What An Enterprise Of Nature
Thus To Lay The Foundations Of And To Build Up The Future
Continent, Of Golden And Silver Sands And The Ruins Of Forests,
With Ant-Like Industry!
Pindar gives the following account of
the origin of Thera, whence, in after times, Libyan Cyrene was
settled by Battus.
Triton, in the form of Eurypylus, presents a
clod to Euphemus, one of the Argonauts, as they are about to
return home.
"He knew of our haste,
And immediately seizing a clod
With his right hand, strove to give it
As a chance stranger's gift.
Nor did the hero disregard him, but leaping on the shore,
Stretching hand to hand,
Received the mystic clod.
But I hear it sinking from the deck,
Go with the sea brine
At evening, accompanying the watery sea.
Often indeed I urged the careless
Menials to guard it, but their minds forgot.
And now in this island the imperishable seed of spacious Libya
Is spilled before its hour."
It is a beautiful fable, also related by Pindar, how Helius, or
the Sun, looked down into the sea one day, - when perchance his
rays were first reflected from some increasing glittering
sandbar, - and saw the fair and fruitful island of Rhodes
"springing up from the bottom,
Capable of feeding many men, and suitable for flocks;
and at the nod of Zeus,
"The island sprang from the watery
Sea; and the genial Father of penetrating beams,
Ruler of fire-breathing horses, has it."
The shifting islands!
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