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Mander, which wanders so much in the same plains, whose winding streams flow back by frequent channels, has seen the neck of Hercules adorned with a string of pearls; that neck to which the heavens were an easy load. You have not been ashamed to bind your arms with chains of gold, and deck your solid joints with shining gems. And yet under these arms did the Nemean lion expire, whose skin new forms a covering for
your left shoulder. You had the weakness to bind your rude locks with a mitre; a garland of poplar would have better adorned the temples of Hercules. Nor did you think it a dishonor to confine your waist with the girdle of Omphale, after the manner of a wanton maid. The image of barbarous Diomedes, who savagely fed his mares with human flesh, was not then, surely, in your mind. Had Busiris beheld you in that unmanly attire, the conquered would have been ashamed of his conqueror. Antus would have torn the pearls from your nervous neck, ashamed to submit to so effeminate a victor. You are said to hold the basket amidst the other attendants of Omphale, and tremble at the threats of a mistress. Degenerate Alcides, are you not ashamed to employ in
servile offices those nervous hands which have been victorious over a thousand dangers? to apply your manly thumb in fashioning the long thread, and measure out the task given you by your fair mistress? How often, while with rough fingers you draw out the slender thread, have your sinewy hands broken the feeble distaffs? You are said, unhappy man, to tremble at the thongs of the whip, and, falling prostrate at the feet of your mistress, to beg a respite from stripes. You hope to appease her by boasting of your great deeds and pompous triumphs; exploits which, in those circumstances, it would be better to dissemble: by relating how, when an infant in your cradle, you grasped hideous serpents, not terrified by their extended jaws, or forky tongues: how the Arcadian boar was slain upon cypress-bearing Erymanthus, and burthened the earth with his enormous weight. You tell also of the heads that were fixed upon Thracian gates, and the mares fattened by the blood of men; of Geryon, that three-fold monster, rich in Iberian herds, who had three bodies in one; of Cerberus, forming three dogs from the same trunk, having his hair wreathed with hissing
snakes; of the astonishing serpent which multiplied by its wounds, and gathered strength from the greatness of its losses; of the enormous burthen which, poised between your left arm and side, you by main strength pressed to death; and the troop of Centaurs, who, vainly trusting to their feet and double-limbed form, were dispersed on the craggy summits of Thessaly. Are you not ashamed to recount these exploits, when you are clad in Tyrian purple; and is not your tongue restrained by a sense of the unseemly dress? The daughter of Iardanus has moreover adorned herself with your armour, and wears the mighty trophies of her captive lover.
