The Argonautica

a double-folded purple mantle once bestowed on Jason

by Pallas, when she first laid keel-props beneath Argo

and taught exact crossbeam measures with the builder's rods.

Far easier to raise your eyes and face the rising sun

than turn your gaze to confront that mantle's blazing redness.

For there across the middle the woven field shone ruddy-red,

and every outer edge was purple; at each border

many designs lay skillfully, separately worked.

There Cyclopes sat at their labor that never perishes,

forging the thunderbolt for Zeus, the lordly king; already

it had been wrought almost wholly shining, lacking only

one single ray, which the Cyclopes beneath iron hammers

hammered to shape; vapor seethed up from fierce fire.

There too were both sons of Antiope, Asopus' daughter,

Amphion and Zethus; Thebes still lay beside them

without her towers; just then they laid the city's foundations

with eager zeal; then Zethus lifted high on his shoulders

the crest of a towering mountain, like one laboring hard;

behind him Amphion went, singing clear on his golden lyre,

and twice so vast a rock followed after his footsteps.

Next in the woven sequence stood deep-tressed Cytherea,

holding the swift shield of Ares; from Cytherea's shoulder

her loosened tunic-clasp fell down the left forearm

beneath her breast; directly opposite, true to life,