VII.

HEPHÆSTUS RECOUNTS TO APOLLO THE ACTIONS OF THE INFANT PRODIGY, HERMES.

Apollo and Hephaestus.

Hephaestus. Apollo, have you seen Maia's baby, which is just born? What a pretty thing it is, and how it smiles on every one, and already plainly shows he is going to turn out some great treasure!

Apollo. That a baby, or a great treasure, who is older than Iapetus himself, as far as depends on rascality!

Hephaestus. And what possible mischief could an infant just born be able to do?

Apollo. Ask Poseidon, whose trident he stole, or Ares; for even from the latter he abstracted his sword from the sheath without being found out, not to speak of myself, whom he disarmed of my bow and arrows.

Hephaestus. The new-born brat did this, who hardly keeps on his feet, who is still in his long clothes?

Apollo. You will know well enough, Hephaestus, if only he come near you.

Hephaestus. Indeed, he already has been near me.

Apollo. Well, have you all your tools, and is none of them missing?

Hephaestus. All of them are safe, my dear Apollo.
Apollo. All the same, examine carefully.

Hephaestus. By heaven! I don't see my fire-tongs.

Apollo. No, but you will probably see them among the infant's swaddling clothes.

Hephaestus. Is he so light-fingered, for all the world as though he had mastered the purloining art in his mother's womb?

Apollo. No wonder you ask, for you have not heard his glib and voluble prattling. He is, besides, quite ready to wait upon us. And yesterday he challenged Eros, and wrestled with him and threw him, somehow tripping up his feet. Then, while he was getting praised for it, he stole Aphrodite's cestus, as she was folding him to her breast on account of his victory; and, while he was laugh

ing, the sceptre of Zeus, also. And, if the thunder-bolt were not a little too heavy, and had a good deal of fire in it, he would have filched that too.

Hephaestus. The child you describe is a regular Gorgon. Apollo. Not only so, but already he is a musical genius, also.

Hephaestus. From what can you draw your inference as to that?

1

Apollo. Somewhere or other he found a dead tortoise, and from it formed a musical instrument: for, having fitted in the horns (or side-pieces) and joined them by a bar, he next fixed pegs, and inserted a bridge beneath them; and, after stretching seven strings upon it, he set about playing a very pretty and harmonious tune, so that even I, practised as I have long been in playing the cithara, envied him. And Maia assured us that not even his nights would he pass in heaven, but from mere busybodyness he would descend as far as Hades, to steal something from thence, I suppose. He is furnished with wings, and has made for himself a sort of staff2 of wonderful virtue, with which he chaperones the souls of dead men, and conducts them down to the infernal regions.

Hephaestus. I gave him that for a plaything.

Apollo. Then he has paid you back: your fire-tongsHephaestus. Well remembered. So I will march off to recover it, if, as you say, it is anywhere to be found among his cradle-clothes.

1 Kilapile. The cithara differed somewhat from the lyra and resembled rather the modern guitar. Originally, the lyre had three or four strings only: but (650 B.C.) it received the full complement of seven strings. From the tortoiseshell material it received its Latin name, testudo. See Smith's Dict. of Ant. art. Lyra.

2 The Caduceus (as the páßdog was called by the Latins). By a from καρυκείον, slight change formed, apparently, 66 a herald's wand"whence the epithet of caducifer. See IX. xxiv. 343; Od. v. 47; Virg. En. iv. 247-253.

1

VIII.

HEPHÆSTUS ASSISTS AT THE PARTURITION OF ZEUS AND

THE BIRTH OF ATHENA.

Hephaestus and Zeus.

Hephaestus. What have I to do, Zeus? For I am come, as you ordered me, with my sharpest axe, sharp enough, even though it were wanted to cut through a stone at one stroke (displaying his tool).

Zeus. Well done, my dear Hephaestus. But don't waste time, but bring it down with a will, and split my head in two. Hephaestus. You are trying me, if I am in my right senses? Order, pray, something else, whatever it is you really want done to you.

2

Zeus. I desire my skull to be split open-that and nothing else. If you will not obey me, it is not the first time you will tempt my anger. Well, now you must come down with all your soul and strength, and that without delay; for I am simply dying under the pangs of labour, which rack my poor brain terribly.

Hephaestus. Look out, Zeus, that we don't do you some injury; for the axe is sharp, and not unattended with blood, nor will it act the midwife for you after the fashion of Eileithuia.3

Zeus. Bring it down boldly, without more ado, sir. I know what's best.

Hephaestus. 'Tis sorely against my will, but I will down. with it, however: for what's one to do, when you order a thing? (Starting back in alarm.) What's this? A girl

1 The part here assumed by the blacksmith god by other authorities is attributed to Prometheus or Hermes. Lucian follows Pindar, OX. vii. 35 (Jacob.). For an etymological disquisition on the name of Athena see Plato, Κρατύλος.

