Tracking the fourth over the deep, you will see Harmonia sailing together with her agemate Cadmos. With these words Hermes departed, fanning his light wings, and the flat of his extended shoes carried him as quick as the winds of heaven in their course.
Nor did the Thracian lady, the pilot of the Cabeiroi, (disobey his bidding) ; but she had “respect to Zeus, and curving her extended fingers with a significant movement towards Ares” unwedded daughter, she beckoned Harmonia by this clever imitation of speech. The other strained the answering gleam from her eyelids, and saw the round of Electra’s face unsmiling, as her cheeks like silent heralds boded the heavy load of a new unspoken distress.
The maiden leapt up and followed her mother into her high-built chamber, Her mother rolled back the bolt of a seven-nook-shotten chamber sealed with many seals, and crossed the doorstone : her knees trembled restlessly in loving anxiety and fear. She caught and lifted the girl’s hand and rosy arm with her own snow-white hand—you might almost say that you saw white-armed Hera holding Hebe’s hand.
But when treading the floor with her crimson shoes she reached the farthest curve of the resplendent room. Atlas’s daughter seated the sorrowful maiden upon a handsome chair: then she in her turn sank upon a silver-shining stool, and declared Cronion’s message to the incredulous girl, and explained everything which she had heard from the Olympian herald disguised as a lad in human form. When the maiden heard of this marriage of much wandering and this unstable husband, this homeless man under their roof, she declared she would have no stranger, and refused all that Cadmos’s patron pro-ted on Zeus his father’s behalf, that cattle-drover fermen She would rather have one of her own city as husband, and away with a carry-house mate and a wedding without wedding-gifts Then clasping her foster-mother’s hand with her own sorrowing palm, bathed in tears she burst into reproachful speech
Mother mine, what has possessed you to cast off your own girl? Do you join your own daughter to some upstart fellow like this What gift will this sailor man put into my hand? Will he give me the ship’s hawser for bride-price did not know you were keeping your own child, the poor banished maiden, “for marriage with a vagrant—you, my kind nurse ! I have others to woo me, and better ones, of our own city : why must I have a bedfellow with empty hands, naked and bare, a foreign vagrant, a runaway from his father But you will say he helped your husband Cronion. Why did not the man get from Zeus an Olympian gift of honour, if indeed he was defender of Olympos, as you say Why did not Hera the consort of Zeus, betroth virgin Hebe to the champion of Zeus? Your husband Zeus who rules in the heights needs no Cadmos. Cronides forgive me—divine Hermes lied in what he said about Father Zeus. I don’t know how I can believe that he neglected furious Ares the pilot of warfare, and called in a mortal man to be partner in the game—he the master of world and sky! Here is a great marvel—he locked up all those Titans in the pit, and then wanted Cadmos, to destroy only one! You know how my fathers wedded —two had their sisters. Zeus my father’s father the bed of his sister Hera, by the family rule of marriage; both the parents of Harmonia, Ares and Cythereia, who mounted one bed, were of one father, another pair of blood kindred. What miserable necessity! Sisters may have a brother for bedfellow, I must have a banished man!
As she spoke, her mother in distress wiped the raindrops from that mourning face : torn between two, she pitied Harmonia and shrank from the threats of Zeus. But now tricky-minded Aphrodite girt her body in the heart-bewitching cestus-belt, and clothing herself in the love-robe of Persuasion she entered Harmonia’s fragrant chamber. She had doffed her heavenly countenance, and put on a form like Peisinoe, a girl of the neighbourhood. As though in love with Cadmos and suffering from some hidden sickness, with but little brightness in her pale face, she chased away the maids; and when Harmonia was alone she sat by her side and said as in shame with deceitful tongue Happy girl! What a handsome stranger you have in the house ! What a man to court you, most blessed of women! What a lovely bedfellow you will see, that no other maiden has won! Surely his blood comes from Assyria! That I must be his home, beside the river of that enchanting Adonis, for that lovely young man came from Libanos where Cythereia dances. No, I was wrong! I don’t suppose any mortal womb bred Cadmos: no, he is sprung from Zeus and he has concealed his stock ! I know where this young Olympian comes from. If Titan Atlas ever begat Electra as Maia’s sister, here’s cousin Hermes without wings come as husband for Harmonia. Then that’s why we sing hymns to Cadmilos! He has only changed his heavenly shape and still he is called Cadmos. Or if he is some other god in human shape, perhaps Apollo is Emathion’s guest in this house,
World-famed maiden, you are more blessed than your mother for Olympian desire and Olympian marriage ! Here is a great marvel! Zeus Allwise wedded Electra in secret — Apollo himself woos Harmonia in the light! Happy girl, whom Far-shooter desired! I only wish Apollo would be as eager for marriage with Peisinoe too! I don’t say no to Apollo, like Daphne, I can tell you! I will not feel like Harmonia! No, I will leave my inheritance and house and the parents whom I love I will go on my travels to marriage with Apollo I remember once a carving like him. For I once went with our father into the house of oracle, and there I saw the Pythian image; and when I saw your vagrant, I thought I saw the statue of Phoibos again in this place.
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