Leaving the long stretch of Arabia with its deep-shadowy forests he measured the Assyrian road on foot, and had a mind to see the Tyrian land, Cadmos’s country ; for thither he turned his tracks, and with stuffs in thousands before his eyes he admired the manycoloured patterns of Assyrian art, as he stared at the woven work of the Babylonian Arachne ; he examined cloth dyed with the Tyrian shell, shooting out sea-sparklings of purple : on that shore once a dog busy by the sea, gobbling the wonderful lurking fish with joyous jaws, stained his white jowl with the blood of the shell, and reddened his lips with running fire, which once alone made scarlet the sea-dyed robes of kings.”
He was delighted to see that city, which Earthshaker surrounded with a Liquid girdle of sea, not wholly, but it got the shape which the moon weaves in the sky when she is almost full, falling short of fullness by one point. And when he saw the mainland joined to the brine, he felt a double wonder, since Tyre lies in the brine, having her own share in the land but joined with the sea which has joined one girdle with the three sides together. Unshakable, it is like a swimming girl, who gives to the sea head and breast and neck, stretching her arms between under the two waters, and her body whitened with foam from the sea beside her, while she rests both feet on mother earth. And Earthshaker holding the city in a firm bond floats all about like a watery bridegroom, as if embracing the neck of his bride in a splashing arm.
Still more Bacchos admired the city of Tyre ; where alone the herdsman’s way was near the fisherman, and he kept company with his piping along the shore, and goatherd with fisher again when he drew his net, and the glebe was cleft by the plow while opposite the oars were cutting the waters. Shepherds near the seaside woods gossiped in company [with boatmen, fisher with] woodmen, and in one place was the loud noise of the sea, the lowing of cattle, the whispering of leaves, rigging and trees, navigation and forest, water, ships, and lugger, plowtail, sheep, reeds, and sickle, boats, lines, sails, and corselet. As he surveyed all this, he thus expressed his wonder :
“How’s this — how do I see an island on the mainland ? If I may say so, never have I beheld such beauty. Lofty trees rustle beside the waves, the Nereid speaks on the deep and the Hamadryad hears hard by. A delicate breeze of the south breathes from Lebanon upon Tyrian seas and seaside plowland, pouring a breath of wind which fosters the corn and speeds the ships at once, cools the husbandman and draws the seaman to his voyage. Here harvesthome Deo brings the sickle of the land close to the trident of the deep, and speaks to the monarch of the wet, who drives his car unwetted upon the soundless calm, while she asks him to guide her rival car on the same course, and herself whips the bounteous backs of her aerial dragons. O world-famous city, image of the earth, picture of the sky ! You have a belt of sea grown into one with your three sides !
So he spoke, and wandered through the city casting his eyes about. He gazed at the streets paved with mosaic of stones and shining metals ; he saw the house of Agenor his ancestor, he saw the courtyards and the women’s apartments of Cadmos ; he entered the ill-guarded maiden chamber of Europe, the bride stolen long ago, and thought of his own horned Zeus. Still more he wondered at those primeval fountains, where a stream comes pouring out through the bosom of the earth, and after one hour plenty of water bubbles up again with flood self-produced. He saw the creative stream of Abarbaree, he saw the lovely fountain named after Callirhoe, he saw the bridal water of Drosera herself spouting daintily out.
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