vinity of the city, with an
address to whom it seemingly begins, though it is difficult to say
what degree of personification is intended.

* * * * *

I pray thee, lover of splendour, most beautiful among the cities of
men, haunt of Persephone, thou who by the banks of Akragas' stream
that nourisheth thy flocks, inhabitest a citadel builded pleasantly--O
queen, graciously and with goodwill of gods and men welcome this crown
that is come forth from Pytho for Midas' fair renown; and him too
welcome therewithal who hath overcome all Hellas in the art which once
on a time Pallas Athene devised, when she made music of the fierce
Gorgon's death-lament.

That heard she pouring from the maiden heads and heads of serpents
unapproachable amidst the anguish of their pains, when Perseus had
stricken the third sister, and to the isle Seriphos and its folk bare
thence their doom.

Yea also he struck with blindness the wondrous brood of Phorkos[1],
and to Polydektes' bridal brought a grievous gift, and grievous
eternally he made for that man his mother's slavery and ravished bed:
for this he won the fair-faced Medusa's head, he who was the son of
Danae, and sprung, they say, from a living stream of gold.

But the Maiden[2], when that she had delivered her well-beloved from
these toils, contrived the manifold music of the flute, that with such
instrument she might repeat the shrill lament that reached her from
Euryale's[3] ravening jaws.

A goddess was the deviser thereof, but having created it for
a possession of mortal men, she named that air she played the
many-headed[4] air, that speaketh gloriously of folk-stirring games,
as it issueth through the thin-beat bronze and the reeds which grow by
the Graces' city of goodly dancing-ground in the precinct of Kephisos'
nymph, the dancers' faithful witnesses.

But if there be any bliss among mortal men, without labour it is not
made manifest: it may be that God will accomplish it even to-day, yet
the thing ordained is not avoidable: yea, there shall be a time that
shall lay hold on a man unaware, and shall give him one thing beyond
his hope, but another it shall bestow not yet.

[Footnote 1: The three Grey Sisters, whose one common eye Perseus
stole,

[Greek: daenaiai korai
treis kyknomorphoi koinon omm' ektaemenai
monodontes, has outh' haelios prosderketai
aktisin, outh' hae nukteros maenae pote.]

Aesch. Prom. 813.

This must mean