Page:The Remains of Hesiod the Ascraean, including the Shield of Hercules - Elton (1815).djvu/96

Round her smooth brow the beauteous-tressed Hours^[1]
A garland twined of spring's purpureal flowers:
The whole, Minerva with adjusting art
Forms to her shape and fits to every part.
Last by the counsels of deep-thundering Jove,
The Argicide, his herald from above,^[2]

bracelets, and her chains, and her rings, and her ear-rings, and all her ornaments, and decked herself bravely, to allure the eyes of all men that should see her." Judith ch. x. v. 4.

1. The beauteous-tressed Hours.] The Hours, according to Homer, made the toilette of Venus:
   The smooth strong gust of Zephyr wafted her
   Through billows of the many-waving sea
   In the soft foam: the Hours, whose locks are bound
   With gold, received her blithely, and enrobed
   With heavenly vestments: her immortal head
   They wreathed with golden fillet, beautiful,
   And aptly framed: her perforated ears
   They hung with jewels of the mountain-brass
   And precious gold: her tender neck, and breast
   Of dazzling white, they deck’d with chains of gold,
   Such as the Hours wear braided with their locks.
   Hymn to Venus.
   
   
2. His herald from above.] The first edition had “winged herald;” but the wings of Mercury are the additions of later mythologists. Homer, in the Odyssey, speaks only of
   The sandals fair,
   Golden, and undecay’d, that waft him o’er
   The sea, and o’er th’ immeasurable earth
   With the swift-breathing wind:
   
   
   there is no mention of the sandals being winged. They seem to