Corydon. But Aegon’s heifers here are lowing pitifully, and miss their master.
Battus. Yes, wretched beasts that they are, how false a neatherd was theirs!
Corydon. Wretched enough in truth, and they have no more care to pasture.
Battus. Nothing is left, now, of that heifer, look you, bones, that’s all. She does not live on dewdrops, does she, like the grasshopper?
Corydon. No, by Earth, for sometimes I take her to graze by the banks of Aesarus, fair handfuls of fresh grass I give her too, and otherwhiles she wantons in the deep shade round Latymnus.
Battus. How lean is the red bull too! May the sons of Lampriades, the burghers to wit, get such another for their sacrifice to Hera, for the township is an ill neighbour.
Corydon. And yet that bull is driven to the mere’s mouth, and to the meadows of Physcus, and to the Neaethus, where all fair herbs bloom, red goat-wort, and endive, and fragrant bees-wort.
Battus. Ah, wretched Aegon, thy very kine will go to Hades, while thou too art in love with a luckless victory, and thy pipe is flecked with mildew, the pipe that once thou madest for thyself!
Corydon. Not the pipe, by the nymphs, not so, for when he went to Pisa, he left the same as a gift to me, and I am something of a player. Well can I strike up the air of Glaucé and well the strain of Pyrrhus, and the praise of Croton I sing, and Zacynthus is a goodly town, and Lacinium that fronts the dawn! There Aegon the boxer, unaided, devoured eighty cakes to his own share, and there he caught the bull by the hoof, and brought him from the mountain, and gave him to Amaryllis. Thereon the women shrieked aloud, and the neatherd,—he burst out laughing.
Battus. Ah, gracious Amaryllis! Thee alone even in death will we ne’er forget. Dear to me as my goats wert thou, and thou art dead! Alas, too cruel a spirit hath my lot in his keeping.