So he struck up his harp and began to sing of Cypris, how she once felt thesting of ambition and fell in love with the distaff, how she tried Athena’s loom with unpractised hands and lifted the shuttle, no longer the girdle of love. The Paphian spun a coarse thread, like the long cord of twisted withies which the old roper makes by his craft in long stretches, to tighten the gaping planks of a ship newly finished. Then all day and all night long by the loom she undid the work of Pallas, and roughened her soft hands with a strange unwonted labour ; she hung the dangling stone from the beam, and parted the threads of the stuff with the comb’s many teeth, and wove the cloth with her shuttle, and so Cypris turned Athena. There was no laughing over that task ; but as the cloth was woven, the monstrous thread pulled across swelled out and thickened the stuff, so that the warpthreads burst of themselves. Witnesses for the double labour of her skill were the Sun, and the lamp, and the Moon of her necessity. The dancers of Orchomenos who were attendants upon the Paphian had no dancing then to do ; but Pasithea made the spindle run round, Peitho dressed the wool, Aglaia gave thread and yarn to her mistress. And weddings went all astray in human life. Time, the ancient who guides our existence, was disturbed, and lamented the bond of wedlock used no more ; Eros unhonoured loosed his fiery bowstring, when he saw the world’s furrow unplowed and unfruitful. Then the harp made no lovely music, the syrinx did not sound, the clear pipes did not sing in clear tones Hymen Hymenaios the marriage-tune ; but life dwindled, birth was hardsmitten, the bolts of indivisible union were shot back.
Industrious Athena saw the Paphian hard at work. Anger and laughter commingled came over her, as she beheld the long rough cords of inexperienced Cythereia. She told the immortals ; and in a passion of jealousy reproached both Cypris and her father :
“So there are changes and chances in your gifts, Heavenly Father! Ino longer manage the gift of the Fates, for your daughter Aphrodite has taken to weaving and stolen my lot. Athenaia has been robbed of her lot not by Hera the Queen, the sister and consort of my Zeus ; but the mistress of the bedchamber, that soft goddess, affronts one armed with shield from her birth, Ageleia the plunderer! When has your cowardly Cythereia fought for Olympos ? what Titans has she destroyed with that womanish girdle, that she comes fresh from her battles to outrage me? Yes, and you, Archeress—tell me this, when have you seen Athena in your forest shooting arrows or hunting game? Whocalls upon Brighteyes, when women are in labour
When she had spoken, the gods of Olympos came thronging to see Aphrodite working the loom. They gathered round and stared at the labours of the divine fumbler, amazed at her bungling work ; and Hermes, who loved his joke, said laughing,
“You have the loom, Cythereia, leave Athena your girdle! If you handle the thread and throw the shuttle, then raise also the furious spear and the aegiscape of Tritogeneia. Ah, Cythereia, I know why you weave at the rattling loom. I understand your secret: no doubt your bridegroom Ares begs from you fine dress for the wedding. Weave your stuff for Ares, but don’t embroider a shield in the new cloth. What does Aphrodite want with shields? Put in Phaéthon, the shining witness of your loves, who told tales of the furtive robber of your bed“; if you like, put those old nets of yours in the pattern, and let your hand, if it can for shame, make a picture of the god who was the husband’s proxy. And you, Eros, leave your bow and help your mother in her passion for the distaff, twirl the spindle for her and spin the thread. Then I may call you weaver instead of winger, I may see the fiery god pulling the spool past the warp, instead of the arrows on the leather bowstring. Make Ares of gold beside golden Aphrodite ; let him hold a shuttle instead of waving a shield, and embroider a double cloth with industrious Cythereia.
“No, Cythereia goddess, throw your threads to the winds out of those distaff-enamoured hands and use your stitched girdle. Take care once more of marriage ; for the ancient nature of the world has all been going astray since you have been weaving cloth.”
As he finished, all the Olympians smiled. ‘Then Cythereia thus put to shame before Brighteyes threw down the stuff of the cloth half finished, and away she went to her own Cyprus to be nurse of the human race; and Eros once more ordered all the varied forms of life by the girdle, sowing the circle of the well-plowed earth with the seed of generation.
Such was the melodious lay which Leucos wove, celebrating how Aphrodite untaught of the distaff, set up her great contest with industrious Athena.
But when they had surfeit of this table so well furnished with liquor, they fell on their beds in the wilderness spluttering wine: dropping on dappled fawnskins, or on spreads of leaves, or just spreading goatskins on the ground amid the deep dust. Some stretched their armoured bodies in the soldier’s sleep, and held traffic with battlerousing dreams, where one struck some Indian sitting on horseback, one pierced an Indian’s throat, one slew a footman with his sword, one wounded Deriades, one shot his bolt high in the air and wounded some huge elephant with his dream-arrow.
Tribes of leopards and wild packs of lions and hunting-dogs took turns in guarding Dionysos in the wilderness with sleepless eyes ; all night they kept vigil in the mountain forest, that no assault of black Indians might approach him. Long lines of torches flashed up to Olympos, the lights of the dancing Bacchants which had no rest.
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