count of some remarkable
instance of androgynous formation.

Ovid may possibly have invented the story himself, merely as a
vehicle for showing how the Deities recompense piety and strict
obedience to their injunctions.

BOOK THE TENTH.

FABLE I. [X.1-85]

Eurydice, the wife of Orpheus, while sporting in the fields, with
other Nymphs, is bitten by a serpent, which causes her death. After
having mourned for her, Orpheus resolves to go down to the Infernal
Regions in quest of her. Pluto and the Fates consent to her return,
on condition that Orpheus shall not look on her till he is out of
their dominions. His curiosity prevailing, he neglects this
injunction, on which she is immediately snatched away from him,
beyond the possibility of recovery. Upon this occasion, the Poet
relates the story of a shepherd, who was turned into a rock by a
look of Cerberus; and that of Olenus and Lethaea, who were
transformed into stones.

Thence Hymenaeus, clad in a saffron-coloured[1] robe, passed through the
unmeasured tract of air, and directed his course to the regions of the
Ciconians[2], and, in vain, was invoked by the voice of Orpheus. He
presented himself indeed, but he brought with him neither auspicious
words, nor joyful looks, nor {yet} a happy omen. The torch, too, which
he held, was hissing with a smoke that brought tears to the eyes, and as
it was, it found no flames amid its waving. The issue was more
disastrous than the omens; for the newmade bride, while she was
strolling along the grass, attended by a train of Naiads, was killed,
having received the sting of a serpent on her ancle.

After the Rhodopeian bard had sufficiently bewailed her in the upper
{realms of} air, that he might try the shades below as well, he dared to
descend to Styx by the Taenarian gate, and amid the phantom inhabitants
and ghosts that had enjoyed the tomb, he went to Persephone, and him
that held these unpleasing realms, the Ruler of the shades; and touching
his strings in concert with his words, he thus said, "O ye Deities of
the world that lies beneath the earth, to which we {all} come {at last},
each that is born to mortality; if I may be allowed, and you suffer me
to speak the truth, laying aside[3] the artful expressions of a
deceitful tongue; I have not descended hither {from curiosity} to see
dark Tartarus, nor to bind the threefold throat of the Medusaean monster,
bristling with serpents. {But}