And first in words they shall tear each other with their teeth, exasperate with jeers; but anon the own cousins shall ply the spear, eager to prevent the violent rape of their cousin birds, and the carrying off of their kin, in vengeance for the traffic without gifts of wooing. Surely many a shaft shall the stream of Cnacion behold hurled by the daring of the eagles, incredible and marvellous for the Pheraeans to hear. One with his spear of cornel-wood shall smite the hollow trunk of the black oak and shall slay one of the pair—a lion joining battle with a bull. The other in turn with his lance shall pierce the side of the ox and bring him to the ground. But against him the undaunted ram shall] butt a second blow, hurling the headstone of the Amyclaean tomb. And bronze spear and thunderbolts together shall crush the bulls ——whereof one had such valour as even Sciastes Orchieus, Lord of Tilphossa, did not scorn, when he bent his bow in battle. And the one pair Hades shall receive: the others the meadows of Olympus shall welcome as guests on every alternate day, brothers of mutual love, undying and dead.
So their spear shall god lull to rest for us, granting us a brief remedy in our woe. But a cloud of others unapproachable in their might shall he rouse—whose rage not even the son of Rhoeo shall lull nor stay, though he bid them abide for the space of nine years in his island, persuaded by his oracles, and though he promise that his three daughters shall give blameless sustenance to all who stay and roam the Cynthian hill beside Inopus drinking the Egyptian waters of Triton. These daughters lusty Problastus’ taught to be skilled in contriving milled food and to make wine and fatty oil—even the dove granddaughters of Zarax, skilled to turn things into wine. These shall heal the great and wasting hunger of the host of alien hounds, coming one day to the grave of Sithon’s daughter. These things the Ancient Maidens whirl on with rushing thread of brazen spindles. But Cepheus and Praxandrus, not princes of a naval host but a nameless brood, fifth and fourth shall come to the land of the goddess queen of Golgi; whereof the one shall lead a Laconian troop from Therapna; the other from Olenos and Dyme shalt lead his host of the men of Bura.
Another shall found Argyrippa, a Daunian estate beside Ausonian Phylamus, seeing the bitter fate of his comrades turned to winged birds, who shall accept a sea life, after the manner of fishermen, like in form to bright-eyed swans. Seizing in their bills the spawn of fishes they shall dwell in an island which bears their leader’s name, on a theatre-shaped rising ground, building in rows their close-set nests with firm bits of wood, after the manner of Zethus. And together they shall betake them to the chase and by night to rest in the dell, avoiding all the alien crowd of men, but in folds of Grecian robes seeking their accustomed resting - place they shall eat crumbs from the hand and fragments of cake from the table, murmuring pleasantly, remembering, hapless ones, their former way of life. His wounding of the Lady of Troezen shall be part cause of his wild wandering and of his evil sufferings when a wild lustful bitch shall be frenzied for adulterous bed. But the altar-tomb of Hoplosmia shall save him from doom, when already prepared for slaughter. And in the glen of Ausonia he shall stand like a colossus resting his feet on the boulders, the foundations of Amoebeus, the builder of the walls, when he has cast out of his ship the ballast stones.
And, disappointed by the judgement of his brother Alaenus, he shall cast an effectual curse upon the fields, that they may never send up the opulent corn-ear of Deo, when Zeus with his rain nurtures the soil, save only if one who draws his blood from his own Aetolian stock shall till the land, cleaving the furrows with team of oxen. And with pillars not to be moved he shall hold fast the land: pillars which no man shall boast to have moved even a little by his might. For as on wings they shall come back again, traversing with trackless steps the terraces. And a high god shall he be called by many, even by those who dwell by the cavernous plain of Io, when he shall have slain the dragon that harried the Phaeacians.
And others shall sail to the sea-washed Gymnesian rocks—crab-like, clad in skins—where cloakless and unshod they shall drag out their lives, armed with three two-membered slings Their mothers shall teach the far-shooting art to their young offspring by supperless discipline. For none of them shall chew bread with his jaws, until with well-aimed stone he shall have won the cake set as a mark above the board.
These shall set foot on the rough shores that feed the Iberians near the gate of Tartessus—a race sprung from ancient Arne, chieftains of the Temmices, yearning for Graea and the cliffs of Leontarne and Scolus and Tegyra and Onchestus’ seat and the flood of Thermodon and the waters of Hypsarnus.
Others shall wander beside Syrtis and the Libyan plains and the narrow meet of the Tyrrhenian Strait and the watching-place fatal to mariners of the hybrid monster that formerly died by the hand of Mecisteus, the hide-clad Spademan, the Cattle-driver, and the rocks of the harpy-limbed nightingales. There, devoured raw, Hades, mine host, shall seize them all, torn with all manner of evil entreatment; and he shall leave but one to tell of his slaughtered friends, even the man of the dolphin device, who stole the Phoenician goddess. He shall see the dwelling of the one-eyed lion, offering in his hands to that flesh-eater the cup of the vine as an after-supper draught. And he shall see the remnant that was spared by the arrows of Ceramyntes Peuceus Palaemon. That remnant shall break in pieces all the well-turned hulls and shall with rushes pierce their evil spoil, as it were of fishes. Unhappy labour after labour shall await him, each more baleful than that which went before.
What Charybdis shall not eat of his dead? What half-maiden Fury-hound? What barren nightingale, slayer of the Centaurs, Aetolian or Curetid, shall not with her varied melody tempt them to waste away through fasting from food? What beast-moulding dragoness shall he not behold, mixing drugs with meal, and beast-shaped doom? And they, hapless ones, bewailing their fate shall feed in pigstyes, crunching grapestones mixed with grass and oilcake. But him the drowsy root shall save from harm and the coming of Ctaros, the Bright Three-headed god of Nonacris.
And he shall come to the dark plain of the departed and shall seek the ancient seer of the dead, who knows the mating of men and women. He shall pour in a trench warm blood for the souls, and, brandishing before him his sword to terrify the dead, he shall there hear the thin voice of the ghosts, uttered from shadowy lips.
Thereafter the island that crushed the back of the Giants and the fierce form of Typhon, shall receive him journeying alone: an island boiling with flame, wherein the king of the immortals established an ugly race of apes, in mockery of all who raised war against the sons of Cronus. And passing the tomb of Baius, his steersman, and the dwellings of the Cimmerians and the Acherusian waters swelling with heaving surge and Ossa and the cattle-path built by the lion and the grove of Obrimo, the Maiden who dwells beneath the earth, and the Fiery Stream, where the difficult Polydegmon’ hill stretches its head to the sky; from which hill’s — depths draw all streams and all springs throughout the Ausonian land; and leaving the high slope of Lethaeon and the lake Aornus’ rounded with a -noose and the waters of Cocytus wild and dark, stream of black Styx, where Termieus’ made the seat of oath-swearing for the immortals, drawing the water in golden basins for libation, when he was about to go against the Giants and Titans—he shall offer up a gift to Daeira and her consort, fastening his helmet to the head of a pillar.
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