Timarion, once a well-framed, polished, swift-sailing ship, is now despised by the sea-wandering oarsmen of Aphrodite.
The spine of her back is bent like the sail-yard of a mast, her hoary locks are ravelled out like halyards, her eunuch breasts flap like a slack sail and she has wrinkles in her belly like sea-waves. Below, the whole ship is water-logged, the sea overflows the hull; her knees lurch and quiver.
The luckless man who boards this twenty-oared old galley sails the marshes of Acheron before his time!