The Judgement of the Goddesses (13)

APHRODITE Here I am close by; examine me thoroughly, part by part, slighting none, but lingering upon each. And if you will be so good, my handsome lad, let me tell you this. I have long seen that you are young and more handsome than perhaps anyone else whom Phrygia nurtures. While I congratulate you upon your beauty, I find’ fault with you because, instead of abandoning these crags and cliffs and living in town, you are letting your beauty go to waste in the solitude. What joy can you get of the mountains? What good can your beauty do the kine? Moreover, you ought to have married by this time— not a country girl, however, a peasant, like the women about Ida, but someone from Greece, either from Argos or Corinth or a Spartan like Helen, who is young and beautiful and not a bit inferior to me, and above all, susceptible to love. If she but saw you, I know very well that, abandoning everything and surrendering without conditions, she would follow you and make her home with you. No doubt you yourself have heard something of her.