From Rouse's translation of Nonnos'
Dionysiaca, via Bowersock's
NYRB blog
post on the Lod Mosaic.
So she brought the baby into the light. The girl was bathed by the four Winds, which ride through all cities to fill the whole earth with the precepts of Beroe. Oceanos, first messenger of the laws for the newborn child, sent his flood for the childbed round the loins of the world, pouring his girdle of water in an everflowing belt. Time, his coeval, with his aged hands swaddled about the newborn girl's body the robes of Justice, prophet of things to come ; because he would put off the burden of age, like a snake throwing off the rope-like slough of his feeble old scales, and grow young again bathed in the waves of Law. The four Seasons struck up a tune together, when Aphrodite brought forth her wonderful daughter.
The beasts were wild with joy when they learnt of the Paphian's child safely born. The lion in playful sport pressed his mouth gently on the bull's neck, and uttered a friendly growl with pouting lips. The horse rattled off, scraping the ground with thuds of galloping feet, as he beat out a birthday tune. The spotted panther leaping on high with bounding feet capered towards the hare. The wolf let out a triumphal howl from a merry throat and kissed the sheep with jaws that tore not. The hound left his chase of the deer in the thickets, now that he felt a passion strange and sweet, and danced in tripping rivalry with the sportive boar. The bear lifted her forefeet and threw them round the heifer's neck, embracing her with a bond that did no hurt. The calf bending again and again in sport her rounded head, skipt up and licked the lioness's body, while her young lips made a half-completed moo. The serpent touched the friendly tusks of the elephant, and the trees uttered a voice.
Bowersock's post quotes the
Dionysica as -
In late antiquity, the Greek epic poet of Dionysus, Nonnos of Panopolis, waxed eloquent in complex verse about the comity of the god’s animals: The lion in playful sport pressed his mouth gently on the bull’s neck ... The spotted panther leaping on high with bounding feet capered toward the hare. The wolf let out a triumphal howl from a merry throat and kissed the sheep with jaws that tore not. The bear lifted her forefeet and threw them round the heifer’s neck, embracing her with a bond that did no hurt. The calf bending again and again in sport her rounded head, skipped up and licked the lioness’s body ... The serpent touched the friendly tusks of the elephant.
