But may God turn her prophecies to fairer issue – even he that cares for thy throne, preserving the ancient
inheritance
of the Bebryces.
Lycophron - Alexandra
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 Scolusa nd Tegyra and Onchestus’ seat and the flood of Thermodon and the waters of Hypsarnus.
[648] 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 he 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 pigstyles, 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.
[681] 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.
[688] Thereafter the island that crushed the back of the Giants and the fierce storm 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 of 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. And he shall slay the triple daughters of Tethys’ son, who imitated the strains of their melodious mother: self-hurled from the cliff’s top they dive with their wings into the Tyrrhenian sea, where the bitter thread spun by the Fates shall draw them. One of them washed ashore the tower of Phalerus shall receive, and Glanis wetting the earth with its streams. There the inhabitants shall build a tomb for the maiden and with libations and sacrifice of oxen shall yearly honour the bird goddess Parthenope. And Leucosia shall be cast on the jutting strand of Enipeus and shall long haunt the rock that bears her name, where rapid Is and neighbouring Laris pour forth their waters. And Ligeia shall come ashore at Tereina spitting out the wave. And her shall sailormen bury on the stony beach nigh to the eddies of Ocinarus; and an ox-horned Ares shall lave her tomb with his streams, cleansing with his waters the foundation of her whose children were turned into birds. And there one day in honour of the first goddess of the sisterhood shall the ruler of all the navy of Mopsops array for his mariners a torch-race, in obedience to an oracle, which one day the people of the Neopolitans shall celebrate, even they who shall dwell on bluff crags beside Misenum’s sheltered haven untroubled by the waves.
[738] And he shall shut up the blustering winds in the hide of an ox, and wandering in woes that ebb and flow, he, the sea-gull, shall be burnt with the lash of the thunderbolt, clinging to the branch of a wild fig-tree so that the wave which draws spouting Charybdis to the deep may not swallow him in the surge. And, after brief pleasure in wedlock with the daughter of Atlas, he dares to set foot in his offhand vessel that never knew a dockyard and to steer, poor wretch, the bark which his own hands made, vainly fastened with dowels to the midst of the keel. Wherefrom Amphibaeus shall toss him forth, as it were the tiny unfledged brood of a halcyon’s bride, and cast him, with midbeams and deck together, headlong as a diver into the waves, entangled in the ropes, and sleepless, swept in the secret places of the sea, he shall dwell with the citizen of Thracian Anthedon. And like a branch of pine, blast after blast shall toss him as a cork, leaping on him with their gusts. And hardly shall the frontlet of Byne save him from the evil tide with torn breast and fingers wherewith he shall clutch the flesh-hooking rocks and be stained with blood by the sea-bitten spikes. And crossing to the island abhorred by Cronus – the isle of the Sickle that severed his privy parts – he a cloakless suppliant, babbling of awful sufferings, shall yelp out his fictitious tale of woe, paying the curse of the monster whom he blinded. Ah! not yet, not yet! Let no such sleep of forgetfulness find Melanthus, the Lord of Horses, bending. For he shall come, he shall come to Rheithron’s sheltering haven and the cliffs of Neriton. And he shall behold all his house utterly overthrown from its foundation by lewd wife-stealers. And the vixen, primly coquetting, will make empty his halls, pouring forth the pour wight’s wealth in banqueting. And he himself, poor parasite, shall see trouble beyond what he endured at the Scaean gates; he shall endure to bear with submissive back sullen threats from his own slaves and to be punished with jeers; shall endure, too, to submit to buffeting of fists and hurling of potsherds. For not alien stripes but the liberal seal of Thoas shall remain upon his sides, engraved with rods: stripes which he, our destroyer, shall consent without a murmur to have engraved upon him, putting the voluntary weal upon his frame, that he may ensnare the foemen, with spying wounds and with tears deceiving our king. He whom of old the Temmician hill of Bombyleia bare to be our chiefest bane – he alone of all his mariners, wretched one, shall win safely home. And lastly, like a sea-gull that roams the waves, worn all about by the salt water even as a shell and finding his possessions swallowed up in banqueting of the Pronians by the Laconian lady of fatal frenzy, ancient as a crow he shall flee with his weapons the shelter of the sea and in wrinkled age die beside the woods of Neriton. The deadly spike, hard to heal, of the Sardinian fish shall wound his sides with its sting and kill him; and his son shall be called the butcher of his father, that son who shall be the own cousin of the bride of Achilles. And in death he shall be garlanded as a seer by the Eurytanian folk and by the dweller in the steep abode of Trampya, wherein one day hereafter the Tymphaean dragon, even the king of the Aethices, shall at a feast destroy Heracles sprung from the seed of Aeacus and Perseus and no stranger to the blood of Temenus.
