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Updated: May 17, 2025
The air had scarcely recovered its silence, when a second crash ensued from a different quarter near them, like thunder when the claps break swiftly into one another. "I am Aglauros," it said, "that was turned into stone." Dante drew closer to his guide, and there ensued a dead silence.
Of these, Aglauros, the dweller in the fields, is the envy or malice of the earth; she answers nearly to the envy of Cain, the tiller of the ground, against his shepherd brother, in her own envy against her two sisters, Herse, the cloud dew, who is the beloved of the shepherd Mercury; and Pandrosos, the diffused dew, or dew of heaven.
Literally, you have in this myth the words of the blessing of Esau: "Thy dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth, and of the dew of heaven from above." Aglauros is for her envy turned into a black stone; and hers is one of the voices the other being that of Cain which haunts the circle of envy in the Purgatory: "Io sono Aglauro, chi divenne sasso."
When a Greek youth took the oath of citizenship, he stood in the temple of Aglauros overlooking the city of Athens and the country beyond and said: "I will never disgrace these sacred arms nor desert my companions in the ranks. I will fight for temples and public property, both alone and with many.
Thereupon the goddess, having called the youth to us, began to speak in these words: 'Agape, most dear to me, this youth, Apyros by name, whom thou seest thus shy amid our glades, shall satisfy thy longing; but see that with care thou preserve inviolate our fires, which in thy heart thou shalt bear with thee hence. I was about to make answer when my tender breast was of a sudden pierced by the flying arrow loosed by the strong hand of the son of her who added these unto her former words: 'We give him thee as thy first and only servant; he lacks nought but our fires, which, kindled even now by thee in him, be it thy care to nourish, that the frost that bound him like to Aglauros being driven from his heart, he may burn with the divine fire no less than father Jove himself. She ceased; and I, trembling yet with fear, no sooner opened my lips to assent to her command, than I found myself once more in prayer before her altars; whereat marvelling not a little, and casting my eyes around in search of Apyros, I became aware of the golden arrow in my breast, and near me the pale youth, his intent gaze fixed upon me, and like me wounded by the god; and so seeing him inflamed with a passion no other than that which burned in me, I laughed, and filled with contentment and desire, made sign to him to be of hopeful cheer.
And if any person seek to annul the laws or set them at naught, I will do my best to prevent him and will defend them both alone and with many. I will honor the religion of my fathers, and I call to witness Aglauros, Enyalios, Ares, Zeus, Thallo, Auxo, and Hegemone." Now, the minister may think that no great part of the improved training for citizenship falls to him.
Dante may well make him invisible, for his words are things veritable thunderbolts. Cain comes in rapid successions of thunder-claps. The voice of Aglauros is thunder-claps crashing into one another broken thunder. This is exceedingly fine also, and wonderful as a variation upon that awful music; but Cain is the astonishment and the overwhelmingness.
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