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So saying, he held the Gorgon's head to the side where Phineus was looking, and in the very form in which he knelt, with his hands outstretched and face averted, he became fixed immovably, a mass of stone!
'Because you have been a traitor, Phineus, the Harpies haunt you night and day. Where is Cleopatra our sister, your wife, whom you keep in prison? and where are her two children, whom you blinded in your rage, at the bidding of an evil woman, and cast them out upon the rocks?
And now they haunt me, and my people, and the Bosphorus, with fearful storms; and sweep away our food from off our tables, so that we starve in spite of all our wealth. Then up rose Zetes and Calais, the winged sons of the North-wind, and said, 'Do you not know us, Phineus, and these wings which grow upon our backs? And Phineus hid his face in terror; but he answered not a word.
Then they two returned answering speech, each to other, and soon in the midst of their converse early dawn appeared; and round Phineus were gathered the neighbours who used to come thither aforetime day by day and constantly bring a portion of their food.
She spake chiding, and Mopsus smiled to hear the god-sent voice of the bird, and thus addressed them: "Do thou, son of Aeson, pass on to the temple, where thou wilt find the maiden; and very kind will her greeting be to thee through the prompting of Cypris, who will be thy helpmate in the contest, even as Phineus, Agenor's son, foretold.
Thus he spake, but Phineus replied to him with downcast look: "Son of Aeson, that is past recall, nor is there any remedy hereafter, for blasted are my sightless eyes. But instead of that, may the god grant me death at once, and after death I shall take my share in perfect bliss."
Phineus had been blinded by Neptune, as a punishment for having shown Phryxus the way to Colchis. He was also tormented by the harpies, frightful winged monsters, who flew down from the clouds whenever he attempted to eat, snatched the food from his lips, and left on it such a vile odor that no man could come near it. He, being a prophet, knew that the Argonauts would free him from this curse.
Now before her father had thought of sacrificing her to the sea monster he had offered Andromeda in marriage to a prince of Ethopia to a prince whose name was Phineus. Phineus did not strive to save Andromeda. But, hearing that she had been delivered from the monster, he came to take her for his wife; he came to Cepheus's palace, and he brought with him a thousand armed men.
And they went up from the shore toward the city, through forests white with snow; and Phineus came out to meet them with a lean and woeful face, and said, "Welcome, gallant heroes, to the land of bitter blasts, a land of cold and misery; yet I will feast you as best I can."
The singers with whom he would fain equal himself are not Dante, or Tasso, or, as Dryden would have it, Spenser, but Blind Thamyris, and blind Maeonides, And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old. As he in equalled with these in misfortune loss of sight he would emulate them in function. And the function of the poet is like that of the prophet in the old dispensation, not to invent, but to utter.
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