Phorkos[1], and to Polydektes' bridal brought a grievous gift, and grievous eternally he made for that man his mother's slavery and ravished bed: for this he won the fair-faced Medusa's head, he who was the son of Danaë, and sprung, they say, from a living stream of gold.
But the Maiden[2], when that she had delivered her well-beloved from these toils, contrived the manifold music of the flute, that with such instrument she might repeat the shrill lament that reached her from Euryale's[3] ravening jaws.
A goddess was the deviser thereof, but having created it for a possession of mortal men, she named that air she played the many-headed[4] air, that speaketh gloriously of folk-stirring games, as it issueth through the thin-beat bronze and the reeds which grow by the Graces' city of goodly dancing-ground in the precinct of Kephisos' nymph, the dancers' faithful witnesses.
But if there be any bliss among mortal men, without labour it is not made manifest: it may be that God will accomplish it even to-day, yet the thing ordained is not avoidable: yea, there shall be a time that shall lay hold on a man unaware, and shall give him one thing beyond his hope, but another it shall bestow not yet.
- ↑ The three Grey Sisters, whose one common eye Perseus stole,
δηναιαὶ κόραι
τρεῖς κυκνόμορφοι κοινὸν ὄμμ᾽ ἐκτημέναι
μονόδοντες, ἃς οὔθ᾽ ἥλιος προσδέρκεται
ἀκτῖσιν, οὔθ᾽ ἡ νύκτερος μήνη ποτέ
Aesch. Prom. 813.If they lived in the dark they might perhaps spare their eye, unless indeed it was like the eyes of owls, cats, &c.
- ↑ Athene.
- ↑ One of the Gorgons.
- ↑ A certain νόμος αὐλητικός was known by this name.
