It is no enterprise undertaken lightly— to describe the very bottom of the universe— 9 nor for a tongue that still cries ‘mommy’ and ‘daddy.’ But may those ladies who aided Amphion → to build the walls of Thebes now aid my verse, 12 that the telling be no different from the fact. O you misgotten rabble, worse than all the rest, → who fill that place so hard to speak of, 15 better had you here been sheep or goats!
