401But the almighty father goes round the mighty walls of heaven and examines whether anything weakened by the force of the fire is collapsing. 403When he sees that they are firm and keep their own strength, he surveys the lands and the works of men. 405Yet his own Arcadia is a more earnest care to him: he restores the springs and the rivers that do not yet dare to flow, gives the earth grass, the trees leaves, and orders the injured forests to grow green again. 409While he comes and goes frequently, he was caught by a maiden of Nonacris, and the fires he had taken in grew hot beneath his bones.
411It was not her business to soften wool by drawing it out, nor to vary the arrangement of her hair; 412when a brooch had fastened her dress, and a white ribbon her careless hair, and she had taken up now a light javelin in her hand, now a bow, she was a soldier of Phoebe: nor did any girl tread Maenalus who was dearer to Trivia than she. 416But no power lasts long. 417The high sun held a course beyond the midpoint when she enters a grove that no age had felled. 419Here she took the quiver from her shoulder and unstrung her pliant bow, and lay on the ground that grass had covered, and rested her neck on her painted quiver.
422When Jupiter saw her tired and without a guard, he said, 'This theft at least my wife will not know of, or if she does find out, the quarrels are worth it, oh, they are worth it.' 425At once he puts on the face and dress of Diana and says: 'O maiden, one of my own companions, on which ridges have you been hunting?' 427The maiden raises herself from the turf and said, 'Hail, divinity greater, in my judgement, than Jupiter, even if he himself should hear.' 429He laughs as he hears it, and rejoices to be preferred to himself, and joins kisses with her, not moderate enough nor such as a maiden gives.
432As she is preparing to tell in which wood she had hunted, he prevents her with an embrace, and betrays himself by no innocent act. 434She indeed struggled against him, as far as a woman could (would that you had seen, daughter of Saturn: you would be kinder!), she indeed fights: but whom could a girl overcome, or who could overcome Jupiter? 437— Jupiter, the victor, makes for the ether above: she hates the grove and the wood that knew. 439As she withdraws from there, she almost forgot to take up her quiver with its arrows and the bow she had hung up. 441Look, Dictynna, attended by her band, advancing across high Maenalus and proud of the slaughter of beasts, catches sight of her and, seeing her, calls her: called, she shrank back, and feared at first that Jupiter was in the goddess.
445But after she saw the nymphs advancing with her, she sensed there was no trickery, and joined their number. 447Alas, how hard it is not to betray guilt in one's face! 448She scarcely raises her eyes from the ground, nor is she, as she used to be, close at the goddess's side, nor first in the whole troop, but she is silent, and by her blushes gives signs of wounded modesty; 451and, were she not a virgin, Diana could have perceived her fault by a thousand signs; 452the nymphs, they say, perceived it. 453The crescent horns of the moon were rising in their orb for the ninth time, when the goddess, faint from hunting in her brother's flames, came upon a cool grove, from which a stream ran, gliding with a murmur and turning over the worn sands.
457When she had praised the place, she touched the surface of the water with her foot: praising this too, she says, 'Far off is every witness; 459let us bathe our naked bodies in the waters poured over them.' 460The Parrhasian girl blushed. 460They all take off their garments: one seeks delays. 461As she hesitates, her dress is taken from her; 462and when it was laid aside, her guilt was revealed with her naked body. 463To her, aghast and trying to hide her belly with her hands, 'Go far from here,' said Cynthia, 'and do not pollute the sacred springs'; 465and she ordered her to leave her company.