So spoke in the dream the intelligent pricket, and without warning it was flown and gone. Autonoé’s husband leapt up, and threw off the wing of this revealing sleep. He aroused his wife much disturbed, and described her boy’s stronghorned animal form, and recounted the story which the intelligent fawn had told. Then there was more lamentation. The bride of Aristaios went on the search again, and passed often through the heart of the longbranching bush ; sadly treading the difficult circuits of the rocky ways, she found with pains that fatal growth, she found even the quiver and bow beside a lonely trunk. With much trouble the mother gathered the fallen relics, bones scattered here and there over the strewn earth. She clasped the sweet horn with loving hand, and kissed the hairy lips of the bloodstained fawn. Wailing loudly the mother entombed the dead, and carved along the tomb all that the voice in a dream of the night had told Actaion’s father.
At the time when mourning resounded in the hall of Aristaios, fair-bosomed Agaue brought forth to Echion the Earthborn a bold god-assaulting son: he was named Pentheus, the man of sorrows, from the sorrow arising for the newly slain.
After the bridals of Nephele of the earlier marriages, maiden Ino went with revels to the bridal chamber of Athamas. She bore Learchos destined to woe, and Melicertes. She was afterwards to find a home in the sea, as cherishing nurse for the childhood of Bromios: to both she gave one common breast, Palaimon and Dionysos. Semele was kept for a more brilliant union, for already Zeus ruling on high intended to make a new Dionysos grow up, a bullshaped copy of the older Dionysos ; since he thought with regret of the illfated Zagreus. This was a son born to Zeus in dragonbed by Persephoneia, the consort of the black-robed king of the under world ; when Zeus put on a deceiving shape of many coils, as a gentle dragon twining around her in lovely curves, and ravished the maidenhood of unwedded Persephoneia ; though she was hidden when all that dwelt in Olympos were bewitched by this one girl, rivals in love for the marriageable maid, and offered their dowers for an unsmirched bridal. Hermes had not yet gone to the bed of Peitho, and he offered his rod as a gift to adorn her chamber. Apollo produced his melodious harp as a marriage-gift. Ares brought spear and cuirass for the wedding, and shield as a bride-gift. Lemnian Hephaistos held out a curious necklace of many colours, newmade and breathing still of the furnace, poor hobbler for he had already, though unwilling, rejected his former bride Aphrodite, when he spied her rioting with Ares; he displayed her to the Blessed and the woman-thief who had robbed his bed, when by information from Phaethon he had entangled them in a spider’s net, naked Ares with naked Aphrodite.
And Father Zeus was much more bewitched by Persephoneia. When Zeus spied the virgin beauty of her shape, his eye ran ahead of him to guide all the Loves, and could not have enough of Persephone; in his heart storms of unsleeping passion raged without ceasing, and gradually a greater furnace of the Paphian was kindled from a small spark ; the gaze of lovemaddened Zeus was enslaved by, the lovely breast of the goddess. Once she was amusing herself with a resplendent bronze plate, which reflected her face like a judge of beauty ; and she confirmed the image of her shape by this free voiceless herald, testing the unreal form in the shadow of the mirror, - and smiling at the mimic likeness. Thus Persephone gazed in the self-graved portrait of her face, and beheld the self-impressed aspect of a false Persephoneia. Once in the scorching steam of thirsty heat, the girl would cease the loom-toiling labours of her shuttle at midday to shun the tread of the parching season, and wipe the running sweat from her face; she loosed the modest bodice which held her breast so tight, and moistened her skin with a refreshing bath, floating in the cool running stream, and left behind her threads fixt on the loom of Pallas. But she could not escape the allseeing eye of Zeus. He gazed at the whole body of Persephoneia, uncovered in her bath. Not so wild his desire had been for the Cyprian, when craving but not attaining he scattered his seed on the ground, and shot out the hot foam of love self-sown, where in the fruitful land of horned Cyprus flourished the two-coloured generation of wild creatures with horns. He—so mighty, the ruler of the universe, the charioteer of heaven, bowed his neck to desire—for all his greatness no thunderbolts, no lightnings helped him against Aphrodite in arms : he left the house of Hera, he refused the bed of Dione, he threw away the love of Deo, he fled from Themis, he deserted Leto—no charm was left for him but only in union with Persephoneia.
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