shoulders her robes, shining with
broad gold, and puts on black garments, and erects an honorary
sepulchre, and offers expiation to an imaginary shade; and laments the
death of a sister not thus to be lamented.

The God {Apollo}, the year being completed, had run through the twice
six signs {of the Zodiac}. What can Philomela do? A guard prevents her
flight; the walls of the house are hard, built of solid stone: her
speechless mouth is deprived of the means of discovering the crime. But
in grief there is extreme ingenuity, and inventive skill arises in
misfortunes. She skilfully suspends the warp in a web of Barbarian
design,[61] and interweaves purple marks with white, as a mode of
discovering the villany {of Tereus}; and delivers it, when finished, to
one {of her attendants}, and begs her, by signs, to carry it to her
mistress. As desired, she carries it to Progne, and does not know what
she is delivering in it. The wife of the savage tyrant unfolds the web,
and reads the mournful tale[62] of her sister, and (wondrous that she
can be so!) she is silent. 'Tis grief that stops her utterance, and
words sufficiently indignant fail her tongue, in want of them; nor is
there room for weeping. But she rushes onward, about to confound both
right and wrong, and is wholly {occupied} in the contrivance of revenge.

[Footnote 51: _Calydon._--Ver. 415. This was a city of AEtolia,
which derived its name from Calydon, the son of Endymion. Diana,
being incensed against Oeneus, its king, because he omitted her
when offering the first fruits to the other Deities, sent an
immense boar to ravage its fields, which was slain by Meleager.
Ovid recounts these circumstances in the eighth book of the
Metamorphoses. Argos, Sparta, and Mycenae, are also included in one
line, by Homer, as having been under the particular tutelage of
Juno.]

[Footnote 52: _Famous for its brass._--Ver. 416. According to some
writers, the Corinthian brass became famous after the fall of
Corinth, when it was taken and burnt by the Consul Mummius. On
that occasion, they say, that from the immense number of statues
melted in the conflagration, a stream of metal poured through the
streets, consisting of melted gold, silver, and copper; in which,
of course, the latter would be predominant. If that was the ground
on which the Corinthian brass was so much commended, Ovid is here
guilty of an anachron