This done, he hastens to execute the Sibyl’s bidding.

A deep cave there was, yawning wide with giant throat,

rough and shingly, shadowed by the black pool and the 15

gloom of the forest—a cave, over whose mouth no winged

thing could fly unharmed, so poisonous the breath that

exhaling from its pitchy jaws steamed up to the sky—whence

Greece has given the spot the name Aornos.[213]

Here first the priestess places in sacrificial station four 20

black-skinned bullocks, and empties wine over their

brows, and plucking from between their horns the hairs of