his
passage can hardly be discerned, visits them all in turn, and, bending
his strong bow, to the drawn string he fits the arrows forged by me and
tempered in the fountains sacred to my divinity. And when he elects
anyone to his service, as being more worthy than others, that one he
rules as it likes him. He kindles raging fires in the hearts of the
young, fans the flames that are almost dead in the old, awakens the
fever of passion in the chaste bosoms of virgins and instils a genial
warmth into the breasts of wives and widows equally. He has even
aforetime forced the gods, wrought up to a frenzy by his blazing torch,
to forsake the heavens and dwell on earth under false appearances.
Whereof the proofs are many. Was not Phoebus, though victor over huge
Python and creator of the celestial strains that sound from the lyres of
Parnassus, by him made the thrall, now of Daphne, now of Clymene, and
again of Leucothea, and of many others withal? Certainly, this was so.
And, finally, hiding his brightness under the form of a shepherd, did
not Apollo tend the flocks of Admetus? Even Jove himself, who rules the
skies, by this god coerced, molded his greatness into forms inferior to
his own. Sometimes, in shape of a snow-white fowl, he gave voice to
sounds sweeter than those of the dying swan, and anon, changing to a
young bull and fitting horns to his brow, he bellowed along the plains,
and humbled his proud flanks to the touch of a virgin's knees, and,
compelling his tired hoofs to do the office of oars, he breasted the
waves of his brother's kingdom, yet sank not in its depths, but joyously
bore away his prize. I shall not discourse unto you of his pursuit of
Semele under his proper form, or of Alcmena, in guise of Amphitryon, or
of Callisto, under the semblance of Diana, or of Danae for whose sake he
became a shower of gold, seeing that in the telling thereof I should
waste too much time. Nay, even the savage god of war, whose strength
appalls the giants, repressed his wrathful bluster, being forced to such
submission by this my son, and became gentle and loving. And the forger
of Jupiter, and artificer of his three-pronged thunderbolts, though
trained to handle fire, was smitten by a shaft more potent than he
himself had ever wrought. Nay I, though I be his mother, have not been
able to fend off his arrows: Witness the tears I have shed for the death
of Adonis! But why weary myself and thee with the utterance of so many
word