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young and old, to crush babes against the teeming breasts, and with the sword to make havoc through every age. Then in a green grove—a grove that darkens the ground hard by the lofty hill of Minerva, black itself, but above it the mountain looms huge, and the sunlight perishes in a twofold night—they pledged their solemn word, and thou wast witness, Martian Enyo, and thou, Ceres of the underworld,^[1] and the Stygian goddesses came in answer to their prayers; but unseen among them everywhere was Venus, Venus armed, Venus kindling wrath. Unwonted was the blood, for the wife of Charops made offering of her son, and they girded themselves, and at once all greedily stretched forth their right hands and mangled with the sword his marvelling breast, and made common oath in impious joy upon the living blood, while the new ghost hovers about his mother. What horror struck my limbs when I beheld so dire a sight! What colour came upon my cheeks! As when a deer is surrounded by savage wolves, and no strength is left in her tender breast and scanty confidence in speed of foot, she darts away in fearful flight, and each moment believes that she is taken, and hears behind her the snap of baffled jaws.

“They were come, and already the keels grated on the edge of the strand, and they leap ashore in emulous haste. Unhappy they, whom their stark valour ’neath Odrysian Mars^[2] destroyed not, nor the rage of the intervening sea! And now they fill with smoke of incense the high shrines of the gods, and drag their promised victims; but murky is the fire on every altar, and in no entrails breathes