And in one city he shall set up an image of that sow and her suckling young, figuring them in bronze. And he shall build a shrine to Myndia Pallenis and establish therein the images of his fathers’ gods. He shall put aside his wife and children and all his rich possessions and honour these first, together with his aged sire wrapping them in his robes, what time the spearmen hounds, having devoured all the goods of his country together by casting of lots, to him alone shall give the choice to take and carry away what gift from his house he will. Wherefore being adjudged even by his foes to be most pious, he shall found a fatherland of highest renown in battle, a tower blest in the children of after days, by the tall glades of Circaeon and the great Aeëtes haven, famous anchorage of the Argo, and the waters of
the Marsionid lake of Phorce and the Titonian stream of the cleft that sinks to unseen depths beneath the earth, and the hill of Zosterius, where is the grim dwelling of the maiden Sibylla, roofed by the cavernous pit that shelters her.
So many are the woes, hard to bear, which they shall suffer who are to lay waste my fatherland.
For what has the unhappy mother of Prometheus in common with the nurse of Sarpedon? Whom the sea of Helle and the Clashing Rocks and Salmydessus and the inhospitable wave, neighbour to the Scythians, sunder with strong cliffs and Tanais divides with his streams—Tanais who, undefiled, cleaves the middle of the lake which is most dear to Maeotian men who mourn their chilblained feet.
My curse, first, upon the Carnite sailor hounds! the merchant wolves who carried off from Lerne the ox-eyed girl, the bull-maiden, to bring to the lord of Memphis a fatal bride, and raised the beacon of hatred for the two continents. For afterwards the Curetes, Idaean boars, seeking to avenge the rape by their heavy deed of violence, carried off captive in a bull-formed vessel the Saraptian heifer to the Dictaean palace to be the bride of Asteros, the lord of Crete.
Nor were they contented when they had taken like for like; but sent with Teucer and his Draucian father Scamandrus a raping army to the dwelling-place of the Bebryces to war with mice; of the seed of those men Dardanus begat the authors of my race, when he married the noble Cretan maid Arisba.
And second they sent the Atracian wolves to steal for their leader of the single sandal the fleece that was protected by the watching dragon’s ward. He came to Libyan Cytaea and put to sleep with simples that four-nostrilled snake, and handled the curved plough of the fire-breathing bulls, and had his own body cut to pieces in a caldron and, not joyfully, seized the hide of the ram. But the self-invited crow he carried off—her who slew her brother and destroyed her children —and set her as ballast in the chattering jay which uttered a mortal voice derived from Chaonian abode and well knew how to speed.
And again he that took up from the rock his father’s shoes and sword-belt and sword, the son of Phemius, on whose sad grave —whereto he was hurled without funeral rites — steep Scyrus long keeps watch beneath its hissing precipices—he went with the wild beast, the Initiate, who drew the milky breast of the hostile goddess Tropaea, and stole the belt and roused a double feud, taking away the girdle and from Themiscyra carrying off the archer Orthosia; and her sisters, the maidens of Neptunis, left Eris, Lagmus and Telamus and the stream of Thermodon and the hill of Actaeum to seek vengeance and relentless rape. Across the dark Ister they drove their Scythian mares, shouting their battle-cry against the Greeks and the descendants of Erechtheus. And they sacked all Acte with the spear and laid waste with fire the fields of Mopsopia.
And my ancestor laid waste the plain of Thrace and the country of the Eordi and the land of the Galadraei, and fixed his bounds beside the waters of Peneius, fettering them with a stern yoke laid upon their necks, in battle a young warrior, most eminent of his race.
And she in return for these things sent her champion, the driver of the oxen, him of the six ships, robed in a hide, and laid in ruins with the spade their steep hill; and him shall Gorgas, changing her mind, consecrate in the estate of the gods, even she that was the prime mover in his woes.
And in turn the falcons set forth from Tmolus and Cimpsus and the gold-producing streams of Pactolus and the waters of the lake where the spouse of Typhon couches in the hidden recess of her dread bed, and rioted into Ausonian Agylla and in battles of the spear joined terrible wrestling with the Ligurians and them who drew the root of their race from the blood of the Sithonian giants. And they took Pisa and subdued all the spear-won land that stands near the Umbrians and the high cliffs of the Salpians.
And, last, the fire-brand wakens the ancient strife, kindling anew with flame the ancient fire that already slept since she saw the Pelasgians dipping alien pitchers in the bright waters of Rhyndacus. But the other in turn in a frenzy - of revenge shall repay the injury threefold and fourfold, laying waste the shore of the land across the sea.
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