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to every sound and girt with empty tidings of tumult, flies before the chariot, sped onward by the winged steeds’ panting breath, and with loud whirring shakes out her fluttering plumes; for the charioteer^[1] with blood-stained goad urges her to speak, be it truth or falsehood, while threatening from the lofty car the sire^[2] with Scythian lance assails the back and tresses of the goddess. Even so their chieftain Neptune drives before him the Winds set free from Aeolus’ cell, and speeds them willing over the wide Aegean; in his train Storms and high-piled Tempests, a surly company, clamour about his reins, and Clouds and the dark Hurricane torn from earth’s rent bowels; wavering and shaken to their foundations the Cyclades stem the blast; even thou, Delos, fearest to be torn away from thy Myconos and Gyaros, and entreatest the protection of thy mighty son.^[3]

And now the seventh Dawn with shining face was bearing bright day to earth and heaven, when the Persean hero^[4] first came forth from the private chamber of his palace, distracted by thought of war and the princes’ swelling ambition, and perplexed in mind, whether to give sanction and stir anew the rival peoples, or to hold tight the reins of anger and fasten in their sheaths the restless swords. On the one side he is moved by the thought of tranquil peace, on the other by the shame of dishonoured quiet and the hard task of turning a people from war’s new glamour; in his doubt this late resolve at last finds favour, to try the mind of prophets and the true presaging of the sacred rites. To thy wisdom,