The Argonautica

Turned by Hera's promptings, her purpose no longer wavered

either way; she yearned for dawn to break at once,

quickly arising, so she could give Jason the charms that tame bulls

as their compact required, and meet Jason face-to-face.

Again and again she loosened the bars of her chamber doors,

watching intently for light, until welcome brilliance was thrown upon her

by Early-born Dawn; through the city each person began to stir.

Then Argus instructed his brothers to wait in that same place,

so they might learn the maiden's mind and the secret plans she was forming;

but he himself, drawing apart, returned ahead to the vessel.

When the maiden first saw Dawn in her earliest shining,

with both her hands she bound up the gold of her streaming tresses,

which in her careless neglect hung loose and fluttered around her;

she wiped and dried both cheeks, still stained by the tears she had shed;

with ointment sweet as nectar she brightened the skin of her body,

and put on a lovely robe fitted close with well-curving brooches,

and over her head, divinely fair, cast down a silver-white veil.

There in the halls of the palace she paced, circling round and round,

and trod on the floor, forgetting the griefs that beset her path,

past all describing, and others still fated to grow thereafter.

Then she called all twelve of her handmaids together around her,

who slept through each night in the forehall of her fragrant chamber,

girls of her age, not yet sharing their marriage-beds with husbands,

then urgently ordered the mules yoked beneath the wagon,