By the harvester’s blade shall be slain the hateful whale dismembered: the harvester who delivered of her pains in birth of horse and man the stony-eyed weasel whose children sprang from her neck. Fashioning men as statues from top to toe he shall envelop them in stone —he that stole the lamp of his three wandering guides.
And he shall visit the fields which drink in summer and the stream of Asbystes and the couch on the ground where he shall sleep among evil-smelling beasts. And all shall he endure for the sake of the Aegyan bitch, her of the three husbands, who bare only female children. And he shall come as a wanderer to the folk of the Iapyges and offer gifts to the Maiden of the Spoils, even the mixing-bowl from Tamassus and the shield of oxhide and the fur-lined shoes of his wife. And he shall come to Siris and the recesses of Lacinium, wherein a heifer shall fashion an orchard for the goddess Hoplosmia, furnished with trees. And it shall be for all time an ordinance for the women of the land to mourn the- nine-cubit hero, third in descent from Aeacus and Doris, the hurricane of battle strife, and not to deck their radiant limbs with gold, nor array them in fine-spun robes stained with purple—because goddess to goddess presents that great spur of land to be her dwelling-place.
And he shall come to -the inhospitable wrestling-arena of the bull whom Colotis bare, even Alentia, Queen of the recesses of Longuros, rounding the Cronos’ Sickle’s leap and the water of Concheia, and Gonusa and the plains of the Sicanians, and the shrine of the ravenous wolf clad in the skin of a wild beast, which the descendant of Cretheus, when he had brought his vessel to anchor, built with his fifty mariners. And the beach still preserves the oily scrapings of the bodies of the Minyans, nor does the wave of the brine cleanse them, nor the long rubbing of the rainy shower.
And others the shores and reefs near Taucheira mourn, cast upon the desolate dwelling-place of Atlas, grinning on the points of their wreckage: where Mopsus’ of Titaeron died and was buried by the mariners, who set over his tomb’s pedestal a broken blade from the ship Argo, for a possession of the dead,—where the Cinypheian stream fattens
Ausigda with its waters, and where to Triton, descendant of Nereus, the Colchian woman gave as a gift the broad mixing-bowl wrought of gold, for that he showed them the navigable path whereby Tiphys should guide through the narrow reefs his ship undamaged. And the twy-formed god, son of the sea, declares that the Greeks shall obtain the sovereignty of the land when the pastoral people of Libya shall take from their fatherland and give to a Hellene the home-returning gift. And the Asbystians, fearing his vows, shall hide the treasure from sight in low depths of the earth, whereon the blasts of Boreas shall cast with his mariners the hapless leader of the men of Cyphos and the son of Tenthredon from Palauthra, king of the Amphrysians of Euryampus, and the lord of the Wolf that devoured the atonement and was turned to stone and of the crags of Tymphrestus.. Of whom some, unhappy, yearning for their fatherland of Aegoneia, others for Echinos, others for Titaros and for Iros and for Trachis and Perrhaebic Gonnos and Phalanna, and the fields of the Olossonians, and Castanaia, torn on the rocks shall bewail their fate that lacks the rites of funeral.
One evil fate after another shall god arouse, presenting them with grievous calamity in place of return to their homes.
Another shall the streams of Aesarus and the little city of Crimisa in the Oenotrian land receive: even the snake-bitten slayer of the fire-brand; for the Trumpet herself shall with her hand guide his arrow point, releasing the twanging Maeotian bowstring. On the banks of Dyras he burnt of old the bold lion, and armed his hands with the crooked Scythian dragon that harped with unescapable teeth. And Crathis shall see his tomb when he is dead, sideways from the shrine of Alaeus of Patara, where Nauaethus belches seaward. The Ausonian Pellenians shall slay him when he aids the leaders of the Lindians, whom far from Thermydron and the mountains of Carpathus the fierce hound Thraseias shall send wandering to dwell in a strange and alien soil. But in Macalla, again, the people of the place shall build a great shrine above his grave and glorify him as an everlasting god with libations and sacrifice of oxen.
In the sheltering arms of Lagaria shall dwell the builder of the horse. Afraid of the spear and the impetuous phalanx, he pays for the false oath of his father regarding the spear-won herds, which wretched man, when the towers of Comaetho were confounded by the army in the cause of loving marriage, he dared to swear by Aloetis Cydonia Thraso, and by the god of Crestone, Candaon or Mamertus, warrior wolf. He even within his mother’s womb arrayed hateful battle against his brother with blows of his hands, while he looked not yet on the bright light of Tito, nor had yet escaped the grievous pains of birth. And for his false oath the gods made his son grow to be a coward man, a good boxer but a skulker in the mellay of the spear. By his arts he most greatly helped the host; and by Ciris and the bright waters of Cylistanus he shall dwell as an alien, far from his fatherland; and the tools wherewith he shall bore the image and fashion sad ruin for the people of my country, he shall consecrate in the shrine of Myndia.
And others shall dwell in the land of the Sicanians, wandering to the spot where Laomedon, stung by the ravages of the gluttonous sea-monster, gave to mariners to expose the three daughters of Phoenodamas that they should be devoured by ravenous wild beasts, there far off where they came to the land of the Laestrygonians in the West, where dwells always abundant desolation.
And those daughters in their turn built a great shrine for the Zerynthian mother of the wrestler, as a gift to the goddess, for as much as they had escaped from doom and lonely dwelling. Of these one the river Crimisus, in the likeness of a dog, took to be his bride: and she to the half-beast god bears a noble whelp, settler and founder of three places. That whelp shall guide the bastard scion of Anchises and bring him to the farthest bounds of the three-necked island, voyaging from Dardanian places. Hapless Aegesta! to thee by devising of the gods there shall be most great and age-long sorrow for my country when it is consumed. by the breath of fire. And thou alone shalt groan for long, bewailing and lamenting unceasingly the unhappy overthrow of her towers. And all thy people, clad in the sable garb of the suppliant, squalid and unkempt, shall drag out a sorrowful life, and the unshorn hair of their heads shall deck their backs, keeping the memory of ancient woes.
And many shall dwell by Siris and Leutarnia’s fields, where lies the unhappy Calchas who Sisyphus-like counted the unnumbered figs, and who was smitten on the head by the rounded scourge — where Sinis’ swift stream flows, watering the rich estate of Chonia.
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