the ocean, went to the ocean Nymphs, and used to relate the eluded
loves of the youths.

While Galatea[70] was giving her hair be to combed, heaving sighs, she
addressed her in such words as these: "{And} yet, O maiden, no ungentle
race of men does woo thee; and as thou dost, thou art able to deny them
with impunity. But I, whose sire is Nereus, whom the azure Doris bore,
who am guarded, too, by a crowd of sisters, was not able, but through
the waves, to escape the passion of the Cyclop;" and as she spoke, the
tears choked her utterance. When, with her fingers like marble, the
maiden had wiped these away, and had comforted the Goddess, "Tell me,
dearest," said she, "and conceal not {from me} ({for} I am true to thee)
the cause of thy grief." In these words did the Nereid reply to the
daughter of Crataeis:[71] "Acis was the son of Faunus and of the Nymph
Symaethis, a great delight, indeed, to his father and his mother, yet a
still greater to me. For the charming {youth} had attached me to himself
alone, and eight birth-days having a second time been passed, he had
{now} marked his tender cheeks with the dubious down. Him I {pursued};
incessantly did the Cyclop me pursue. Nor can I, shouldst thou enquire,
declare whether the hatred of the Cylops, or the love of Acis, was the
stronger in me. They were equal. O genial Venus! how great is the power
of thy sway. For that savage, and one to be dreaded by the very woods,
and beheld with impunity by no stranger, the contemner of great Olympus
with the Gods {themselves}, {now} feels what love is; and, captivated
with passion for me, he burns, forgetting his cattle and his caves.

"And now, Polyphemus, thou hast a care for thy looks, and now for {the
art of} pleasing; now thou combest out thy stiffened hair with rakes,
{and} now it pleases thee to cut thy shaggy beard with the sickle, and
to look at thy fierce features in the water, and {so} to compose them.
Thy love for carnage, and thy fierceness, and thy insatiate thirst for
blood, {now} cease; and the ships both come and go in safety. Telemus,
in the mean time arriving at the Sicilian AEtna, Telemus, the son of
Eurymus, whom no omen had {ever} deceived, accosts the dreadful
Polyphemus, and says, 'The single eye that thou dost carry in the midst
of thy forehead, Ulysses shall take away from thee.' He laughed, and
said, 'O most silly of the prophets, thou art mistaken, {for} another
has already taken it away.' Thus does he slig