But now the jarring portals close,
For ever fix'd in dead repose:
Since the proud demigods by fate
Are urged to cross the narrow strait.
And next the wandering heroes trace380
To Phasis' flowing streams their way,
Mingling with Colchis' swarthy race,
And great Æetes in the fray.
Venus, whose darts inflict the sharpest wound,
First to mankind the raging songster bore,385
Which to the wheel indissolubly bound,[1]
That from Olympus gain'd its magic round,
Taught wise Æsonides her charmed lore;386
That from Medea's raging mind
All shame of parents left behind390
Persuasion's lash might take, and prove
Greece the sole object of her love.
The sum of all the labours dire
Enjoin'd him by her cruel sire
She told; and mingled with the oil395
Her antidotes to rugged toil,
Given to anoint his manly frame,
Then in sweet Hymen's bands they vow'd to quench their flame. 397
But when the adamantine plough
- ↑ This is the celebrated ιυγξ, a bird which was supposed to possess the power of inspiring the emotions of love. The scholiast gives us a long explanation of its properties, and in his comment on [[../../Nemean Odes/4|Nem. iv.]] 56, where it is again mentioned, gives its allegorical pedigree, by declaring it to have been a daughter of Echo, or, as some assert, of Peitho, the goddess of persuasion, who by filters, or magical incantations, allured Jupiter to the love of Ino, and was transformed by the revengeful Juno into a bird, which by its continued whirling expressed emblematically the raging agitation of love. The classical reader will call to mind the importance attached to its agency by Simætha, in the second Idyllium of Theocritus.