[805] When he is dead, Perge, hill of the Tyrrhenians, shall receive his ashes in the land of Gortyn; when, as he breathes out his life, he shall bewail the fate of his son and his wife, whom her husband shall slay and himself next pass to Hades, his throat cut by the hands of his sister, the own cousin of Glaucon and Apsyrtus.
[812] And having seen such a heap of woes he shall go down a second time to unturning Hades, having never beheld a day of calm in all his life. O wretched one! how much better had it been for thee to remain in thy homeland driving oxen, and to harness still the working stallion ass to the yoke, frenzied with feigned pretence of madness, than to suffer the experience of such woes!
[820] And he again – the husband seeking for his fatal bride snatched from him having heard rumours, and yearning for the winged phantom that fled to the sky – what secret places of the sea shall he not explore? What dry land shall he not come and search? First he shall visit the watching-place of Typhon, and the old hag turned to stone, and the jutting shores of the Erembi, abhorred by mariners. And he shall see the strong city of unhappy Myrrha, who was delivered of the pangs of child-birth by a branching tree; and the tomb of Gauas whose death the Muses wrought – wept by the goddess of the Rushes, Arenta, the Stranger: Gauas whom the wild boar slew with white tusk. And he shall visit the towers of Cepheus and the place that was kicked by the foot of Hermes Laphrios, and the two rocks on which the petrel leapt in quest of food, but carried off in his jaws, instead of a woman, the eagle son of the golden Sire – a male with winged sandals who destroyed his liver. 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.
[847] 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 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 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 Hopolosmia, 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 a goddess to a 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 waves of the brine cleanse them, nor the long rubbing of the rainy shower.
[877] 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 Asbytians, 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 Tenthedron from Palauthra, king of the Amphrysians of Euryampus, and the lord of the Wolf that devoured the atonement and was 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 Perhaebic 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.
[909] One evil fate after another shall god arouse, presenting them with grievous calamity in place of return to their homes.
[911] 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 Thrascias 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.
[930] 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 wretchedman, 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 country, he shall consecrate in the shrine of Myndia.
[951] 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 they 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.
[978] And many shall dwell in 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. There the unhappy men shall build a city like Ilios, and shall vex the Maiden Laphria Salpinx by slaying in the temple of the goddess the descendants of Xuthus who formerly occupied the town. And her image shall shut its bloodless eyes, beholding the hateful destruction of Ionians by Achaeans and the kindred slaughter of the wild wolves, when the minister son of the priestess dies and stains fir the altar with his dark blood.
[992] And others shall take to them the steep Tylesian hills and sea-washed Linos’ hilly promontory, the territory of the Amazon, taking on them the yoke of a slave woman, whom, as servant of the brazen-mailed impetuous maiden, the wave shall carry wandering to an alien land: slave of that maiden whose eye, smitten as she breathes her last, shall bring doom to the ape-formed Aetolian pest, wounded by the bloody shaft. And the men of Croton shall sack the city of the Amazon, destroying the dauntless maiden Clete, queen of the land that bears her name. But, ere that, many shall be laid low by her hand and bite the dust with their teeth, and not without labour shall the sons of Laureta sack the towers.
[1008] Others, again, in Tereina, where Ocinarus moistens the earth with his streams, bubbling with bright water, shall dwell, weary with bitter wandering.
