band
does. But receive the gifts, and ask thy father to give up the sentence of
banishment against these children for my sake. But when she saw the
ornaments, she refused not, but promised her husband every thing; and
before thy sons and their father were gone far from the house, she took and
put on the variegated robes, and having placed the golden chaplet around
her tresses she arranges her hair in the radiant mirror, smiling at the
lifeless image of her person. And after, having risen from her seat, she
goes across the chamber, elegantly tripping with snow-white foot; rejoicing
greatly in the presents, looking much and oftentimes with her eyes on her
outstretched neck.[36] After that however there was a sight of horror to
behold. For having changed color, she goes staggering back trembling in her
limbs, and is scarce in time to prevent herself from falling on the ground,
by sinking into a chair. And some aged female attendant, when she thought
that the wrath either of Pan or some other Deity[37] had visited her,
offered up the invocation, before at least she sees the white foam bursting
from her mouth, and her mistress rolling her eyeballs from their sockets,
and the blood no longer in the flesh; then she sent forth a loud shriek of
far different sound from the strain of supplication; and straightway one
rushed to the apartments of her father, but another to her newly-married
husband, to tell the calamity befallen the bride, and all the house was
filled with frequent hurryings to and fro. And by this time a swift runner,
exerting his limbs, might have reached[38] the goal of the course of six
plethra;[39] but she, wretched woman, from being speechless, and from a
closed eye having groaned deeply writhed in agony; for a double pest was
warring against her. The golden chaplet indeed placed on her head was
sending forth a stream of all-devouring fire wonderful to behold, but the
fine-wrought robes, the presents of thy sons, were devouring the white
flesh of the hapless woman. But she having started from her seat flies, all
on fire, tossing her hair and head on this side and that side, desirous of
shaking off the chaplet; but the golden wreath firmly kept its hold; but
the fire, when she shook her hair, blazed out with double fury, and she
sinks upon the ground overcome by her sufferings, difficult for any one
except her father to recognize. For neither was the expression of her eyes
clear, nor her noble countenance; but th