invoke all the pests of your trade, the Syntripi, Asbeti, Abacti, and Omodami,[1] on your furnace. May the hearth and the home become the prey of the flame, and, during the confusion caused by the fire, may nothing be heard save the lamentations of the potters. As the trembling of the terrified horse, so may be that of the furnace at the bursting of the vases. Circe, dread daughter of the Sun, celebrated for thy many enchantments, poison the potters, and destroy their work. And thou, Chiron, bring thy dire hosts of Centaurs[2] and their victims to aid in the destruction of these places. May the furnace fall under the stroke of the destroyers! may the potters, to enhance their grief, be the miserable spectators of the frightful scene! I shall rejoice at your misfortunes! May those who approach to extinguish the flames, be consumed by the fire, that all the world may learn not to commit injustice."
XXXIII. He passed the winter at Samos. At the Neomenia, [or New Moons,] he frequented the houses of the rich, where he sang the Eirisionic hymn,[3] thus earning his
- ↑ Syntrips signifies the bruising sustained by the vases in rubbing against each other; smaragos, the noise they make in breaking; asbetos, is an inextinguishable fire in the workshop; abaktos, the consequent astonishment of the potters; and omodamos, the annihilation of every thing.
- ↑ In the preceding verse we read πεῖθε πυραίθουσαν. Barnes corrects it to πέρθε πύρ' ἄιθουσαν, and his correction is admitted by Reinolds. Circe, daughter of Helios, (the Sun,) was herself a goddess, and is parallel to Medeia. According to Hesiod (Theog. 1001) she had two children by Odysseus, Agrius and Latinus. Conf. Apollod. i. 9. Strabo v. Virgil, Ecl. viii. v. 70. Æn. iii. v. 386; vii. v. 10. Hygin. fab. cxxv. Ovid. Metam. xiv. fab. i. and iv.
- ↑ The Eirision was (Schol. Aristoph. Plut. 1055, and Equit. 725) a branch of olive, and sometimes of laurel, rolled in bandages of linen entwined. To the pendent ends, figs, bread, honey, oil, and wine, were fastened. Clemens Alex. (Stromat. iv. p. 566) says, "The Eirision carries figs, bread, and honey, in a cotylus, anointing oil, and wine, the enervating vapour of which inspires gentle slumber." Again, in a fragment of the Polyidus of Sophocles, preserved by Porphyrius (de Abstinentiâ, ii. § 19, p. 134): "We see there the wool of the sheep, the liquor of the vine,