[1011] And him, again, who won the second prize for beauty, and the boar leader from the streams of Lycormas, the mighty son of Gorge, on the one hand the Thracian blasts, falling on taut sails, shall carry to the sands of Libya; on the other hand from Libya again the blast of the South wind shall carry them to the Argyrini and the glades of Ceraunia, shepherding the sea with grievous hurricane. And there they shall see a sorry wandering life, drinking the waters of Aias which springs from Lacmon. And neighbouring Crathis and the land of the Mylaces shall receive them in their bounds to dwell at Polae, the town of the Colchians whom the angry ruler of Aea and of Corinth, the husband of Eiduia, sent to seek his daughter, tracking the keel that carried off the bride; they settled by the deep stream of Dizerus.
[1027] Others wanderers shall dwell in the isle of Melita, near Othronus, round which Sicanian wave laps beside Pachynus, grazing the steep promontory that in after time shall bear the name of the son of Sisyphus and the famous shrine of the maiden Longatis, where Helorus empties his chilly stream.
[1033] And in Othronus shall dwell the wolf that slew his own grandfather, yearning afar for his ancestral stream of Coscynthus. Standing in the sea upon the rocks he shall declare to his countrymen the compact of the sailing army. For never will the ally of Justice, the Telphusian hound that dwells by the streams of Ladon, allow the murderer to touch with his feet his fatherland, if he has not spent a great year in exile. Thence, fleeing from the terrible warfare of the serpent-shaped vermin, he shall sail to the city of Amantia, and coming nigh to the land of the Atintanians, right beside Practis shall he dwell upon a steep hill, drinking the waters of Chaonian Polyanthes.
[1047] And near the Ausonian false-tomb of Calchas one of the two brothers shall have an alien soil over his bones and to men sleeping in sheepskins on his tomb he shall declare in dreams his unerring message for all. And healer of diseases shall he be called by the Daunians, when they wash the sick with the waters of Althaenus and invoke the son of Epius to their aid, that he may come gracious unto men and flocks. There some time for the ambassadors of the Aetolians shall dawn a sad and hateful day, when, coming to the land of the Salangi and the seats of the Angaesi, they shall ask the fields of their lord, the rich inheritance of goodly soil. Alive in a dark tomb within the recesses of a hollow cleft shall the savages hide them; and for them the Daunites shall set up a memorial of the dead without funeral rites, roofed with piled stones, giving them the land which they desired to get, – the land of the son of the dauntless boar who devoured the brains of his enemy.
[1067] And the mariners of the descendants of Naubolus shall come to Tecmessa, where the hard horn of the Hipponian hill inclines to the sea of Lampeta. And in place of the bounds of Crisa they shall till with ox-drawn trailing ploughshare the Crotonian fields across the straits, longing for their native Lilaea and the plain of Anemoreia and Amphissa and famous Abae. Poor Setaea! for the waits an unhappy fate upon the rocks, where, most pitifully outstretched with brazen fetters on thy limbs, thou shalt die, because thou didst burn the fleet of thy masters: bewailing near Crathis thy body cast out and hung up for gory vultures to devour. And that cliff, looking on the sea, shall be called by thy name in memory of thy fate.
[1083] And others again beside the Pelasgian streams of Membles and the Cerneatid isle shall sail forth and beyond the Tyrrhenian strait occupy Lametian waters Leucanian plains.
[1086] And griefs and varied sufferings shall be the lot of these – bewailing their fate which allows them not to return home, on account of my haling to unhappy marriage.
[1090] Nor shall they who after many days come gladly home kindle the flame of votive offering in gratitude to Cerdylas Larynthius. With such craft shall the hedgehog ruin their homes and mislead the housekeeping hens embittered against the cocks. Nor shall the ship-devouring hostile beacons abate their sorrow for his shattered scion, whom a new-dug habitation in the territory of Methymna shall hide.
