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unafraid stood in his horses’ very path; backward they gave place, and e’en now have drooped their thick manes in suppliant wise to earth. Then leaning her bosom on the yoke, and with sidelong tearful glance she begins—meanwhile bowed at their mistress’ feet the horses champ the foaming steel: “War even against Thebes, O noble father, war dost thou thyself prepare, and the sword’s destruction for all thy race? And does not Harmonia’s offspring,^[1] nor heaven’s festal day of wedlock, nor these tears of mine, thou madman, give thee one moment’s pause? Is this thy reward for my misdoing? Is this the guerdon that the Lemnian chains and scandal’s tongue and loss of honour have won for me at thy hands? Proceed then as thou wilt; far different service does Vulcan pay me, and even an injured husband’s wrath yet does my bidding. If I were to bid him sweat in endless toil of furnaces and pass unsleeping nights of labour, he would rejoice and work at arms and at new accoutrements, yea, even for thee! Thou—but I essay to move rocks and a heart of bronze by praying!—yet this sole request, this only do I make in anxious fear: why didst thou have me join our beloved daughter to a Tyrian husband in ill-omened wedlock?^[2] And boast the while that the Tyrians, of dragon stock and direct lineage of Jove, would win renown in arms and show hearts keen and alive for action? Ah! would rather our maiden had married beneath the Sithonian pole, beyond Boreas and thy Thracians! Have I not suffered wrong enough, that my daughter crawls her length upon the ground, and spews poison on the Illyrian grass?