Translator?
Jove does not confide the reason for this commission, but orders his son to proceed to Sidon, way to the East. Mercury knows where it is. "Go then," the lord of Olympus instructs. "You will find on a hillside a herd of cattle grazing, rare and wonderful cattle, the king's, in fact. Drive them down to the shore where a spit of land extends to make a cove.: He did not have to specify further where the king's daughter took the air with her maidens-in-waiting. But that was the place and purpose he had in mind, that young and unbearably beautiful girl he had seen. The grandeur of gods is all very well but makes for awkwardnesses in love. The delicate (or sometimes indelicate) business is further muddled - as Jupiter's lessons had so often demonstrated. The august god therefore put down his lightning-bolt trident and stowed away the impressive paraphernalia of power, assuming instead a different and most unlikely guise, getting himself to look, for the nonce, . . . like a bull, handsome as bulls go, but one of the herd. He lowed like all the rest as he grazed, nibbling delicate morsels of grass. He was snowy white, dazzling, and his strength was eloquent in the carved musculature of his neck and shoulders. A noble dewlap hung down under his chin, and the elegant twist of his horns suggested some mannerist artist had carved them as his idea of what might adorn a bull. His expression was altogether gentle and tranquil. Agenor's daughter Europa noticed - could not help it - the striking creature and felt drawn to hold out a timorous hand. Frightened, of course, by his size and presence, she nonetheless was fascinated. She offered clover for him to nibble and felt the enormous lips that nuzzled her open palm. The bull frisks like a calf on the sand, rolls on his back, allows her to pat him and deck his horns with the blossoms she's braided in garlands. It is a dance, their small steps forming a pattern that seems in retrospect fated, her little forays, his responses, the way she is bolder and clasps with delicate arms his huge neck, which is yet so soft and tame . . . . She lolls on his flank, and thrills to the silky steel of a power she's never imagined, exhilarating and making it hard to breathe for her laughter - or whatever it is that bubbles up from the depths of her spirit. She climbs on the bull's back, and he ambles gently along, taking the girl into shallow water and then farther out, and faster, and, terrified now, she looks way back at the distant shoreline and holds on tight to the great beast's horn as the wind, freshening, whips her tunic, which streams into pennants behind her.