1347-1362) "Listen, friends; as I lay in my grief, three goddesses girded with goat-skins from the neck downwards round the back and waist, like maidens, stood over my head nigh at hand; and they uncovered me, drawing my cloak away with light hand, and they bade me rise up myself and go and rouse you, and pay to our mother a bounteous recompense for all her travail when she bare us so long in her womb, when Amphitrite shall have loosed Poseidon's swift-wheeled car.

But I cannot fully understand concerning this divine message.

They said indeed that they were heroines, Libya's warders and daughters; and all the toils that we endured aforetime by land and sea, all these they declared that they knew full well.

Then I saw them no more in their place, but a mist or cloud came between and hid them from my sight." (ll.

1363-1369) Thus he spake, and all marvelled as they heard.