deep-set wound gurgles in her breast. Thrice rising, she struggles to prop herself on her elbow, thrice the bed rolled back, with wandering eyes sought high heaven’s light, and when she found it, moaned.

Then almighty Juno, pitying her long agony and painful dying, sent Iris down from heaven to release her struggling soul from the prison of her flesh. For since she perished neither in the course of fate nor by a death she had earned, but wretchedly before her day, in the heat of sudden frenzy, not yet had Propserpine taken from head the golden lock and consigned her to the Stygian underworld. So Iris on dewy saffron wings flits down through the sky, trailing athwart the sun a thousand shifting tints, and halted above her head.

“This offering, sacred to Dis, I take as bidden, and from your body set you free”: