In the thirty-second are battles, and the bed of sleeping Zeus, and the madness of Bacchos.
APHRODITE was won. The mistress of wiles obeyed the cunning request, and drawing the cestus up from her bosom she bestowed it upon willing Hera, and thus she spoke and described the witchery of the strap: “Accept this strap to help your trouble. You shall charm all in one with this cestus, the guide to all desire—Sun and Zeus and the company of stars, and the evermoving stream of boundless Ocean.”
This said, she plunged beneath the rocks of Assyrian Libanos. But Hera passed to the star-scattered circle of Olympos. Quickly she decked out her allwhite body. Often she guided the straying clusters of floating hair and arranged them in even rows down to her forehead ; she touched up the plaits with sweetscented oil—stir it, and the farspreading scent of the unguent intoxicates heaven and sea and the whole earth. She put on her head a coronet of curious work, set with many rubies, the servants of love ; when they move, the Cyprian flame sends out bright sparklings. She wore also that stone which draws man to desire, which has the bright name of the desire-struck Moon; and the stone which is enamoured of iron the loveproducing; and the Indian stone of love, offspring itself of the waters and akin to the Foamborn; and the deep blue sapphire still beloved of Phoibos. About her hair she twined that herb of passion which Cythereia loves as much as the rose, as much as the anemone, which she wears when she is about to mingle her love with Myrrha’s son. She bound the unaccustomed cestus about and about her flanks: but the embroidered robe she wore was her oldest, still bearing the bloodmarks of maidenhead left from her bridal, to remind her bedfellow of their first love when she came to her brother a virgin in that secret union. She washed her face, and wrapt about her a shining robe and clasped it with a brooch to lock up her tunic. Having thus adorned herself and surveyed all in the mirror, Hera sped through the air, swift as a bird, swift as a thought.’
She came near to Zeus. And when Zeus Highest and Mightiest saw her, the goading cestus whipt him to hotter love. As Zeus looked upon her, his eyes were enslaved, and staring hard Cronides spoke these words :
“O Hera, why have you come to this eastern clime ? What need has brought you?) Why are you here to-day ? Are you again full of wrath and armed against Bacchos of the vine? Do you desire to help those overweening Indians ?
He spoke, and crafty Hera with laughing heart, yet mad with jealousy, answered, deluding her husband : my own. I came not to concern myself with others’ troubles, warlike Indians and Indianslaying Dionysos, but I hasten to visit the blazing court of the East near to Helios. For Eros is on the wing beside the waters of Tethys, struck with passion for Rhodope Ocean’s daughter, and he has renounced his matchmaking ! So the order of the universe is out of joint, life is worthless when wedlock is gone. I have been to summon him, and here I am on the way back. For you know I am called the Lady of Wedlock, because my hands hold the accomplishment of childbirth.”
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