And then Electra took Harmonia by the hand, under the witnessing escort of the gods, and took her undowered to Cadmos as his due, wiping the streaming shower from her face. Early in the morning the traveller received the Cyprian’s daughter with an old waiting-woman, and left the house, having as the queen’s gift a servant to guide him through the city to the sea,
When the Moon saw the girl following a stranger along the shore above the sea, and boiling under fiery constraint, she reproached Cypris in mocking words : So you make war even upon your children, Cypris! Not even the fruit of your womb is spared by the goad of love! Don’t you pity the girl you bore, hard-heart What other girl can you pity then, when you drag your own child into passion Then you must go wandering too, my darling. Say to your mother, Paphian’s child, Phaethon mocks you, and Selene puts me to shame.’ Harmonia, love-tormented exile, leave to Mene her bridegroom Endymion, and care for your vagrant Cadmos, Be ready to endure as much trouble as I have, and when you are weary with love-begetting anxiety, remember love-wounded Selene.”
While she was speaking, Cadmos hastened his companions over the oars. He released the back- running hawsers of the forth-faring ship, and shook out the sail to the mild spring breeze, and guided the timbered sea-car across the sea-swell, making the two .
fast to a pin bracing the sheets equally shipshape and Phoinician fashion : for he knew from his fathers the traditional art of seamanship. He remained by the steering-oar, but he kept the girl Harmonia untouched sitting on the poop, his companion, when he saw strangers coming aboard as passengers whom the sailors were then taking in in with the fare. One of the passengers seeing these two, mingled his voice with admiration as he said gently :
That sailor looks like Love himself and no wonder that Aphrodite of the sea has a mariner son. But Eros carries bow and arrow and lifts a firebrand, he’s a little one with wings on him ; and this I see is a Sidonian ketch. Perhaps that is the cunning old thief Ares sitting on the poop, and carrying Aphrodite into Libanos, from Thrace, whence he sailed last night, Be gracious, mother of Love! Send me a following wind in a waveless calm over your mother sea storm-less!
Such was the sort of things the traveller said to himself, looking keenly at Harmonia out of the corner of his eye.
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