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and thresholds summons us to council; her children clinging to her bear her woeful company. No less eagerly do all the women burst from their houses and rush to the citadel of Pallas on the hill-top: hither in feverish haste we press and crowd disorderly. Then with drawn sword she commands silence, and prompting us to crime dares thus to speak among us: ‘Inspired by heaven and our just anger, O widowed Lemnians—steel now your courage and banish thought of sex!—I make bold to justify a desperate deed. If ye are weary of watching homes for ever desolate, of watching your beauty’s flower blight and wither in long barren years of weeping, I have found a way, I promise you—and the Powers are with us!—a way to renew the charm of Love; only take courage equal to your griefs, yea, and of that assure me first. Three winters now have whitened—which of us has known the bonds of wedlock, or the secret honours of the marriage chamber? Whose bosom has glowed with conjugal love? Whom has Lucina beheld in travail? Whose ripening hope throbs in the womb as the due months draw on? Yet such permission is granted to beasts and birds to unite after their manner. Alas! sluggards that we are! could a Grecian sire^[1] give avenging weapons to his daughters, and with treacherous joy drench in blood the bridegroom’s careless slumber? And are we then to be but a spiritless mob? Or if ye would have deeds nearer home, lo! let the Thracian wife^[2] teach us courage, who with her own hand avenged her union and set the feast before her spouse. Nor do I urge you on, guiltless myself or without care: full is my own house, and huge—ay, look^[3]—the struggle.