The Thracian women, offended at the coldness of Orpheus, tear him to pieces, and throw his head into the Hebras, whose streams convey it to the coast of the Aegean sea, where a serpent, while sucking his blood, is changed into a stone.
Here, while the Thracian bard’s enchanting strain Soothes beasts, and woods, and all the listening plain, The female Bacchanals, devoutly mad, In shaggy skins, like savage creatures, clad, Warbling in air, perceived his lovely lay, And from a rising ground beheld him play; When one, the wildest, with dishevell’d hair, That loosely stream’d and ruffled in the air, Soon as her frantic eye the lyrist spied, “See, see, the hater of our sex,” she cried; Then at his face her missive javelin sent, Which wizz’d along, and brush’d him as it went; But the soft wreaths of ivy twisted round Prevent a deep impression of the wound. Another, for a weapon, hurls a stone, Which, by the sound subdued as soon as thrown, Falls at his feet, and, with a seeming sense, Implores his pardon for its late offence.