176slipped from him. 176At once he files out fine chains of bronze, and nets and snares that could deceive the eye (the finest threads could not surpass that work, nor the spider's web that hangs from the topmost beam), and he makes them yield to light touches and the slightest movements, and places them skilfully arranged around the bed. 182When the wife and the adulterer came together onto the one couch, by the husband's skill and the chains prepared in a novel way, both are caught and held fast in the midst of their embraces. 185At once the Lemnian threw open the ivory doors and let in the gods: the pair lay there bound, disgracefully; 187and one of the gods, not of the gloomy sort, wishes he might be disgraced like that: the gods above laughed, and for a long time this was the most famous story in all heaven.
190The Cytherean exacts a penalty that remembers the betrayal, and in turn she wounds him who wounded her secret love with a like love. 192What use to you now, son of Hyperion, are your beauty and your colour and your radiant light? 194Indeed you, who scorch all lands with your fires, are scorched by a new fire; 195and you who ought to look upon all things gaze at Leucothoe, and fix upon one girl the eyes you owe to the world. 197Now you rise too early in the eastern sky, now you sink too late into the waves, and through your lingering to look you lengthen the winter hours; at times you fail, and the sickness of your mind passes into your light, and darkened you terrify mortal hearts.
202Nor are you pale because the image of the moon, nearer to the earth, has blocked you: it is that love of yours that makes this colour. 204You love her alone; 204neither Clymene nor Rhodos holds you, nor the loveliest mother of Aeaean Circe, nor Clytie, who, though scorned, sought your bed and at that very time bore a grievous wound: Leucothoe made you forget many, she whom Eurynome, loveliest of the fragrant race, brought forth. 210But after the daughter grew up, as far as the mother surpassed all women, so far the daughter surpassed her mother. 212Her father Orchamus ruled the Achaemenian cities, and he is counted seventh in descent from ancient Belus.
214Beneath the western sky lie the pastures of the Sun's horses. 215They have ambrosia instead of grass: it nourishes their limbs, weary from the day's service, and restores them for their labour. 217And while the steeds crop the heavenly fodder there and night takes its turn, the god enters the bedroom he loves, changed into the likeness of Eurynome, her mother, and among twelve maidservants he sees Leucothoe by lamplight, drawing out fine threads on the turning spindle. 222So when, like a mother, he had given kisses to his dear daughter, 'This,' he says, 'is a secret matter. 223Maids, withdraw, and do not take from a mother the right to speak in private.' 225They had obeyed: and the god, the room left without a witness, said: 'I am he who measures out the long year, who see all things, through whom the earth sees all things, the eye of the world.
228Believe me, you please me.' 228She is terrified, and in her fear both distaff and spindle fell from her slackened fingers. 230Her very fear became her. 230Delaying no longer, he returned to his true appearance and his usual brilliance: and the girl, though terrified by the unexpected sight, overcome by the god's brilliance, endured his force without complaint. 234Clytie was envious (for the Sun's love for her had been beyond measure), and goaded by anger at her rival she spreads word of the affair and reveals the scandal, now noised abroad, to her father. 237He, fierce and unrelenting, as she prayed and stretched out her hands to the light of the Sun and said, 'He took me by force, against my will,' cruelly buried her deep in the ground, and over her he adds a mound of heavy sand.
241Hyperion's son scatters this with his rays and gives you a way by which you might bring out your buried face. 243But you could no longer raise your head, nymph, crushed by the weight of earth, and you lay a bloodless corpse. 245Nothing, it is said, did the driver of the winged horses see more grievous than this since the fires of Phaethon. 247He tries indeed, by the power of his rays, to recall her chilled limbs to living warmth, if he can: but since fate opposes such great efforts, he sprinkled both body and place with fragrant nectar, and after much lamenting said, 'Yet you shall touch the sky.' 252At once the body, steeped in heavenly nectar, melted away and soaked the earth with its fragrance: and a shoot of frankincense, gradually driving its roots through the clods, rose up and broke through the mound with its tip.
256But the author of light, though love could excuse her grief, and grief her betrayal, visits Clytie no more, and he put an end to his lovemaking with her. 259From then on the nymph, having used her love so madly, pined away, unable to endure the others, and under the open sky, night and day, she sat on the bare ground, with bare and unkempt hair, and for nine days, tasting neither water nor food, she fed her fasting only on pure dew and her own tears, and did not stir from the ground: she only gazed at the face of the god as he went, and turned her face towards him.
266They say her limbs clung to the soil, and a ghastly pallor changed part of her colour into bloodless greenery; 268in part there is a red flush, and a flower very like a violet covers her face. 269She, though held fast by a root, turns towards her Sun, and, though changed, keeps her love.'