[1099] One at the bath while he seeks for the difficult exits of the mesh about his neck, entangled in a net, shall search with blind hands the fringed stitching. And diving under the hot covering of the bath he shall sprinkle with his brains tripod and basin, when he is smitten in the midst of the skull with the well-sharpened axe. His piteous ghost shall wing its way to Taenarus, having looked on the bitter housekeeping of the lioness. And I beside the bath shall lie on the ground, shattered by the Chalybdic sword. For she shall cleave me – broad tendon and back – even as a woodcutter workman on the mountains cleaves trunk of pine or stem of oak – and, sand-viper as she is, will rend all my cold body in blood and set her foot on my neck and glut her laden soul of bitter bile, taking relentless vengeance on me in evil jealousy, as if I were a stolen bride and not a spear-won prize. And calling on my master and husband, who hears no more, I shall follow his track on wings of the wind. But a whelp, seeking vengeance for his father’s blood, shall with his own hand plunge his sword in the entrails of the viper, with evil healing the evil pollution of his race.
[1122] And my husband, lord of a slave bride, shall be called Zeus by the crafty Spartiates, obtaining highest honours from the children of Oebalus. Nor shall my worship be nameless among men, nor fade hereafter in the darkness of oblivion. But the chiefs of the Daunians shall build for me a shrine on the banks of the Salpe, and those also who inhabit the city of Dardanus, beside the waters of the lake. And when girls wish to escape the yoke of maidens, refusing for bridegrooms men adorned with locks such as Hector wore, but with defect of form or reproach of birth, they will embrace my image with their arms, winning of mighty shield against marriage, having clothed them in the garb of the Erinyes and dyed their faces with magic simples. By those staff-carrying women I shall long be called an immortal goddess.
[1141] And to many women robbed of their maiden daughters I shall bring sorrow hereafter. Long shall they bewail the leader who sinned against the laws of marriage, the pirate of the Cyprian goddess, when they shall send to the unkindly shrine their daughters reft of marriage. O Larymna and Spercheius and Boagrius and Cynus and Scarpheia and Phalorias and city of Naryx and Locrian streets of Thronium and Pyrnoean glades and all the house of Ileus son of Hodoedocus – ye for the sake of my impious wedlock shall pay penance to the goddess Gygaea Agrisa, for the space of a thousand years fostering to old age your unwed daughters by the arbitrament of the lot. And they, aliens in an alien land, shall have without funeral rites a tomb, a sorry tomb in wave-washed sands, when Hephaestus burns with unfruitful plants the limbs of her that perishes from Traron’s peaks, and tosses her ashes into the sea. And, to fill the place of those that shall die, others shall come by night to the fields of Sithon’s daughter by secret paths and glancing fearfully, until they rush into the shrine of Ampheira as suppliants beseeching with their prayers Stheneia. And they shall sweep and array the floor of the goddess and cleanse it with dew, having escaped the loveless anger of the citizens. For every man of Ilios shall keep watch for the maidens, with a stone in his hands, or a dark sword or hard bull-slaying axe, or shaft from Phalacra, eager to sate his hand athirst for blood. And the people shall not harm him who slays that race of reproach, but shall praise him and grave his name by ordinance.
[1174] O mother, O unhappy mother! thy fame, too, shall not be unknown, but the maiden daughter of Perseus, Triform Brimo, shall make thee her attendant, terrifying with thy baying in the night all mortals who worship not with torches the images of the Zerynthian queen of Strymon, appeasing the goddess of Pherae with sacrifice. And the island spur of Pachynus shall hold thine awful cenotaph, piled by the hands of thy master, prompted by dreams when thou hast gotten the rites of death in front of the streams of Helorus. He shall pour on the shore offerings for thee, unhappy one, fearing the anger of the three-necked goddess, for that he shall hurl the first stone at thy stoning and begin the dark sacrifice to Hades.
