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Notes Display Latin text Display Dutch text | Ovid XIII Chapter 10: 675-704 The cup of Alcon | Next chapter Return to index Previous chapter |
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After they had filled the time with these and other matters, they left the table and retired to sleep, and rising with the dawn, they went to the oracle of Phoebus, who ordered them to seek their ancient mother, and their ancestral shores. The king [Note 1] gave them parting gifts and escorted them on their way: a sceptre for Anchises, a cloak and quiver for his grandson, Ascanius, and a drinking-bowl for Aeneas, that Therses of Thebes, a friend, had sent, from the Aonian coast, to the king: Therses had given it, but it was made by Alcon of Hyle, who had engraved it with a complete story. There was a city, and you could see its seven gates: these served to name it, and tell you that it was Thebes. In front of the city funeral rites, sepulchres, funeral pyres, and fires, and women with naked breasts and streaming hair, depicted mourning. Nymphs, also, appeared weeping, and lamenting their dried-up fountains: the trees stood bare and leafless: goats nibbled the dry gravel. See here, in the midst of Thebes he portrays Orion's daughters, the one, more than a woman, slashing her unprotected throat, the other stabbing a weapon into her valiant breast, falling on behalf of their people, then carried in glorious funeral procession through the city, and burned among crowds of mourners. Then two youths, famous as the Coroni, spring from the virgin ashes, so that the race will not die, and lead the cortège containing their mother's remains. Such was the ancient bronze with its gleaming designs: round the rim gilded acanthus leaves were embossed. The Trojans gave gifts in return, worth no less: an incense-box for the priest, a libation-saucer, and a crown shining with gold and jewels. Note 1: king = Anius Event: Aeneas visits Delos |