With the twelfth, delight your heart, where Ampelos has shot up his own shape, a new flower of love, into the fruit of the vine.
So these by the brows of western Oceanos took ship for the mansion of Helios their father. As they approached, Hesperos the Evening Star leapt up and went out of the hall to meet them. Selene herself also darted out newrisen, showing her light as she drove her cattle. The Sisters at the sight of the Lifegiving Charioteer stayed their fruitful step. He had just finished his course and come down from the sky. Bright Phosphoros was ready for the fire-eyed driver, near his chariot and four. He put away the hot yokestraps and starry whip, and washed in the neighbouring Ocean stream the bodies of the firefed horses wet with sweat. The colts shook the dripping manes on their necks, and stamped with sparkling hooves the shining manger-trough. The four were greeted by the twelve circling Hours, daughters of Time, tripping round the fiery throne of the untiring Charioteer in a ring, servants of Helios that attend on his shining car, priestesses of the […] each in her turn: for they bend a servile neck to the ancient manager of the universe. Then up […] the grape-tending Season, holding out her […] of the fruit-pining autumn as witness to her prayer : Helios, giver of […], plant-dresser, lord of fruits ! When will the soil make wine-mother grapes to grow ? Which of the blessed will have this honour betrothed him by Time ? Hide it not, I adjure you, because of all the Sisters I alone have no privilege of honour! I provide no fruit, no corn, no meadow hay, no rain from Zeus.”
She spoke, and Helios cheered the nurse of the fruitage to come. He raised a finger, and pointed out to his circling daughter close to a wall opposite the separated tablets of Harmonia. In these are recorded in one group all the oracles which the prophetic hand of Phanes first-born engraved as ordained for the world, and drew with his pencil the house proper for each. And Hyperion, […] of fire, added these words : In the third tablet, you shall know whence the fruitage of wine shall come—where is the Lion and the Virgin : in the fourth, who is the Prince of grapes ; that is where Ganymedes draws the delicious nectar, and lifts a cup in hand in the picture.”
When the god had spoken, the wineloving maiden turned her eyes about, and ran to the place. Beside the oracular wall she saw the first tablet, old as the infinite past, containing all things in one: upon it was all that Ophion lord paramount had done, all that ancient Cronos accomplished : when he cut off his father’s male plowshare, and sowed the teeming deep with seed on the unsown back of the daughter-begetting sea; how he opened a gaping throat to receive a stony son, when he made a meal of the counterfeit body of a pretended Zeus ; how the stone played midwife to the brood of imprisoned children, and shot out the burden of the parturient gullet.
But when the stormfoot Semon, Phaethon’s handmaid, had seen the fiery shining victory of Zeus at war and the hailstorm snowstorm conflict of Cronos, she looked the next tablet in its turn. There was shown how the pine was in labour of the human race—how the tree suddenly burst its […] birth and disgorged a son unbegotten self-completed ; how Raincloud Zeus brought the waters up in mountainous seas on high and flooded all cities, how Notos and Boreas, Euros and Lips in turn lashed Deucalion’s wandering chest, lifted it castaway on waves in the air and left it harbourless near the Moon.
When the […] of […] passed with nimble foot to the third tablet, the […] maiden stood gazing at the manifold oracles of the world’s fate, in letters of glowing colour engraved with the artist’s vermilion, all that elaborate story which the mind had inscribed ; and this was the […] that she read in the tablets :
Hera’s herdsman Argos shall change form to a bird, with the appearance of his grim eyes made bright. Harpalyce after the bed of criminal nuptials shall carve up her son for her incestuous father, and paddle a winged course through the air as a storm-swift bird. Philomela the busy weaver shall be a twittering swallow with tuneful throat, and abroad the witness of her tongueless silence once she skilfully inscribed like talking words upon a robe. Niobe shall remain a monument of sorrow on the slopes of Sipylos, a rock endowed with sense, and mourning the line of her children with stony tears. Near her shall be Pyrrhos, a Phrygian stone enamoured, still feeling the lawless lust for impossible union with Rheia. Thisbe shall be running water along with Pyramos both of an age, each desiring the other. Cronos, in love with Smilax, that fair girl, shall be the flower of love. And after the goal of the stormy marriage-race, after the Paphian’s […], Artemis shall change Atalanta into a lioness and drive her mad.”
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