Her rosy limbs made the dark water glow red; the stream became a lovely meadow gleaming with such graces. An unveiled naiad espying the nymph in wonder, cried out these words:

“Can it be that Cronos, after the first Cypris, again cut his father’s loins with unmanning sickle, until the foam got a mind and made the water shape itself into a selfperfected birth, delivered of a younger Aphrodite from the sea? Can it be that the river has rivalled the deep with a childbirth, and rolled a torrent of self-pregnant waves to bring forth another Cypris, not to be outdone by the sea? Can it be that one of the Muses has dived from neighbouring Helicon into my native water, and left another to take the honeydripping water of Pegasos the horse, or the stream of Olmeios! I spy a silverfooted maiden stretched under the streams of my river! I believe Selene bathes in the Aonian waves on her way to Endymion’s bed on Latmos, the bed of a sleepless shepherd; but if she has prinked herself out for her sweet shepherd, what’s the use of Asopos after the Ocean stream? And if she has a body white as the snows of heaven, what mark of the Moon has she? A team of mules unbridled and a mule-cart with silver wheels are there on the beach, but Selene knows not how to put mules to her yokestrap—she drives a team of bulls! Or if it is a goddess come down from heaven—I see a maiden’s bright eyes sparkling under the quiet eyelids, and it must be Athena Brighteyes bathing, when she threw the skin back at him after the old victory over Teiresias. This girl looks like a divine being with her rosy arms; but if she was the glorious burden of a mortal womb, she is worthy of the heavenly bed of Cronion.”