Then Hephaestus, happening to be near, attacked me, with all the fire he had in his forge it seemed to me, yes, with all his fire in Etna, and burnt my elms and tamarisks, roasting my unhappy fish and my eels, and making me myself bubble all over, and nearly dry all up. You can see the state I’m in from my burns.

You’re muddy and hot, Xanthus, as is only natural, what with the blood from the bodies and the heat from that fire you’ve been talking about—and quite right too, when you had the cheek to attack my grandson It is very difficult to retain the υἱὸν of the MSS. in the sense of “descendant”. I have adopted the correc- tion υἱωνὸν (though ὑϊδοῦν would be equally possible) on the assumption that Lucian (who reserves the name Doris for the Nereid, cf. p. 179 note) has replaced Doris, the traditional mother of Thetis, by the General goddess of the sea, Thalatta, who first appears thus in Bion, I, 13 and Meleager, A.P. V, 180. Lucian may be thinking of works of art, as Pausanias, 2.1.7 mentions statues of Thalatta at Corinth, while Philostratus, Imag. II, 16 also describes Thalattai at Corinth. though he was the son of a Nereid!

Was it wrong for me, then, to feel sorry for my neighbours of Phrygia?