[1189] And thou, O brother, most beloved of my heart, stay of our halls and of our whole fatherland, not in vain shalt thou redden the altar pedestal with blood of bulls, giving full many a sacrificial offering to him who is lord of Ophion’s throne. But he shall bring thee to the plain of his nativity, that land celebrated above others by the Greeks, where his mother, skilled in wrestling, having cast into Tartarus the former queen, delivered her of him in travail of secret birth, escaping the child-devouring unholy feast of her spouse; and the fattened not his belly with food, but swallowed instead the stone, wrapped in limb-fitting swaddling-clothes: savage Centaur, tomb of his own offspring. And in the Islands of the Blest thou shalt dwell, a mighty hero, defender of the arrows of pestilence, where the sown folk of Ogygus, persuaded by the oracles of the Physician Lepsius Termintheus, shall lift thee from thy cairn in Ophryneion and bring thee to the tower of Calydnus and the land of the Aonians to be their saviour, when they are harassed by an armed host which seeks to sack their land and the shrine of Tenerus. An the chiefs o the Ectenes shall with libations celebrate thy glory in the highest, even as the immortals.
[1214] And unto Cnossus and the halls of Gortyn shall come the woe of me unhappy, and all the house of the rulers shall be overthrown. For not quietly shall the fisherman voyage, rowing his two-oared boat, to stir up Leucus, guardian of the kingdom, and weaving hate with lying wiles. He shall spare neither the children of Meda the wedded wife, in the rage of his mind, nor the daughter Cleisithera, whom her father shall betroth unhappily to the serpent whom he himself has reared. All will he slay with impious hands in the temple, maltreated and abused in the Trench of Oncaea.
[1226] And the fame of the race of my ancestors shall hereafter be exalted to the highest by their descendants, who shall with their spears win the foremost crown of glory, obtaining the sceptre and monarchy of earth and sea. Nor in the darkness of oblivion, my unhappy fatherland, shalt thou hide thy glory faded. Such a pair of lion whelps shall a certain kinsman of mine leave, a breed eminent in strength: the son of Castnia called also Cheiras, – in counsel best and not to be despised in battle. He shall first come to occupy Rhaecelus beside the steep crag of Cissus and the horned women of Laphystius. And from Almopia in his wandering Tyrsenia shall receive him and Lingeus bubbling forth its stream of hot waters, and Pisa and the glades of Agylla, rich in sheep. And with him shall an erstwhile foe join a friendly army, winning him by oaths and prayers and clasped knees: even the Dwarf who in his roaming searched out every recess of sea and earth; and therewithal the two sons of the King of the Mysians, whose spear one day shall be bent by the Housekeeping God of Wine, who shall fetter his limbs with twisted tendrils; even Tarchon and Tyrsenus, tawny wolves, sprung from the blood of Heracles. There he shall find full of eatable a table which is afterwards devoured by his attendants and shall be reminded of an ancient prophecy. And he shall found in places of the Boreigonoi a settled land beyond the Latins and Daunians – even thirty towers, when he has numbered the offspring of the dark sow, which he shall carry in his ship from the hills of Ida and places of Dardanus, which shall rear such number of young at birth. 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.
[1281] So many are the woes, hard to bear, which they shall suffer who are to lay waste my fatherland.
[1282] 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.
[1291] 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 afterward 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 contended when they had taken like for like; but sent 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 maiden Arisba.
[1309] 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.
[1322] 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.
[1341] 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.
[1351] 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.
[1362] 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 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.
[1369] First there shall come a Zeus who bears the name of Zeus Lapersios; who shall come with swooping thunderbolt to burn all the habitations of the foe. With him shall I die, and when I flit among the dead I shall hear these further things which I am about to utter.
[1374] And, second, the son of him that was slain in a net, like a dumb fish, shall lay waste with fire the alien land, coming, at the bidding of the oracles of the Physician, with a host of many tongues.
[1378] And third, the son of the woodcutter king, beguiling the potter maiden of Branchidae to give him in his need earth mixed with water, wherewith to set on a tablet his finger-seal, shall found the mountain monarchy of the Phtheires, when he has destroyed the host of the Carians – the first to fight for hire – what time his wanton daughter shall abuse her nakedness and say in mockery of marriage that she will conclude her nuptials in the brothels of barbarians.
