v. 10. Cf. Pindar, IIú0., xii. One of the lost tragedies of Euripides was founded on this exposure of Andromeda.