r comes a herdsman, leaving the sea-coast, about to tell
thee some new thing.

HERDSMAN. Daughter of Agamemnon and child of Clytaemnestra, hear thou from
me a new announcement.

IPH. And what is there astonishing in the present report?

HERDS. Two youths are come into this land, to the dark-blue Symplegades,
fleeing into a ship, a grateful sacrifice and offering to Diana. But you
can not use too much haste[41] in making ready the lustral waters and the
consecrations.

IPH. Of what country? of what land do the strangers bear the name?

HERDS. Greeks, this one thing I know, and nothing further.

IPH. Hast thou not heard the name of the strangers, so as to tell it?

HERDS. One of them was styled Pylades by the other.

IPH. But what was the name of the yoke-fellow of this stranger?

HERDS. No one knows this. For we heard it not.

IPH. But how saw ye them, and chanced to take them?

HERDS. Upon the furthest breakers of the inhospitable sea.

IPH. And what had herdsmen to do with the sea?

HERDS. We came to lave our steers in the dew of the sea.

IPH. Go back again to this point--how did ye catch them, and by what means,
for I would fain know this? For they are come after a long season, nor has
the altar of the Goddess yet been crimsoned with Grecian blood.[42]

HERDS. After we woodland herdsmen had brought our cattle down to the sea
that flows between the Symplegades, there is a certain hollow cave,[43]
broken by the frequent lashing of the waves, a retreat for those who hunt
for the purple fish. Here some herdsman among us beheld two youths, and he
retired back, piloting his step on tiptoe, and said: See ye not? these who
sit here are some divine powers. And one of us, being religiously given,
uplifted his hand, and addressed them, as he beheld: O son of Leucothea,
guardian of ships, Palaemon our lord, be propitious to us, whether indeed ye
be the twin sons of Jove (Castor and Pollux) who sit upon our shores, or
the image of Nereus, who begot the noble chorus of the fifty Nereids. But
another vain one, bold in his lawlessness, scoffed at these prayers, and
said that they were shipwrecked[44] seamen who sat upon the cleft through
fear of the law, hearing that we here sacrifice strangers. And to most of
us he seemed to speak well, and [we resolved] to hunt for the accustomed
victims for the Goddess. But meanwhile one of the strangers leaving the
rock, stood still, and shook his head up and down, and groaned, wi