Book 4
5
She hangs these on a peg and fumigates them with sulphur, sprinkling salt over the fire, and mumbles both your names. Then she plucks out a magic wheel from her bosom, and whirls it round, rattling off an incantation full of horrible outlandish names. That’s what she did on that occasion, and shortly afterwards, though at one and the same time his friends told him off, and Phoebis, the lady whose company he was keeping, pleaded desperately with him, he returned to me; and it was mainly the charm that brought him back. Yes, and she impressed on me this spell for turning him against Phoebis—to look out for any footprints she left, to erase them, place my right foot where her left had been, and vice versa, with feet pointing the other way, and say, “I trample on you and am on top of you.” These instructions I carried out.
5
Hurry, hurry, Bacchis. Fetch the Syrian woman at once. And you, Acis, get ready the loaf and the sulphur and all the other things for the spell.
