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There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient ordinance of the gods,[65] eternal and sealed fast by broad oaths, that whenever one of the daemons, whose portion is length of days, has sinfully polluted his hands with blood,[66] or followed strife and forsworn himself, 5he must wander thrice ten thousand seasons from the abodes of the blessed, being born throughout the time in all manners of mortal forms, changing one toilsome path of life for another. For the mighty Air drives him into the Sea, and the Sea spews him forth on the dry Earth; 10Earth tosses him into the beams of the blazing Sun, and he flings him back to the eddies of Air. One takes him from the other, and all reject him. One of these I now am, an exile and a wanderer from the gods, for that I put my trust in insensate strife. R. P. 181.

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Charis loathes intolerable Necessity.

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For I have been ere now a boy and a girl, a bush and a bird and a dumb fish in the sea. R. P. 182.

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I wept and I wailed when I saw the unfamiliar land. R. P. 182.

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From what honour, from what a height of bliss have I fallen to go about among mortals here on earth.

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We have come under this roofed-in cave.[67]

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... the joyless land, where are Death and Wrath and troops of Dooms besides; and parching Plagues and Rottennesses and Floods roam in darkness over the meadow of Ate.

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There were[68] Chthonie and far-sighted Heliope, bloody Discord and gentle-visaged Harmony, Kallisto and Aischre, Speed and Tarrying, lovely Truth and dark-haired Uncertainty, Birth and Decay, Sleep and Waking, Movement and Immobility, 5crowned Majesty and Meanness, Silence and Voice. R. P. 182 a.

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Alas, O wretched race of mortals, sore unblessed: such are the strifes and groanings from which ye have been born!

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From living creatures he made them dead, changing their forms.

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(The goddess) clothing them with a strange garment of flesh.[69]

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Among beasts they[70] become lions that make their lair on the hills and their couch on the ground; and laurels among trees with goodly foliage. R. P. 181 b.

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Nor had they[71] any Ares for a god nor Kydoimos, no nor King Zeus nor Kronos nor Poseidon, but Kypris the Queen.... Her did they propitiate with holy gifts, with painted figures[72] and perfumes of cunning fragrancy, with offerings of pure myrrh and sweet-smelling frankincense, 5casting on the ground libations of brown honey. And the altar did not reek with pure bull's blood, but this was held in the greatest abomination among men, to eat the goodly limbs after tearing out the life. R. P. 184.

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And there was among them a man of rare knowledge, most skilled in all manner of wise works, a man who had won the utmost wealth of wisdom; for whensoever he strained with all his mind, he easily saw everything of all the things that are, in ten, 5yea, twenty lifetimes of men.[73]

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For all things were tame and gentle to man, both beasts and birds, and friendly feelings were kindled everywhere. R. P. 184 a.

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