METAMORPHOSES BOOK III
becomes hard and covered with scales. But Libys, while he seeks to ply the sluggish oars, sees his hands suddenly shrunk in size to things that can no longer be called hands at all, but fins. Another, catching twisted rope with his arms, finds he has no arms and goes plunging backwards with limbless body into the sea: the end of his tail is curved like the horns of a half-moon. They leap about on every side, sending up showers of spray; they emerge from the water, only to return to the depths again; they sport like a troupe of dancers, tossing their bodies in wanton sport and drawing in and blowing out the water from their broad nostrils. Of but now twenty men—for the ship bore so many—I alone remained. And, as I stood quaking and trembling with cold fear, and hardly knowing what I did, the god spoke words of cheer to me and said: ‘Be of good courage, and hold on your course to Naxos.' Arrived there, I have joined the rites and am one of the Bacchanalian throng."
When Pentieus said: "We have lent ear to this long, rambling tale, that by such delay our anger might lose its might. Ye slaves, now hurry him away, rack his body with fearsome tortures, and so send him down to Stygian night." Straightway Acoetes, the Tyrrhenian, was dragged out and shut up in a strong dungeon. And while the slaves were getting the cruel instruments of torture ready, the iron, the fire-of their own accord the doors flew open wide; of their own accord, with no one loosing them, the chains fell from the prisoner's arms.
But Pentheus stood fixed in his purpose. He no longer sent messengers, but went himself to where Cithaeron, the chosen seat for the god's sacred rites,
was resounding with songs and the shrill cries of wor-
