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leap in excited dance around the infant Thunderer; their cymbals clash in emulous frenzy, but Ide resounds with his loud wailings.

But the child, lying in the bosom of the vernal earth and deep in herbage, now crawls forward on his face and crushes the soft grasses, now in clamorous thirst for milk cries for his beloved nurse; again he smiles, and would fain utter words that wrestle with his infant lips, and wonders at the noise of the woods, or plucks at aught he meets, or with open mouth drinks in the day, and strays in the forest all ignorant of its dangers, in carelessness profound. Such was the young Mars amid Odrysian snow, such the winged boy on the heights of Maenalus, such was the rogue Apollo when he crawled upon Ortygia’s^[1] shore, and set her side atilt.

They go through the coppices and by devious dusky ways of shadowy green; some cluster round their guide, some throng behind, others outstrip her. In the midst of the band she moves with proud mien and hurrying step; and now the vale echoes loud as they approach the stream, and the plashing of water upon rocks assails their ears: then first from the column’s head, just as he was, with banner raised high for the nimble companies, Argus exultant cries “Water!” and through the warriors mouths ran the long-drawn shout of “Water!” Even so, along the shores of the Ambracian sea, sounds forth at the helmsman’s prompting the shout of the seamen at the oars, and in turn the smitten land sends back the echo, when Apollo^[2] at their salutation brings Leucas into view. Into the stream the host plunged, indiscriminate and disordered, chieftains alike and common soldiers;