f this, dwelt the two sisters, the daughters of
Phorcys, who shared the use of a single eye; that he stealthily, by sly
craft, while it was being handed over,[88] obtained possession of this
by putting his hand in the way; and that through rocks far remote, and
pathless, and bristling with woods on their craggy sides, he had arrived
at the abodes of the Gorgons, and saw everywhere, along the fields and
the roads, statues of men and wild beasts turned into stone, from their
{natural form}, at the sight of Medusa; yet that he himself, from the
reflection on the brass of the shield[89] which his left hand bore,
beheld the visage of the horrible Medusa; and that, while a sound sleep
held her and her serpents {entranced}, he took the head from off the
neck; and that Pegasus and his brother,[90] fleet with wings, were
produced from the blood of {her}, their mother. He added, too, the
dangers of his lengthened journey, {themselves} no fiction;[91] what
seas, what lands he had seen beneath him from on high, and what stars he
had reached with his waving wings.

Yet, before it was expected,[92] he was silent; {whereupon} one of the
nobles rejoined, inquiring why she alone, of the sisters, wore snakes
mingled alternately with her hair. "Stranger," said he, "since thou
inquirest on a matter worthy to be related, hear the cause of the thing
thou inquirest after. She was the most famed for her beauty, and the
coveted hope of many wooers; nor, in the whole of her person, was any
part more worthy of notice than her hair: I have met {with some} who
said they had seen it. The sovereign of the sea is said to have
deflowered her in the Temple of Minerva. The daughter of Jove turned
away, and covered her chaste eyes with her shield. And that this might
not be unpunished, she changed the hair of the Gorgon into hideous
snakes. Now, too, that she may alarm her surprised foes with terror, she
bears in front upon her breast, those snakes which she {thus} produced."

[Footnote 77: _Hippotas._--Ver. 663. AEolus, the God of the Winds,
was the son of Jupiter, by Acesta, the daughter of Hippotas.]

[Footnote 78: _Ammon._--Ver. 671. Jupiter, with the surname of
Ammon, had a temple in the deserts of Libya, where he was
worshipped under the shape of a ram; a form which he was supposed
to have assumed, when, in common with the other Deities, he fled
from the attacks of the Giants. The oracle of Jupiter Ammon being
consu