the young men, Aristarchus and Apollonius Rhodius, the one of whom proved a most judicious critic, the other a poet of no mean character.
These and many more filled the court of that munificent prince, whose liberal dispensations of wealth and favour became encouragements to every one to exert their parts to the utmost; like streams which flow through different sorts of soils, and improve each in that for which it was adapted by nature.
Such was the court when Zoilus arrived; but before he entered Alexandria, he spent a night in the temple of Isis, to enquire of the success of his undertaking; not that he doubted the worth of his works, but his late misfortune had instructed him, that others might be ignorant of it. Having therefore performed the accustomed sacrifice, and composed himself to rest upon the hide, he had a vision which foretold of his future fame.
He found himself sitting under the shade of a dark yew, which was covered with hellebore and hemlock, and near the mouth of a cave, where sat a monster, pale, wasted, surrounded with snakes, fostering a cockatrice in her bosom; and cursing the sun for making the work of the deities appear in its beauty. The sight of this bred fear in him; when she suddenly turning her sunk eyes, put on a hideous kind of a loving grins, in which she discovered a resemblance to some of his own features. Then turning up her snakes, and interlacing them in the form of a turban, to give him less disgust,
