The fireside sphinx Author:Agnes Repplier Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: But, in an evil hour, I said her nay; And now, alas ! Far-travelled Nicias hath wooed and won Arsinoe, With gifts of furry creatures, white and dun, F... more »rom over sea." It is a melancholy truth that after the " little lion " had been domesticated in Greece, we hear nothing to her credit. Theocritus flouts her with a careless word, " Cats love to sleep softly; " and decadent poets, in place of singing her beauty and her grace, as Homer sang of Helen on the battlements of Troy, grow ethical and positively evangelical over her too manifest shortcomings. There was a cat of spirit belonging to the epigrammatist, Agathias, who, when the occasion offered, ate her master's tame partridge, for which deed she has been handed down to posterity as an unnatural and infuriate monster. Agathias solaced himself by writing two poems on the tragedy, one of which has been very charmingly — if very freely — translated by Mr. Richard Garnett. " O cat in semblance, but in heart akin To canine raveners, whose ways are sin ; Still at my hearth a guest thou dar'st to be ? Unwhipt of Justice, hast no dread of me ? Or deem'st the sly allurements shall avail Of purring throat and undulating tail ? chapter{Section 4No ! as to pacify Patroclus dead, Twelve Trojans by Pelides' sentence bled, So shall thy blood appease the feathery shade, And for one guiltless life shall nine be paid." Poor Pussy ! wasting thy soft purrs and delicate blandishments on the destroyer. And, as if the wrath of Agathias were not enough to damn thee forever, Damocharis, a friend and disciple, must needs pour forth his eloquent denunciations, likening thee to one of Aktaeon's hounds that tore its master, — no such guilt was thine, — and reproaching thee for long neglected duties. "And thou, base cat, thinkest ...« less