and the red-hot pole, all own the absolute and authentic lordship of my winged son; and in Heaven not only is he esteemed a god, like the other deities, but he is so much more puissant than them all that not one remains who has not heretofore been vanquished by his darts.  He, flying on golden plumage throughout his realms, with such swiftness that his passage can hardly be discerned, visits them all in turn, and, bending his strong bow, to the drawn string he fits the arrows forged by me and tempered in the fountains sacred to my divinity.  And when he elects anyone to his service, as being more worthy than others, that one he rules as it likes him.  He kindles raging fires in the hearts of the young, fans the flames that are almost dead in the old, awakens the fever of passion in the chaste bosoms of virgins and instils a genial warmth into the breasts of wives and widows equally.  He has even aforetime forced the gods, wrought up to a frenzy by his blazing torch, to forsake the heavens and dwell on earth under false appearances.  Whereof the proofs are many.  Was not Phoebus, though victor over huge Python and creator of the celestial strains that sound from the lyres of Parnassus, by him made the thrall, now of Daphne, now of Clymene, and again of Leucothea, and of many others withal?  Certainly, this was so.  And, finally, hiding his brightness under the form of a shepherd, did not Apollo tend the flocks of Admetus?  Even Jove himself, who rules the skies, by this god coerced, molded his greatness into forms inferior to his own.  Sometimes, in shape of a snow-white fowl, he gave voice to sounds sweeter than those of the dying swan, and anon, changing to a young bull and fitting horns to his brow, he bellowed along the plains, and humbled his proud flanks to the touch of a virgin’s knees, and, compelling his tired hoofs to do the office of oars, he breasted the waves of his brother’s kingdom, yet sank not in its depths, but joyously bore away his prize.  I shall not discourse unto you of his pursuit of Semele under his proper form, or of Alcmena, in guise of Amphitryon, or of Callisto, under the semblance of Diana, or of Danae for whose sake he became a shower of gold, seeing that in the telling thereof I should waste too much time.  Nay, even the savage god of war, whose strength appalls the giants, repressed his wrathful bluster, being forced to such submission by this my son, and became gentle and loving.  And the forger of Jupiter, and artificer of his three-pronged thunderbolts, though trained to handle fire, was smitten by a shaft more potent than he himself had ever wrought.  Nay I, though I be his mother, have not been able to fend off his arrows:  Witness the tears I have shed for the death of Adonis!  But why weary myself and thee with the utterance of so many words?  There is no deity in heaven who has passed unscathed from his assaults; except, perhaps, Diana only, who may have escaped him by fleeing to the woods; though some there be who tell that she did not flee, but