Book 7
elixirs potent to renew the years of age,
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giving the bloom of youth.—You shall not fail
to grant me this; for not in vain the stars
are flashing confirmation; not in vain
the flying dragons, harnessed by their necks,
from skies descending bring my chariot down.”
A chariot, sent from heaven, came to her—
and soon as she had stroked the dragons' necks,
and shaken in her hands the guiding reins—
as soon as she had mounted, she was borne
quickly above, through unresisting air.
And, sailing over Thessaly, she saw
the vale of Tempe, where the level soil
is widely covered with a crumbling chalk—
she turned her dragons towards new regions there:
and she observed the herbs by Ossa born,
the weeds on lofty Pelion, Othrys, Pindus
and vast Olympus—and from here she plucked
the needed roots, or there, the blossoms clipped
all with a moon-curved sickle made of brass—
many the wild weeds by Apidanus,
as well as blue Amphrysus' banks, she chose,
and not escaped Enipeus from her search;
Peneian stretches and Spercheian banks
all yielded what she chose:—and Boebe's shore
where sway the rushes; and she plucked up grass,
a secret grass, from fair Euboean fields
life-giving virtues in their waving blades,
as yet unknown for transformation wrought
All those fields she visited,
with ceaseless diligence in quest of charms,
nine days and nine nights sought strong herbs,
and the swift dragons with their active wings,
failed not to guide the chariot where she willed—
until they reached her home. The dragons then
had not been even touched by anything,
except the odor of surrounding herbs,
and yet they sloughed their skins, the growth of years.
She would not cross the threshold of her home
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