Thou hadst no child, it pleased him not to bear
A fate like thine; but by some favourite slave,
His paramour by stealth, he hath a son.
Him to some Delphian gave he, distant far,
To educate, who, to this sacred house
Consigned, as secret here, received his nurture.
He, knowing this, and that his son advanced
To manhood was, urged thee to come hither,
Pleading thy barrenness. 'Twas not the god,
But Xuthus, who deceived thee, and long since
Devised this wily plan to rear his son.
Failing, he could on Phœbus fix the blame,
Succeeding, would adroitly choose the time
To make him ruler of thy rightful land."
The servant—loyal to his mistress as Evan dhu Maccombich was to Fergus MacIvor, equally ready to die for her, or to do murder to avenge her imagined wrongs—devises a plot that would have been quite successful had not Apollo been on the watch. Creusa is in possession of a deadly poison—"two drops of blood that from the Gorgon fell"—given to her father Erectheus by Pallas. One heals disease, the other works certain and swift death. The princess proposes to poison her stepson when he is beneath her roof. "I like not that," says the servant. "There you will be the first to be suspected; a stepdame's hate is proverbial." To this Creusa agrees, and, anticipating the old vassal's thought, she herself prescribes the mode of destroying the son of Xuthus:—
"This shalt thou do: this little golden casket
Take from my hand. Bear it beneath thy vest.
