boy and serve him on his father's table, who partakes eagerly of his own flesh and blood. He then calls for his son, and Procne exclaims that he carries within him that which he calls for; and, as he still looks about him and seeks after him and again asks and calls for him, Philomela sets before his face the bloody head. Then he breaks away from table with an awful cry of anguish, and weeps and calls himself his son's sepulchre, and forthwith makes after the daughters of Pandion with the naked steel. But now supplied with wings they float away from thence, the one into the forest, the other into the roof; and Tereus also, despite all the energy of his sorrow and desire of revenge, is changed into the bird which rears on its crest the comb of feathers, and carries a beak of immoderate projection. The name of the bird is the hoopoe. On the other hand, we have changes which proceed from a guilt of less significance. As examples, there is Cygnus who became a swan, and Daphne, the first love of Apollo[145], who was changed into the laurel, Clyde into the heliotrope, Narcissus, who despised in his vanity maidens, and sees himself in the watery mirror, and Biblis[146], who was enamoured of her brother, and is, when he scorns her, changed into the spring which even now bears her name and flows beneath the shading oak. However, we must not lose ourselves in further digression through particular examples, and I will merely, by way of passage, and the one further reference to the change of the Pierides, who, according to Ovid[147], were the daughters of Pieros and challenged the Muses to a match of rivalry. For ourselves the distinction of importance is the nature of the songs which the combatants sang respectively. The Pierides celebrate the battles of the gods[148] and honour the giants unduly while they depreciate the deeds of the great gods. Rising up from the depths of Earth, Typhoeus filled heaven with fear; in a body the gods take flight from thence until, wearied out, they rest on Egyptian soil. But here, too, so sang the Pierides, Typhoeus arrives, and the high gods are fain to hide themselves in illusive shapes. Jupiter was leader of the army, and for this reason, so ran their refrain, the Lybian Ammon to this day is figured with crooked horns; and in like manner the scion of Semele is changed into a ram, the sister of Phoebus into a cat, Juno into a snow-white cow, Venus is concealed in a fish, Mercury in the feathers of Ibis.