METAMORPHOSES BOOK III walking with bowed form and tottering steps. She spoke also in the voice of age and became even as Beroë, the Epidaurian nurse of Semele. When, after gossiping about many things, they came to mention of Jove's name, the old woman sighed and said: "I pray that it be Jupiter; but I am afraid of all such doings. Many, pretending to be gods, have found entrance into modest chambers. But to be Jove is not enough; make him prove his love if he is true Jove; as great and glorious as he is when welcomed by heavenly Juno, so great and glorious, pray him grant thee his embrace, and first don a his splendourS. In such wise did Juno instruct the guileless daughter of Cadmus. She in her turn asked Jove for a boon, unnamed. The god replied: " Choose what thou wilt, and thou shalt suffer no refusal. And that thou mayst be more assured, I swear it by the divinity of the seething Styx, whose godhead is the fear of all the gods." Rejoicing in her evil fortune, too much prevailing and doomed to perish through her lover's compliance, Semele said: " In such guise as Saturnia beholds thee when thou seekest her arms in love, so show thyself to me." The god would have checked her even as she spoke; but already her words had sped forth into uttered speech. H groans; for neither can she recall her wish, nor he his oath. And so in deepest distress he ascends the steeps of heaven, and with his beck drew on the mists that followed, then mingling clouds and lightnings and blasts of wind, he took last the thunder and that fire that none can escape. And yet whatever way he can he essays to lessen his own might, nor arms himself now with that bolt witlh which he had hurled down from heaven Typhoeus 145
