Now the maiden went forth from the city to kindle the altar of Zeus Lord of lightning. She stood by the victims and sprinkled her bosom with the blood ; her body was drenched with blood, plentiful streams of blood soaked her hair, her clothes were crimsoned with drops from the bull. Then with robes discoloured she made her way along the meadow deep in rushes, beside Asopos the river of her birthplace, and plunged in his waters to wash clean the garments which had been drenched and marked by the showers of blood.
Erinys the Avenger flying by in the air saw Semele bathing in the waters of Asopos, and laughed as she thought how Zeus was to strike both with his thunderbolt in one common fate. There the maiden cleansed her body, and naked with her attendants moved through the water with her hands ; she kept her head stretched well above the stream unwetted, by the art she knew so well, under water to the hair and no farther, breasting the current and treading the water back with alternate feet.
There she received a new dress, and mounting upon the neighbouring riverbank, by the eastern strand which belonged to Dionysos the Guardian Spirit, she shook off into the winds and waters all the terror of her dreams. Not without God she […] into the water, but she was led to that river’s flow by the prophetic Seasons,
Nor did the allseeing eye of Zeus fail to see her: from the heights he turned the infinite circle of his vision upon the girl. At this moment Eros stood before the father, who watched her, and the inexorable archer drew in the air that bow which fosters life. The bowstring sparkled over the flower-decked shaft, and as the bow was drawn stretched back the […] missile sounded the Bacchic strain. Zeus was the butt—for all his greatness he bowed his neck to Eros the nobody. And like a shooting star the shaft of love flew spinning into the heart of Zeus, with a bridal whistle, but swerving with a calculated twist it had just scratched his rounded thigh with its grooves—a foretaste of the birth to come. Then Cronion quickly turned the eye which was the channel of desire, and the love-charm fogged him into passion for the girl. At the sight of Semele, he leapt up, in wonder if it were Europa whom he saw on that bank a second time, his heart was troubled as if he felt again his Phoinician passion ; for she had the same radiant shape, and on her face gleamed as born in her the brightness of her father’s sister.
Father Zeus now deceitfully changed his form, and in his love, before the due season, he flew above River Asopos, the father of a daughter, as an eagle with eye sharp-shining like the bird, as he were now presaging the winged bridal of Aigina. He left the sky, and approaching the bank of the near flowing river he scanned the naked body of the girl with her lovely hair. For he was not content to see from afar; he wished to come near and examine all the pure white body of the maiden, though he could send that eye so great—such an eye ranging to infinity all round about, surveying all the universe, yet he thought it not enough to look at one unwedded girl.
Her rosy limbs made the dark water glow red ; the stream became a lovely meadow gleaming with such graces. An unveiled naiad espying the nymph in wonder, cried out these words : Can it be that Cronos, after the first Cypris again cut his father’s loins with unmanning sickle, until the foam got a mind and made the water shape itself into a self-perfected birth, delivered of a younger Aphrodite from the sea? Can it be that the river has rivalled the deep with a childbirth, and rolled a torrent of self-pregnant waves to bring forth another Cypris, not to be outdone by the sea? Can it be that one of the Muses has dived from neighbouring Helicon into my native water, and left another to take the honeydripping water of Pegasos the horse, or the stream of Olmeios ? I spy a silver-footed maiden stretched under the streams of my river ! I believe Selene bathes in the Aonian waves on her way to Endymion’s bed on Latmos, the bed of a shepherd ; but if she has prinked herself out for her sweet shepherd, what’s the […] of Asopos after the Ocean stream ? And if she has a body white as the snows of heaven, what mark of the Moon has she ? A team of mules unbridled and a mule-cart with silver wheels are there on the beach, but Selene knows not how to put mules to her yokestraps ; she drives a team of bulls! Or if it is a goddess come down from heaven—I see a maiden’s bright eyes sparkling under the quiet eyelids, and it must be Athena Brighteyes bathing, when she threw the skin back at him after the old victory over Teiresias. This girl looks like a divine being with her rosy arms; but if she was the glorious burden of a mortal womb, she is worthy of the heavenly bed of Cronion.”
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