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 METAMORPHOSES BOOK IV and as she was entering heaven, Iris, the daughter of Thaumus, sprinkled her o'er with purifying water. Straightway the fell Tisiphone seized a torch which had been steeped in gore, put on a robe red with dripping blood, girt round her waist a writhing snake, and started forth. Grief went along with her, Terror and Dread and Madness, too, with quivering face. Sh. Thev e stood upon the doomed threshold say the very door posts of the house of Aeolus1 shrank away from her; the polished oaken doors grew dim and the sun hid his face. Ino was mad with terror at the monstrous sight, and her husband, Athamas, was filled with fear. They made to leave their palace, but the baleful Fury stood in their way and blocked their exit. And stretching her arms, wreathed with vipers, she shook out her locks: disturbed, the serpents hissed horribly. A part lay on her shoulders, part twined round her breast, hissing, vomiting venomous gore, and darting out their tongues. Then she tears away two serpents from the midst of her tresses, and with deadły aim hurls them at her victims. The snakes go gliding over the breasts of Ino and of Athamas and breathe upon them their pestilential breath. No wounds their bodies suffer; 'tis their minds that feel th<e deadly stroke. The Fury, not content with this, had brought horrid poisons too-froth of Cerberus' jaws, the venom of the Hydra, strange hallucinations and utter forgetfulness, crime and tears, mad love of slaughter, all mixed together with fresh blood and green hemlock juice, and brewed in a brazen cauldron. And while they stood quaking there, over the breasts of both she poured this maddening poison brew, and made it sink to their being's core. 1 The father of Athamss.