Tyrrhenian father did not beget you to be as inaccessible as Penelope to your wooers. O though neither presents, nor prayers, nor the violet-tinctured paleness of your lovers, nor your husband smitten with a musical courtezan, bend you to pity; yet [at length] spare your suppliants, you that are not softer than the sturdy oak, nor of a gentler disposition than the African serpents. This side [of mine] will not always be able to endure your threshold, and the rain.
ODE XI.
TO MERCURY.
O Mercury, for under thy instruction the ingenious Amphion moved rocks by his voice, you being his tutor; and though my harp, skilled in sounding, with seven strings,[1] formerly neither vocal nor pleasing, but now agreeable both to the tables of the wealthy and the temples [of the gods]; dictate measures to which Lyde may incline her obstinate ears, who, like a filly of three years old, plays and frisks about in the spacious fields, inexperienced in nuptial loves, and hitherto unripe for a brisk husband. You are able to draw after your tigers and attendant woods, and to retard rapid rivers. To your blandishments the enormous porter of the [infernal] palace yielded, though a hundred serpents fortify his head, and a pestilential steam and an infectious poison issue from his triple-tongued mouth. Moreover, Ixion and Tityus smiled with a reluctant aspect: while you soothe the daughters of Danaus[2]
- ↑ Diodorus tells us, that the lyre had at first but four strings, according to the number of seasons, or quarters of the heavens. Macrobius informs us, that it was afterward, in view to the number of the planets, mounted with seven strings; from whence Author:Pindar calls it the seven-tongued lyre. Fran.
- ↑ Danaides; the daughters of Danaus. he was the brother of Egyptus, king of Egypt. He came into Greece, and having expelled Sthenelus, fixed at Argos. He had fifty daughters, who were married to the fifty sons of Egyptus, whereof all except Hypermnestra, by their father's command, slew their husbands upon the wedding-night; for which they were condemned in hell to fill a tub with water, the bottom of which was
outer edge. Should the weight of the mass that is to be raised prove too heavy, the rope, unable to resist, snaps asunder, and flies back, being drawn down by the body intended to be elevated. Anthon.