2 Hephaestus had been expelled, in an ignominious fashion, from heaven on the memorable occasion recorded in IX. i. ad fin.

3 The goddess who comes with help to women in childbirth. See IX. xi. 270, where the poet speaks of more than one Eileithuia, and represents the sisters as daughters of Hera :

66 μογοστόκοι Εἴλείθυιαι

Ηρης θυγάτερες, πικρὰς ὠδῖνας ἔχουσαι.”

Cf. IX. xix. 119. Hesiod knows only one, Oɛoу. 886-900, 922.

C

in armour! A mighty pain you had in your head, Zeus. With good reason, I admit, you were so short-tempered, maintaining alive in the pia mater of your brain a virgin of such proportions, and that too, in a suit of armour! It was a camp, surely, not a head you have had all this while without its being known. Why! she leaps and dances the Pyrrhic dance,' and clashes her shield, and brandishes her spear, and is all on fire with martial excitement; and, what is more, in this short time, she has become a very beautiful woman, and is in her full bloom already. She has a fierceness in her bluish-gray eyes' to be sure, but her helmet sets off that, too, to advantage. So, Zeus, pay me my midwife-fee, by betrothing her to me now at once.

Zeus. You ask impossibilities, Hephaestus, for she chooses to remain ever a virgin: but I, however, as far as I am concerned, offer no opposition.

The rest shall be my

Hephaestus. That's all I wanted. care, and I will carry her off even now.

Zeus. If you find it an easy affair, do so: but I know that you are indulging a hopeless passion."

IX.

HERMES REFUSES POSEIDON ADMISSION TO ZEUS, AND ASSIGNS AS THE REASON THE LYING-IN OF THE KING OF GODS AND MEN WITH BACCHUS.

Poseidon and Hermes.

Poseidon. May one have an interview with Zeus just now, Hermes ?

1 Πυῤῥιχίζει. The Pyrrhic dance (ή πυῤῥίχη) was the famous military dance performed in full armour to the sound of the flute or rather pipe. At Athens it formed part of the Panathenaic festival. The birth of Athena occupied a conspicuous place on the sculptures of the Parthenon. See Pausanias, i. 24.

2 Γλαυκώπις. The well-known Homeric epithet of the goddess of War and Wisdom. The exact colour implied in yλaúкog is disputed. As applied to Athena, it included a certain flashing or fierceness of the eyes. Plutarch, Bío Пapaλ., in his description of Sulla, records of his eyes:—“ τὴν τῶν ὀμμάτων γλαυκότητα, δεινῶς καὶ πικρὰν καὶ ἄκρατον οὖσαν, ἡ χρόα τοῦ προσώπου φοβερωτέραν ἐποίει προσιδεῖν.” Cf. Οr. Amores, ii. 659; Statius, Theb. ii. 715.

3 For a description of a famous Greek painting of this subject see

Hermes. By no means, my dear Poseidon.

Poseidon. At all events announce me to him (making a forward movement).

Hermes. (Interposing himself.) Don't be a nuisance, I say for it is quite an unseasonable moment, so you could not possibly see him at present.

Poseidon. He is not engaged with Hera, is he?

Hermes. No, but it is quite another sort of affair.

Poseidon. I understand. Ganymedes is closeted with

him.

Hermes. Not that, either. The fact is, he is rather poorly.

Poseidon. From what cause, my dear Hermes? For this is strange news you report.

Hermes. I blush to tell it, such is its nature.

Poseidon. But you need not blush to tell me, your uncle. Hermes. He has but just now been brought to bed, Poseidon.

Poseidon. Get away with you. He brought to bed? By whom? Is he an hermaphrodite,1 without our knowing it all this time? Yet his person did not discover any symptoms of it.

Hermes. You are right, for the usual part did not hold the embryo.

Poseidon. Ah! I know. He has given birth again through his head-piece, as he did to Athena-it's his head he keeps for a breeding-place.

Hermes. No, it was in his thigh that he was pregnant with Semele's 2 infant.

Philostratus, Elkovec, in the French version, Philostrate Ancien, Une Galerie Antique, par A. Bougot, Paris, 1881. The highly interesting pictures, described by Philostratus as having been seen by him in a gallery at Naples, appear to have been not frescoes but painted in the studio.

1 'Avdpóyvvos, Plato's Dialogue, the Evμπóσov, has given celebrity to the word. Another form of it is yvvávdpoç. Hermaphrodite, which frequently appears in Greek Art, is compounded of Hermes and Aphrodite. See Ov. Metam. iv. 5, for the story of the Naiad Salmacis and Hermaphroditus.

2 The story of Semele is to be found in Ovid, Metam. iii. 4, 5. Cf. Apollod. iii. 4. It forms the subject of one of the Eikovɛs of Philostratus, where Semele is represented mounting to Heaven.