Page:The Greek bucolic poets (1912).djvu/56



''monologue, which preserves the dialogue-form by a dumb character, consists of two parts; in the ﬁrst a Coan girl named Simaetha lays a fire-spell upon her neglectful lover, the young athlete Delphis, and in the second, when her maid goes of to smear the ashes upon his lintel, she tells the Moon how his love was won and lost. The scene lies not far from the sea, at a place where three roads meet without the city, the roads being bordered with tombs. The Moon shines in the bachground, and in the foreground is a wayside shrine and statue of Hecate with a little altar before it. Upon this altar, in the ﬁrst part of the rite, the poor girl burns successively barley-meal, bay-leaves, a waxen puppet, and some bran; next, the coming of the Goddess having been heralded by the distant barking of dogs and welcomed with the beating of brass, amid the holy silence that betohens her presence Simaetha pours the libation and puts up her chief prayer; lastly she burns the herb hippomanes and a piece of the fringe of her lover’s cloak. The incantation which begins and ends'' 24