[1388] And then, again, the fourth, of the seed of Dymas, the Codrus-ancients of Lacmon and Cyrita – who shall dwell in Thigros and the hill of Satnion and the extremity of the peninsula of him who of old was utterly hated by the goddess Cyrita: the father of the crafty vixen who by daily traffic assuaged the raging hunger of her sire – even Aethon, plougher of alien shires.
[1397] And the Phrygian, avenging the blood of his brothers, will sack again the land that nursed the ruler of the dead, who in loveless wise pronounces relentless judgement on the departed. He shall spoil the ears of the ass, lobes and all, and deck his temples, fashioning a terror for the ravenous blood-suckers. By him all the land of Phlegra shall be enslaved and the ridge of Thrambus and spur of Titon by the sea and the plains of the Sithonians and the fields of Pallene, which the ox-horned Brychon, who served the giants, fattens with his waters.
[1409] And many woes, on this side and that alternately, shall be taken as an offering by Candaeus or Mamertus – or what name should be given to him who banquets in gory battles?
[1412] Yet the mother of Epimetheus shall not yield but in return for all shall send a single giant of the seed of Perseus, who shall walk over the sea on foot and sail over the earth, smiting the dry land with the oar. And the shrines of Laphria Mamerse shall be consumed with fire together with their defence of wooden walls, and shall blame for their hurt the prater of oracles, the false prophesying lackey of Pluto. By his unapproachable host every fruit-bearing oak and wild tree flourishing on the mountain shall be devoured, stripping off its double covering of bark, and every flowing torrent shall be dried up, as they slake with open mouth their black thirst. And they shall raise overhead clouds of arrows hurtling from afar, whose shadow shall obscure the sun, like a Cimmerian darkness dimming the sun. And blooming for a brief space, as a Locrian rose, and burning all things like withered ear of corn, he shall in his turn taste of homeward flight, glancing fearfully towards the oaken bulwark hard at hand, even as a girl in the dusky twilight frightened by a brazen sword.
[1434] And many contests and slaughters in between shall solve the struggles of men, contending for dread empire, now on land, now on the plough-turned backs of earth, until a tawny lion – sprung from Aeacus and from Dardanus, Thesprotian at once and Chalastraean – shall lull to rest the grievous tumult, and, overturning on its face all the house of his kindred, shall compel the chiefs of the Argives to cower and fawn upon the wolf-leader of Galadra, and to hand over the sceptre of the ancient monarchy. With him, after six generations, my kinsman, an unique wrestler, shall join battle by sea and land and come to terms, and shall be celebrated among his friends as most excellent, when he has received the first fruits of the spear-won spoils.
[1451] Why, unhappy, do I call to the unheeding rocks, to the deaf wave, and to the awful glades, twanging the idle noise of my lips? For Lepsieus has taken credit from me, daubing with rumour of falsity my words and the true prophetic wisdom of my oracles, for that he was robbed of the bridal which he sought to win. Yet will he make my oracles true. And in sorrow shall many a one know it, when there is no means any more to help my fatherland and shall praise the frenzied swallow.
[1461] So much she spake, and then sped back and went within her prison. But in her heart she wailed her latest Siren song – like some Mimallon of Claros or babbler of Melancraera, Neso’s daughter, or Phician monster, mouthing darkly her perplexed words. And I came, O King, to announce to thee this the crooked speech of the maiden prophetess, since thou didst appoint me to be the warder of her stony dwelling and didst charge me to come as a messenger to report all to thee and truly recount her words.
But may God turn her prophecies to fairer issue – even he that cares for thy throne, preserving the ancient inheritance of the Bebryces.
[648] 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 he 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 pigstyles, 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.
[681] 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.
