gs and, poised almost
motionless with hovering flight, looks all around him and seeks what
prey he shall choose whereon to swoop[37] sudden like a thunderbolt
from heaven on high. In one glance he sees all cattle in the field,
all beasts upon the mountains, all men in their cities, all threatened
at once by his intended swoop, and thence he falls to pierce with his
beak and clutch with his claws the unsuspecting lamb, the timid hare,
or whatsoever living creature chance offers to his hunger or his
talons.
[Footnote 36: _inhibens_ (Heinsius) _pinnarum eminus_ (MSS.).]
[Footnote 37: _fulminis vicem de caelo improvisa, simul._ Van der
Vliet places a comma after _vicem_ and gives none after _improvisa_.]
_The story of Marsyas and his challenge to Apollo._
3. Hyagnis, according to tradition, was the father and instructor of
the piper Marsyas, and skilled in song beyond all others in the years
when music was still in its infancy. It is true that as yet the sound
of his breath lacked the finer modulations; he knew but a few simple
modes and his pipe had but few stops. For the art was but newly born
and only just beginning to grow. There is nothing that can attain
perfection in its first beginnings; everything must commence by
mastering the elements in hope, ere it can attain experience and
success. Well, then, before Hyagnis the majority of musicians could do
no more than the shepherds or cowherds of Vergil who
_Made sorry strains on pipes of scrannel straw._
If any of them seemed to have made some real advance in art, even he
played only on one pipe or one trumpet. Hyagnis was the first to
separate his hands when he played, the first to fill two pipes with
one breath, the first to finger stops with either hand and make sweet
harmony of shrill treble and booming bass. Marsyas was his son, and
though he possessed his father's skill upon the pipe, he was in all
else a barbarous Phrygian, with a filthy beard and the grim and shaggy
face of a wild beast. All his body was covered with hair and bristles,
and yet--good heavens! he is said to have striven for mastery with
Apollo. 'Twas hideousness contending with beauty, a rude boor against
a sage, a beast against a god. The Muses and Minerva, hiding their
amusement, stood by to judge, that they might make a mockery of the
monster's uncouth presumption and punish his stupidity. But Marsyas,
like the peerless fool he was, never perceived that he was an object
of rid
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