—archery, and music, and medicine, and magic to boot; and has set up his prophecy-shops, one at Delphi, and one in Claros, and one at Didymœ; and cheats the people who come to consult him, with his enigmas and double-entendres, which can be turned into answers to the question both ways, so that he can never be proved wrong. He makes it pay, no doubt; there are always fools enough in the world ready to be cheated by a fortune-toller. But wiser persons see through him well enough, for all his humbugging prodigies. Prophet as he is, he could not divine that he was to kill his favourite with a quoit; or foresee that Daphne would run away from him, in spite of his pretty face and his curls. I don't see, for my own part, how you could have been considered more fortunate in your children than poor Niobe.
La. Oh yes; I know how you hate to see my two darlings—the cannibal and the charlatan, as you are pleased to call them—in the company of the gods: especially when her beauty is the subject of remark, or when he plays after dinner, to the admiration of everybody.
Ju. Really, Latona, you make me laugh. Admire his playing indeed! Why, if the Muses had only thought proper to decide fairly, Marsyas ought to have skinned him, for he was unquestionably the better musician of the two. As it was, poor fellow, he was cheated, and lost his life by their unjust verdict. And as for your beautiful daughter,—yes, she was so beautiful, that when she knew she had been spied by Actæon, for fear that the young man
