heu quaenam aspicio! nostris modo concitus ausis aequoreos vocat ecce deos Neptunus et ingens concilium. fremere et legem defendere cuncti hortantur. sic amplexu, sic pectora fratris, Iuno, tene; tuque o puppem ne desere, Pallas: nunc patrui nunc flecte minas. cessere ratemque accepere mari. per quot discrimina rerum expedior! subita cur pulcher harundine crines velat Hylas? unde urna umeris niueosque per artus caeruleae vestes? unde haec tibi volnera, Pollux? quantus io tumidis taurorum e naribus ignis! tollunt se galeae sulcisque ex omnibus hastae et iam iamque umeri. quem circum vellera Martem aspicio? quaenam aligeris secat anguibus auras caede madens? quos ense ferit? miser eripe parvos, Aesonide. cerno et thalamos ardere iugales. Alas! what do I see! Even now, stirred by our daring, lo! Neptune calls the gods to a vast conclave. They murmur, and one and all urge him to defend his rights. Hold as thou holdest now, Juno, hold thy brother in thine embrace: and thou, Pallas, forsake not our ship: now, even now, appease thy brother's threats. They have yielded: they give Argo entrance to the sea. Through what perils am I whirled along! Why does fair Hylas veil his locks with a sudden crown of reeds? Whence comes the pitcher on his shoulder and the azure raiment on his limbs of snow? Whence, Pollux, come these wounds of thine? Ah! what a flame streams from the widespread nostrils of the bulls. Helmets and spears rise from every furrow, and now see! shoulders too! What warfare for the fleece do I see? Who is it cleaves the air with winged snakes, reeking with slaughter? Whom smites she with the sword? Ah! son of Aeson, hapless man, save thy little ones. I see, too, the bridal chamber all aflame. These lines form a kind of abridgement or _précis_ of the whole _Argonautica_, or even more, for we can hardly believe that the scheme of it included the murder of Medea's children and her vengeance on the house of Creon[501]. They are also far too obscure to be interesting to any save a highly-trained literary audience, while their extreme compression could only be justified by their having been primarily designed for recitation in a dramatic and realistic manner with suitable pauses between the different visions.[502] A yet worse and less excusable example of this peculiar brevity is the jerky and prosaic enumeration of Medea's achievements in the black art (vi. 442)-- mutat agros fluviumque vias; suus alligat ingens cuncta sopor, recoquit fessos aetate parentes, datque alias sine lege colus. She changes crops of fields and course of rivers. [At her bidding] deep clinging slumber binds all things; fathers outworn with age she seethes to youth again, and to others she gives new span of life against fate's ordinance.