The Dance (51-55)

Thrace also has much that is essential to one who intends to dance—Orpheus, his dismemberment and his talking head that voyaged on the lyre;[*]

and Thessaly affords still more—Pelias, Jason, Alcestis, the expedition of the fifty youths, the Argo and her talking keel, the incidents at Lemnos, Aeétes, the dream of Medea,[*] the dismemberment of Apsyrtus, the happenings of the cruise,

and after that, Protesilaus and Laodameia.

If you cross the sea again to Asia, there are many dramas there—Samos, at the outset, with the fate of Polycrates and his daughter’s wanderings, extending to Persia,[*] and the stories that are still older—the loquaciousness of Tantalus, the feast of the gods at his house, the butchering of Pelops, and his shoulder of ivory.

In Italy, moreover, we have the Eridanus, and Phaethon, and the poplars that are his sisters, mourning and weeping amber.