She a mother in her pangs;
She would bring pollution to you
From the chamber of a corpse.
In the crossways swoop upon you,
Fix on you a murderer’s shame.[[290]]
Nor will their views about Apollo, or Hera, or Aphrodite be a whit more decent, they fear and tremble at them all. Yet what was there in Niobe’s blasphemy about Latona, compared to what |C| superstition has persuaded fools to believe about that goddess, how she felt herself insulted and actually shot down the poor woman’s
Six daughters, beauteous all, six blooming sons,[[291]]
so greedy of calamities for another woman, so implacable! For if the Goddess had really been full of wrath and resentment of wickedness, and felt aggrieved at insults to herself, disposed to resent, rather than to smile at human folly and ignorance, why then she ought to have shot down those who lyingly imputed to her such savage bitterness, in speech or books. Certainly we denounce the bitterness of Hecuba as savage and beastly: |D|
In whose mid-liver I my teeth would set,
And cling and gnaw.[[292]]