And lo! three companies of women, and at the head of one of them
Autonoe, thy mother Agave at the head of the second, and Ino at the
head of the third. And they all slept, with limbs relaxed, leaned
against the low boughs of the pines, or with head thrown heedlessly
among the oak-leaves strewn upon the ground--all in the sleep of
temperance, not, as thou saidst, pursuing Cypris through the
solitudes of the forest, drunken with wine, amid the low rustling of
the lotus-pipe.
"And thy mother, when she heard the lowing of the kine, stood up in
the midst of them, and cried to them to shake off sleep. And they,
casting slumber from their eyes, started upright, a marvel of beauty
and order, young and old and maidens yet unmarried. And first, they
let fall their hair upon their shoulders; and those [72] whose
cinctures were unbound re-composed the spotted fawn-skins, knotting
them about with snakes, which rose and licked them on the chin.
Some, lately mothers, who with breasts still swelling had left their
babes behind, nursed in their arms antelopes, or wild whelps of
wolves, and yielded them their milk to drink; and upon their heads
they placed crowns of ivy or of oak, or of flowering convolvulus.
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