METAMORPHOSES BOOK VII it bowls of liquid wine, and again bowls of milk still warm, while at the same time she uttered her incantations, called up the deities of the earth, and prayed the king of the shades with his stolen bride not to be in haste to rob the old man's body of the breath of life. When she had appeased all these divinities by long, low-muttered prayers, she bade her people bring out under the open sky old Aeson's worn-out ocdy , and having buried hiin in a deep slumber by her spells, like one dead she stretched im out on a bed of herbs. Far hence she bade Jason go, far hence all the attendants, and warned them not to look with profane eyes upon her secret rites. They retired as she had bidden. Medea, with streaming hair after the fashion of the Bacchantes, moved round the blazing altars, and dipping many-cleft sticks in the dark pools of blood, she lit the gory sticks at the altar Hames. Thrice she purified the old man with fire, thrice with water, thrice with sulphur. Meanwhile the strong potion in the bronze pot is boiling, leaping and frothing white with the swelling foam. In this pot she boils roots cut in a Thessalian vale, together with seeds, flowers, and strong juices. She adds to these ingredients pebbles sought for in the farthest Orient and sands which the ebbin tide of Ocean laves. She adds hoar frost gathered under the full moon, the wings of the uncanny screech-owl with the flesh as well, and the entrails of a werewolf which has the power of chang ng its wild-beast features into a man's. There also in the pot is the scaly skin of a slender Cinyphian water-snake, the liver of a long-lived stag, to which she adds also eggs and the head ofa crow nine generations old. When with these and a thousand other naneless tings the barbarian 361
