humorous naïveté argues with the counsellors of state, tries to bribe the
seers, and finally resorts to magic. When nothing avails, she secures
Carme's aid. The lock is cut, the city falls, the girl is captured by
Minos--in true Alexandrian technique the catastrophe comes with terrible
speed--and she is led, not to marriage, but to chains on the captor's
galley. Her grief is expressed in a long soliloquy somewhat too
reminiscent of Ariadne's lament in Catullus. Finally, Amphitrite in pity
transforms the captive girl into a bird, the Ciris, and Zeus as a reward
for his devout life releases Nisus, also transforming him into a bird of
prey, and henceforth there has been eternal warfare between the Ciris and
the Nisus:

quacunque illa levem fugiens secat aethera pennis,
ecce inimicus atrox magno stridore per auras
insequitur Nisus; qua se fert Nisus ad auras,
illa levem fugiens raptim secat aethera pennis.[1]

[Footnote 1: These four lines occur again in the _Georgios_, I. 406-9.]

The _Ciris_ with all its flaws is one of our best examples of the
romantic verse tales made popular by the Alexandrian poets of
Callimachus' school. The old legends had of course been told in epic
or dramatic form, but changing society now cared less for the stirring
action and bloodshed that had entertained the early Greeks. The times
were ripe for a retelling from a different point of view, with a more
patient analysis of the emotions, of the inner impulses of the moment
before the blow, the battle of passions that preceded the final act. We
notice also in these new poems a preponderance of feminine characters.
These the masculine democracy of classical Athens had tended to
disregard, but in the capitals of the new Hellenistic monarchies, many