I was a shell, O Venus Zephyritis,[8]
Now I'm the pious offering of Selena,
The gentle nautilus. When balmy winds
Breathe soft along the sea, I hold my course,
Stretching my sails on their congenial yards.
Should calm, the placid goddess, still the waves,
I row myself along with nimble feet,
So that my name suits rightly with my acts.
Now have I fallen on the Iulian shore,
To be a pleasant sport to Arsinoe.
No more shall Halcyons' dew-besprinkled eggs,
My dainty meal, lie thick within my bed
As formerly they did, since here I lie.
But give to Cleinias's daughter worthy thanks;
For she does shape her conduct honestly,
And from Æolian Smyrna doth she come.
Posidippus also wrote this epigram on the same Venus which is worshipped in Zephyrium:—
Oh, all ye men who traffic on the streams,
Or on the land who hold a safer way,
THE POLYPUS.
Worship this shrine of Philadelphus' wife,
Venus Arsinoe, whom Callicrates,
The naval leader, first did firmly place
On this most beautiful Zephyrian shore.
And she will on your pious voyage smile,
And amid storms will for her votaries
Smooth the vex'd surface of the wide-spread sea.
Ion the tragedian also mentions the polypus, in his Phœnix, saying—
I hate the colour-changing polypus,
Clinging with bloodless feelers to the rocks.
107. Now the different species of polypus are these: the eledone, the polypodine, the bolbotine, the osmylus; as both Aristotle and Speusippus teach us. But, in his book on Animals and their Properties, Aristotle says that the polypus, the osmylus, the eledone, the cuttle-fish, and the squid, are all molluscous. Epicharmus, in his Hebe's Wedding, says—
A polypus, a cuttle-fish, and quickly-moving squid,
A foul-smelling bolbitine, and chattering old woman.
And Archestratus says—