With such soothsaying songs of yore did the Parcae chant from divine breast the felicitous fate of Peleus. For of aforetime the heaven-dwellers were wont to visit the chaste homes of heroes and to shew themselves in mortal assembly ere yet their worship was scorned. Often the father of the gods, a-resting in his glorious temple, when on the festal days his annual rites appeared, gazed on an hundred bulls strewn prone on the earth. Often wandering Liber on topmost summit of Parnassus led his yelling Thyiads with loosely tossed locks. * * * * When the Delphians tumultuously trooping from the whole of their city joyously acclaimed the god with smoking altars. Often in lethal strife of war Mavors, or swift Triton's queen, or the Rhamnusian virgin, in person did exhort armed bodies of men. But after the earth was infected with heinous crime, and each one banished justice from their grasping mind, and brothers steeped their hands in fraternal blood, the son ceased grieving o'er departed parents, the sire craved for the funeral rites of his first-born that freely he might take of the flower of unwedded step-dame, the unholy mother, lying under her unknowing son, did not fear to sully her household gods with dishonour: everything licit and lawless commingled with mad infamy turned away from us the just-seeing mind of the gods. Wherefore nor do they deign to appear at such-like assemblies, nor will they permit themselves to be met in the day-light.
LXV.
Esti me adsiduo confectum cura dolore
Sevocat a doctis, Ortale, virginibus,
Nec potisest dulces Musarum expromere fetus
Mens animi, (tantis fluctuat ipsa malis:
5
Namque mei nuper Lethaeo gurgite fratris