333But his mother heard the sound in her chamber beneath the deep river. 334Around her the Nymphs were spinning Milesian fleeces dyed with a deep glassy colour, Drymo and Xantho and Ligea and Phyllodoce, their shining hair streaming over their white necks, Nesaee and Spio and Thalia and Cymodoce, Cydippe and golden Lycorias, one a maiden, the other having just then known the first pangs of Lucina, and Clio and her sister Beroe, both daughters of Ocean, both girt with gold, both with dappled skins, and Ephyre and Opis and Asian Deiopea, and swift Arethusa, her arrows at last laid aside. 345Among them Clymene was telling of the vain watchfulness of Vulcan, and the tricks and sweet thefts of Mars, and was counting the crowded loves of the gods from Chaos onwards; and while, charmed by the song, they unwound the soft wool from their spindles, once again the lament of Aristaeus struck his mother's ears, and all were astonished on their glassy seats; 351but before her other sisters Arethusa, looking out, raised her golden head above the surface of the water, and from afar called: 'O Cyrene, my sister, not in vain alarmed by so loud a groaning, it is your Aristaeus himself, your greatest care, who stands in sorrow by the water of father Peneus, weeping, and calls you cruel by name.' 357To her the mother, her mind struck with a strange dread, said, 'Bring him, come, bring him to us; 358it is right for him to touch the thresholds of the gods.' 359At once she bids the deep river part far and wide, to let the young man enter.
360And the water, arched into the shape of a mountain, stood around him, and received him in its vast embrace and sent him beneath the river. 363And now, marvelling at his mother's home and watery kingdom, and the lakes shut in caves and the echoing groves, he went on, and stunned by the vast movement of the waters he gazed at all the rivers gliding beneath the great earth in their different places, Phasis and Lycus, and the source from which deep Enipeus first bursts forth, from which father Tiber and from which the streams of Anio flow, and rocky, roaring Hypanis and Mysian Caicus, and Eridanus, with gilded horns on his bull-like face, than whom no river flows more violently through rich farmland into the purple sea.
374When he had reached the chamber's roof hung with pumice and Cyrene had learned of her son's vain weeping, her sisters in turn pour clear spring water on his hands, and bring towels of close-shorn nap; 378some load the tables with a feast and set out full cups again, and the altars blaze with Panchaean fires; 380and his mother said, 'Take the goblets of Maeonian wine: let us pour a libation to Ocean.' 381At the same time she prays herself to Ocean, father of all things, and to the sister Nymphs who guard a hundred woods, a hundred rivers. 384Three times she sprinkles the blazing hearth with clear nectar; three times the flame shot up to the roof and shone again.
386Strengthening his spirit with this omen, she herself begins thus: