waste too much time. Nay, even the savage god of war, whose strength
appalls the giants, repressed his wrathful bluster, being forced to such
submission by this my son, and became gentle and loving. And the forger
of Jupiter, and artificer of his three-pronged thunderbolts, though
trained to handle fire, was smitten by a shaft more potent than he
himself had ever wrought. Nay I, though I be his mother, have not been
able to fend off his arrows: Witness the tears I have shed for the death
of Adonis! But why weary myself and thee with the utterance of so many
words? There is no deity in heaven who has passed unscathed from his
assaults; except, perhaps, Diana only, who may have escaped him by
fleeing to the woods; though some there be who tell that she did not
flee, but rather concealed the wound. If haply, however, thou, in the
hardness of thy unbelief, rejectest the testimony of heaven, and
searchest rather for examples of those in this nether world who have
felt his power, I affirm them to be so multitudinous that where to begin
I know not. Yet this much may I tell thee truly: all who have confessed
his sway have been men of might and valor. Consider attentively, in the
first place, that undaunted son of Alcmena, who, laying aside his arrows
and the formidable skin of the huge lion, was fain to adorn his fingers
with green emeralds, and to smooth and adjust his bristling and
rebellions hair. Nay, that hand which aforetime had wielded the terrific
club, and slain therewith Antæus, and dragged the hound of hell from the
lower world, was now content to draw the woolen threads spun from
Omphale's distaff; and the shoulders whereon had rested the pillars of
the heavens, from which he had for a time freed Atlas, were now clasped
in Omphale's arms, and afterward, to do her pleasure, covered with a
diaphanous raiment of purple. Need I relate what Paris did in obedience
to the great deity? or Helen? or Clytemnestra? or Ægisthus? These are
things that are well known to all the world. Nor do I care to speak of
Achilles, or of Scylla, of Ariadne or Leander, of Dido, or of many