Others culling the fresh bounty of the rain strewed a rosy carpet for the wooden trail. Others undid the spun girdles of sea-purple about their breasts and with woven garlands wreathed the horse. Some broaching the seal of a great jar poured forth wine mixed with golden saffron and made the piled earth odorous with fragrant mud. With the shouting of men was mingled the cry of women, the huzza of boys was joined with the voice of age. And even as the denizens of rich Ocean, the attendants of winter, the ranks of the cranesa crying in air, align the circle of their wandering dance, uttering their notes abhorred by the ploughmen who labour the earth: even so with crying and with tumult they led to the acropolis the horse laden within. And the god-driven daughterb of Priam would not abide any more to her chamber. Tearing apart the bars she ran, like restless heifer whom the sting of the ox-tormenting gadfly has smitten and stung to frenzy: which looks no more to the herd nor obeys the herdsman nor yearns for the pasture, but whetted by the sharp dart she passes beyond the range of oxen: in such wise, her heart distraught by the pricking of the shafts of prophecy, the maiden shook the holy laurel wreath and cried everywhere throughout the city. She heeded nor parents nor friends, and maiden shame forsook her. Not so doth the pleasant flute of
a The (Susan note Grk), or crane-dance, is described by Pollux iv. 101, ãThe crane-dance they danced in a body, one behind the other in line, the extremities being occupied by the leaders, Theseus and his party having first imitated so, round the altar in Delos, their escape from the labyrinth.ä Cf. Plutarch, Thes. 21, Lucian, De salt. 34. A similar dance called (Susan note grk) is still danced in Greece. It seems likely enough that The Taking of Ilios [Troy] by Tryphiodorus has in mind also the orderly flight of the cranes (Aristotle, H. A. ix. 10; Eurip. Hel. 1478 ff.). In Greece the bird was a migrant and its passage from its nesting-places in the north (Macedonia, etc.) to the south (Africa, etc., Hom. Il. iii. 2 ff.) which took place about October was the signal for ploughing, Hesiod, W. 448 ff.
b Cassandra.