agony and her trouble in dying, sent down Iris[183] from 10
Olympus to part the struggling soul and its prison of flesh.
For, as she was dying, not in the course of fate, nor for
any crime of hers, but in mere misery, before her time, the
victim of sudden frenzy, not yet had Proserpine[184] carried
off a lock of her yellow hair, and thus doomed her head to 15
Styx and the place of death. So then Iris glides down
the sky with saffron wings dew-besprent, trailing a thousand
various colours in the face of the sun, and alights
above her head. “This I am bidden to bear away as an