The Argonautica

rising in ordered rows; high over the house, a stone coping

rested securely upon finely carved capitals of bronze.

At ease and unopposed they crossed the threshold; close beside it

garden vines, crowned thickly and richly with green-growing leaves,

rose high and flourished overhead; below the vines

four fountains ran without ceasing, which Hephaestus hollowed.

The first of the fountains bubbled upward with milk, and another

with wine; and the third one flowed full of sweet-scented oil.

The fourth poured flowing water; when the Pleiades sank,

it warmed; but when they rose in turn, the water changed;

cold as ice, it gushed upward from the hollow rock.

Such wonders stood in the halls of Cytaean Aeetes,

works skillful Hephaestus fashioned, wondrous past belief.

For Aeetes he labored to fashion bulls with feet of bronze;

their mouths too were bronze, and they breathed a terrible blaze of fire.

He added a plough, all one piece, made from unyielding adamant,

hammered in thanks to Helios, whose horses took him up,

worn utterly out in the bitter Phlegraean battle.

There too an inner courtyard was built; ranged all around it

stood well-joined folding doors and chambers on this side and that;

a richly wrought colonnade ran all along either side.

Transversely, higher dwellings stood on both sides at angles.

One dwelling stood preeminent above all the others;

lord Aeetes lived together there with his own wedded wife;