Book 14
“You might do better,” she replied, “to court
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one who is willing, one who wants your love,
and feels a like desire. You did deserve
to win her love, yes, to be wooed yourself.
In fact you might be. If you give some hope,
you have my word, you shall indeed be wooed.
That you may have no doubt, and so retain
all confidence in your attraction's power—
behold! I am a goddess, and I am
the daughter also, of the radiant Sun!
And I who am so potent with my charms,
and I who am so potent with my herbs,
wish only to be yours. Despise her who
despises you, and her who is attached
to you repay with like attachment—so
by one act offer each her just reward.”
But Glaucus answered her attempt of love,
“The trees will sooner grow in ocean waves,
the sea-weed sooner grow on mountain tops,
than I shall change my love for graceful! Scylla.”
The goddess in her jealous rage could not
and would not injure him, whom she still loved,
but turned her wrath upon the one preferred.
She bruised immediately the many herbs
most infamous for horrid juices, which,
when bruised, she mingled with most artful care
and incantations given by Hecate.
Then, clothed in azure vestments, she passed through
her troop of fawning savage animals,
and issued from the center of her hall.
Pacing from there to Rhegium, opposite
the dangerous rocks of Zancle, she at once
entered the tossed waves boiling up with tides:
on these as if she walked on the firm shore,
she set her feet and, hastening on dry shod,
she skimmed along the surface of the deep.
Not far away there was an inlet curved,
round as a bent bow, which was often used
by Scylla as a favorite retreat.
There, she withdrew from heat of sea and sky
