{statue} of ivory.' The golden Venus, as she herself was
present at her own festival, understood what that prayer meant; and as
an omen of the Divinity being favourable, thrice was the flame kindled
up, and it sent up a tapering flame into the air. Soon as he returned,
he repaired to the image of his maiden, and, lying along the couch, he
gave her kisses. She seems to grow warm. Again he applies his mouth;
with his hands, too, he feels her breast. The pressed ivory becomes
soft, and losing its hardness, yields to the fingers, and gives way,
just as Hymettian wax[41] grows soft in the sun, and being worked with
the fingers is turned into many shapes, and becomes pliable by the very
handling. While he is amazed, and is rejoicing, {though} with
apprehension, and is fearing that he is deceived; the lover again and
again touches the object of his desires with his hand. It is a {real}
body; the veins throb, when touched with the thumb.

"Then, indeed, the Paphian hero conceives {in his mind} the most lavish
expressions, with which to give thanks to Venus, and at length presses
lips, no {longer} fictitious, with his own lips. The maiden, too, feels
the kisses given her, and blushes; and raising her timorous eyes towards
the light {of day}, she sees at once her lover and the heavens. The
Goddess was present at the marriage which she {thus} effected. And now,
the horns of the moon having been nine times gathered into a full orb,
she brought forth Paphos; from whom the island derived its name."

[Footnote 40: _Bows from her breast._--Ver. 265. The 'Redimiculum'
was a sort of fillet, or head band, worn by females. Passing over
the shoulders, it hung on each side, over the breast. In the
statues of Venus, it was often imitated in gold. Clarke translates
it by the word 'solitaire.']

[Footnote 41: _Hymettian wax._--Ver. 284. Hymettus was a mountain
of Attica, much famed for its honey.]

EXPLANATION.

The Pygmalion here mentioned must not be mistaken for the person of
the same name, who was the brother of Dido, and king of Tyre. The
story is most probably an allegory, which was based on the fact that
Pygmalion being a man of virtuous principles, and disgusted with the
vicious conduct of the women of Cyprus, took a great deal of care in
training the mind and conduct of a young female, whom he kept at a
distance from the contact of the prevailing vices; and whom, after
having recovered