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118 bridal stir his spirit: alone he ranged Hyperborean icefields and snowy Tanaïs and Rhipaean plains that never unloose their frosts, murmuring over his lost Eurydice and the vain gifts of Dis: till slighted by such tribute, Ciconian matrons, amid divine sacrifice and Bacchic revels by night, rent him asunder and scattered him wide over the land. Even then, when torn from the marble neck his head went rolling down the mid-eddies of Oeagrian Hebrus, the very voice and chill tongue cried Eurydice! ah poor Eurydice! as their life ebbed away: Eurydice! the banks re-echoed all down the stream.

Thus Proteus, and sprang with a bound into the sea depths, and where he sprang the wave spun eddying in foam. But not so Cyrene: for she accosted him in words of cheer:

O my son, thou mayest dismiss the care that saddens thy soul. This is all the source of the sickness; this why the Nymphs with whom she wheeled the dance in depth of groves have dealt destruction on thy poor bees. Do thou humbly seek their favour with gifts outstretched, and worship the gracious maidens of the lawn: for to thy prayers they will yield pardon and relent from wrath. But first I will tell thee duly what is the way of supplication. Choose out four noble bulls of stately girth that now graze the heights of green Lycaeus, and as many heifers whose neck knows not the yoke; for these rear four altars by the lofty shrines of the goddesses and let the devoted blood trickle from their throats,