“For Cytherëa’s lips while Cupid prest, He with a heedless arrow razed her breast. The goddess felt it, and, with fury stung, The wanton mischief from her bosom flung: Yet thought at first the danger slight, but found The dart too faithful, and too deep the wound. Fired with a mortal beauty, she disdains To haunt th’ Idalian mount, or Phrygian plains. She seeks not Cnidos, nor her Paphian shrines, Nor Amathus, that teems with brazen mines: Even Heaven itself with all its sweets unsought, Adonis far a sweeter Heaven is thought.”

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When Xerxes invaded Greece he crossed the Hellespont on a bridge of boats with an army of five million. So say the historians. On his return he crossed it in a fishing boat almost alone⁠—“a warning to all human arrogance.”