Lives of Alcyone

kindly and sensibly, he banished his son from the country and
condemned his daughter to death. Ursa, however, had idea of
submitting quietly to such an inauspicious ending to his pleasures.
He managed to escape from his father’ s guards, and to rescue his
sister from the place in which she was confined, and they fled
together and concealed themselves in a forest on the outskirts of the
kingdom, having contrived to divert pursuit by allowing it to be
understood that they had fled by sea from a certain port in quite
another direction. In this forest he and his sister lived for some
years, and two children were born to them, a son, Sirius, and a
daughter, Vega. Ursa carefully tattooed round the waist of Sirius the
red snake which marked him as the heir to the throne, and the
brother and sister lived happily enough in sylvan solitude; but after a
time Ursa began to tire of this life and to yearn for the delights of the
Court and the position which he had left.
Being in the habit of considering only his own convenience, he
had no hesitation in abandoning his wife and children; he made his
appearance at a port and pretended to have arrived from a foreign
country. He soon made his way to his father, who forgave him and
reinstated him as heir to the throne. Being anxious to provide for the
succession. Alastor shortly arranged a marriage for Ursa, which the
latter accepted without saying anything about the wife and the
children whom he had left behind in the forest. Indeed, on first
returning he had allowed it to be understood that he had had no part
in his sister’ s escape, and knew nothing about her fate. His new
wife, Hesperia, presently bore him child, Pollux; and this child was
also tattooed with the snake, for if Ursa had not permitted this to be
done, suspicion would have been at once aroused. The new wife,