HKB
seen; {and minds} that his long smooth wand, with which he induces and drives away sleep, is in his right hand, and that his wings[86] shine upon his beauteous feet.
A private part of the house had three bed-chambers, adorned with ivory and with tortoiseshell, of which thou, Pandrosos, hadst the right-hand one, Aglauros the left-hand, and Herse had the one in the middle. She that occupied the left-hand one was the first to remark Mercury approaching, and she ventured to ask the name of the God, and the occasion of his coming. To her thus answered the grandson of Atlas and of Pleione: “I am he who carries the commands of my father through the air. Jupiter himself is my father. Nor will I invent pretences; do thou only be willing to be attached to thy sister, and to be called the aunt of my offspring. Herse is the cause of my coming; I pray thee to favor one in love.” Aglauros looks upon him with the same eyes with which she had lately looked upon the hidden mysteries of the yellow-haired Minerva, and demands for her agency gold of great weight; {and}, in the meantime, obliges him to go out of the house. The warlike Goddess turned upon her the orbs of her stern eyes, and drew a sigh from the bottom {of her heart}, with so great a motion, that she heaved both her breast and the Ægis placed before her valiant breast. It occurred {to her} that she had laid open her secrets with a profane hand, at the time when she beheld progeny created for {the God} who inhabits Lemnos,[87] without a mother, {and} contrary to the assigned laws; and that she could now be agreeable both to the God and to the sister {of Aglauros}, and that she would be enriched by taking the gold, which she, in her avarice, had demanded. Forthwith she repairs to the abode of Envy, hideous with black gore. Her abode is concealed in the lowest recesses of a cave, wanting sun, {and} not pervious to any wind, dismal and filled with benumbing cold; and which is ever without fire, and ever abounding with darkness.
[Footnote 83: Munychia.--Ver. 709. Munychia was the name of a promontory and harbor of Attica, between the Piræus and the promontory of ‘Sunium.’ The spot was so called from Munychius, who there built a temple in honor of Diana.]
[Footnote 84: Balearic.--Ver. 727. The Baleares were the islands of Majorca, Minorca, and Iviza, in the Mediterranean, near the coast of Spain. The natives of these islands were famous for their skill in the use of the sling. That weapon does not appear to have been used in the earliest times among the Greeks, as Homer does not mention it; it had, however, been introduced by the time of the war with Xerxes, though even then the sling was, perhaps, rarely used as a weapon. The Acarnanians and the Achæans of Agium, Patræ, and Dymæ were very expert in the use of the sling. That used by the Achæans was made of three thongs of leather, and not of one only, like those of other nations. The natives of the Balearic isles are said to have attained their skill from the circumstance of their mothers, when they were children, obliging them to obtain their food by striking it, from a tree, with a sling. While other slings were made of leather, theirs were made of rushes. Besides stones, plummets of lead, called ‘glandes,’ (as in the present instance), and μολύβδιδες, of a form between acorns and almonds, were cast in moulds, to be thrown from slings. They have been frequently dug up in various parts of Greece, and particularly on the plains of Marathon. Some have the device of a thunderbolt; while others are inscribed with δέξαι, ‘take this.’ It was a prevalent idea with the ancients that the stone discharged from the sling became red hot in its course, from the swiftness of its motion.]