THE TAKING OF ILIOS 



Others culling tlie fresh bounty of the rain strewed 

 a rosy carpet for the wooden trail. Others undid 

 the spun girdles of sea-purple about their breasts 

 and with woven garlands wreathed the horse. Some 

 broaching the seal of a great jar poured forth wine 

 mixed with golden saffron and made the piled earth 

 odorous with fragrant mud. With the shouting of 

 men was mingled the cry of women, the huzza of 

 boys was joined with the voice of age. And even as 

 the denizens of rich Ocean, the attendants of winter, 

 the ranks of the cranes'' crjing Ln air, align the 

 circle of their wandering dance, uttering their notes 

 abhorred by the ploughmen who labour the earth : 

 even so with crpng and with tumult they led to the 

 acropolis the horse laden within. And the god- 

 driven daughter ^ of Priam would not abide any more 

 in her chamber. Tearing apart the bars she ran, like 

 restless heifer whom the sting of the ox-tormenting 

 gadfly has smitten and stung to frenzy : which looks 

 no more to the herd nor obeys the herdsman nor 

 yearns for the pasture, but whetted by the sharp dart 

 she passes beyond the range of oxen : in such M-ise, 

 her heart distraught by the pricking of the shafts of 

 prophecy, the maiden shook the holy laurel wreath 

 and cried everj-Avhere throughout the city. She 

 heeded nor parents nor friends, and maiden shame 

 forsook her. Not so doth the pleasant flute of 



enough that Tryphiodorus has in mind also the orderly- 

 flight of the cranes (Aristotle, II. A. ix. 10; Eurip. Ilel. 

 1478 ff.). In Greece the bird was a migrant and its passage 

 from its nesting-places in the north (Macedonia, etc. ; to the 

 south {Africa, etc., Horn. //. ui. 2 K) which took place 

 about October was the signal for ploughing, Hesiod, W. 

 448 if. 



' Cassandra. 



607 



