The Argonautica

First she seated them there on chairs, then settled beside them,

binding the still-uncombed lengths of her hair with both hands.

Smiling, she addressed them thus with coaxing, guileful words:

Dear friends, what purpose or need has brought you here to me

after long years? Why now have both of you come together,

rare visitors before, though ranked first among goddesses?

Hera answered Cypris in turn with words such as these:

Mock if you will; but both of our hearts are shaken by trouble.

Even now on the river Phasis his ship lies at anchor,

Aeson's son and his comrades, all in pursuit of the Fleece.

For all of the men we feel dread, now the labor is looming,

but for Aeson's son above all we are terribly frightened.

I shall preserve him, even if he should sail as far as Hades,

meaning to free Ixion below from his fetters of bronze,

while any strength still abides in the limbs that are mine,

lest Pelias laugh, having slipped from his own evil doom,

whose arrogant pride in sacrifice denied me due honor.

And for another reason, Jason was greatly dear to me earlier,

ever since at the outflow of Anaurus, brimming in flood,

when I, making trial of righteousness found among mortals,

met him returning from hunting. Snow covered over

all the mountains and towering lookout peaks, while down them

torrents came thundering down, rolling onward in clamor.

I wore an old woman's shape; he pitied me, lifted me upward,