The Argonautica

Come, let us visit Cypris; once there, let us both urge her

to speak to her son and strongly urge him, if he will listen,

to shoot and enchant drug-wise Aeetes' daughter with arrows,

kindling love for Jason. Then surely, I think, by her guidance

he will bear off the Fleece, carrying it back home to Hellas.

So Hera spoke; her close-woven counsel pleased Athena,

Athena answered again in a voice full of gentleness:

Hera, my father begot me a stranger to love's arrows;

I know no spell of enchantment that wakens desire.

Yet if this counsel delights you, then gladly I follow;

you shall speak when we both stand face-to-face with the goddess.

So both sprang to their feet and went to the mighty dwelling

of Cypris: the great house her lame-footed husband had fashioned,

when first he led her away from Zeus to become his consort.

They entered the courtyard and stood in the open porch of her chamber,

where she, the goddess, made ready the bed of Hephaestus.

He had gone at dawn to the bronze-smithy, down to his anvils,

deep in the broad recess of a wandering island, and there

wrought all his intricate bronzework in blasts of the fire.

Cypris sat alone in the house on a turned chair facing doorways,

white shoulders covered on either side by the fall of her tresses.

Parting and ordering hair with a golden comb, she prepared

to braid the long tresses; but seeing the goddesses near her,

she stopped, summoned both of them in, and rose from the chair.