Book 6
1
Let this strait, where the girl Helle, daughter of Athamas and Nephele. fell from the skies, be called Hellespont after her. You, Nereids, take the body to the Troad, so that it can be buried by people there.
1
Please not that, Poseidon, but let her be buried here in the sea named after her. We feel very sorry for the pitiable way she was treated by her step-mother. Ino.
1
That would be wrong, Amphitrite, and it’s not quite the thing either to leave her lying here under the sand; no, she’ll be buried, as I said, in the Troad or the Chersonese. She’ll find it no small consolation that, before long, the same thing will happen to Ino; she’ll be pursued by Athamas, and plunge into the sea with her child Melicertes. Cf. p. 197. in her arms from the heights of Cithaeron where a ridge runs down into the sea. But we must save Ino to please Dionysus; for she was his nurse and his nanny.
2
You shouldn’t save a bad woman like that!
2
But, Amphitrite, we mustn’t offend Dionysus.
2
But what came over her that she fell from the ram, while Phrixus, her brother, is having a safe ride?
2
That’s natural; he’s a young man and can withstand the speed; but she has no experience, and when she got on that strange mount, and looked down into the gaping depths beneath her, she was terrified, and, overcome at the same time by the heat, and growing dizzy at the speed of the flight, lost hold of the ram’s horns, to which she’d been clinging, and fell into the sea.
2
But shouldn’t Nephele, her mother, have helped her when she was falling?
2
Yes, indeed, but Fate is far stronger than Nephele.
