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 METAMORPHOSES BOOK III of the hundred hands, for that weapon were too deadly; but there is a lighter bolt, to which the Cyclops' hands had given a less devouring flame, a wrath less threatening. The gods call them his " Second Armoury." With these in hand he enters the palace of Agenor's son, the home of Semele. Her mortal body bore not the onrush of heavenly power, and by that gift of wedlock she was consumed. The babe still not wholly fashioned is snatched from the mother's womb and (if report may be believed) sewed up in his father's thigh, there to await its full time of birth. In secret his mother's sister, Ino, watched over his infancy; thence he was confided to the nymphs of Nysa, who hid him in their cave and nurtured him with milk. Now while these things were happening on the earth by the decrees of fate, when the cradle of Bacchus, twice born, was safe, it chanced that Jove (as the story goes), while warmed with wine, put care aside and bandied good-humoured jests with Juno in an idle hour. "1 maintain," said he, "that your pleasure in love is greater than that which we enjoy." She held the opposite view. And so they decided to ask the judgment of wise Tiresias. He knew both sides of love. For once, with a blow of his staff he had outraged two huge serpents mating in the green forest; and, wonderful to relate, from m was changed into a woman, and in that form spent seven years. In the eighth year he saw the same serpents again and said: " Since in striking you there is such magic power as to change the nature of the giver of the blow, now will I strike you once again." So saying, he struck the serpents and his former state was restored and he became ashe had been born. He there fore, being asked to arbitrate the playful dispute of 147