Page:The Odyssey of Homer, with the Hymns, Epigrams, and Battle of the Frogs and Mice (Buckley 1853).djvu/414

378 his hands, a sad report from his belly, an impudent messenger. And quickly after it he sneezed. But Apollo heard it, and cast glorious Mercury from his hands upon the ground. (But he sat down before [him], although hastening on his way,) reproaching Mercury, and addressed him in words:

"Be of good courage, thou enswaddled son of Jove and Maia; I will hereafter find my stout heads of heifers by these omens, but well shalt thou hereafter be leader of the way."

Thus he spake, but Cyllenian Mercury again leaped up quickly, going in haste. But with his hands he pulled the swaddlings, with which he was enwrapped as to his shoulders, around his ears also, and spoke thus:

"Whether bearest thou me, O Far-Darter, most powerful of all the gods? Surely thou art thus teasing me, enraged on account of these heifers. O gods! may the race of cows perish! For I did not steal your cows, nor saw I another, whoever these cows are, for I hear the report alone. But give and receive justice in presence of Saturnian Jove."

But after vagrant Mercury and the glorious son of Latona had said these things openly, having their mind in different ways, for the latter indeed demanded a true confession, not satisfaction for the cows, from renowned Mercury, but he of Cyllene by wiles and cunning speeches wished to deceive him of the silver bow. But when he, being cunning in counsel, met with one of many devices, then quickly he walked through the sand before, but the son of Jove at Latona behind. And soon they came to the heights of incense-fraught Olympus, to the Saturnian sire, they the beauteous children of Jove, (for