[688] Thereafter the island that crushed the back of the Giants and the fierce storm 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 of 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. And he shall slay the triple daughters of Tethys’ son, who imitated the strains of their melodious mother: self-hurled from the cliff’s top they dive with their wings into the Tyrrhenian sea, where the bitter thread spun by the Fates shall draw them. One of them washed ashore the tower of Phalerus shall receive, and Glanis wetting the earth with its streams. There the inhabitants shall build a tomb for the maiden and with libations and sacrifice of oxen shall yearly honour the bird goddess Parthenope. And Leucosia shall be cast on the jutting strand of Enipeus and shall long haunt the rock that bears her name, where rapid Is and neighbouring Laris pour forth their waters. And Ligeia shall come ashore at Tereina spitting out the wave. And her shall sailormen bury on the stony beach nigh to the eddies of Ocinarus; and an ox-horned Ares shall lave her tomb with his streams, cleansing with his waters the foundation of her whose children were turned into birds. And there one day in honour of the first goddess of the sisterhood shall the ruler of all the navy of Mopsops array for his mariners a torch-race, in obedience to an oracle, which one day the people of the Neopolitans shall celebrate, even they who shall dwell on bluff crags beside Misenum’s sheltered haven untroubled by the waves.
[738] And he shall shut up the blustering winds in the hide of an ox, and wandering in woes that ebb and flow, he, the sea-gull, shall be burnt with the lash of the thunderbolt, clinging to the branch of a wild fig-tree so that the wave which draws spouting Charybdis to the deep may not swallow him in the surge. And, after brief pleasure in wedlock with the daughter of Atlas, he dares to set foot in his offhand vessel that never knew a dockyard and to steer, poor wretch, the bark which his own hands made, vainly fastened with dowels to the midst of the keel. Wherefrom Amphibaeus shall toss him forth, as it were the tiny unfledged brood of a halcyon’s bride, and cast him, with midbeams and deck together, headlong as a diver into the waves, entangled in the ropes, and sleepless, swept in the secret places of the sea, he shall dwell with the citizen of Thracian Anthedon. And like a branch of pine, blast after blast shall toss him as a cork, leaping on him with their gusts. And hardly shall the frontlet of Byne save him from the evil tide with torn breast and fingers wherewith he shall clutch the flesh-hooking rocks and be stained with blood by the sea-bitten spikes. And crossing to the island abhorred by Cronus – the isle of the Sickle that severed his privy parts – he a cloakless suppliant, babbling of awful sufferings, shall yelp out his fictitious tale of woe, paying the curse of the monster whom he blinded. Ah! not yet, not yet! Let no such sleep of forgetfulness find Melanthus, the Lord of Horses, bending. For he shall come, he shall come to Rheithron’s sheltering haven and the cliffs of Neriton. And he shall behold all his house utterly overthrown from its foundation by lewd wife-stealers. And the vixen, primly coquetting, will make empty his halls, pouring forth the pour wight’s wealth in banqueting. And he himself, poor parasite, shall see trouble beyond what he endured at the Scaean gates; he shall endure to bear with submissive back sullen threats from his own slaves and to be punished with jeers; shall endure, too, to submit to buffeting of fists and hurling of potsherds. For not alien stripes but the liberal seal of Thoas shall remain upon his sides, engraved with rods: stripes which he, our destroyer, shall consent without a murmur to have engraved upon him, putting the voluntary weal upon his frame, that he may ensnare the foemen, with spying wounds and with tears deceiving our king. He whom of old the Temmician hill of Bombyleia bare to be our chiefest bane – he alone of all his mariners, wretched one, shall win safely home. And lastly, like a sea-gull that roams the waves, worn all about by the salt water even as a shell and finding his possessions swallowed up in banqueting of the Pronians by the Laconian lady of fatal frenzy, ancient as a crow he shall flee with his weapons the shelter of the sea and in wrinkled age die beside the woods of Neriton. The deadly spike, hard to heal, of the Sardinian fish shall wound his sides with its sting and kill him; and his son shall be called the butcher of his father, that son who shall be the own cousin of the bride of Achilles. And in death he shall be garlanded as a seer by the Eurytanian folk and by the dweller in the steep abode of Trampya, wherein one day hereafter the Tymphaean dragon, even the king of the Aethices, shall at a feast destroy Heracles sprung from the seed of Aeacus and Perseus and no stranger to the blood of Temenus.
[805] When he is dead, Perge, hill of the Tyrrhenians, shall receive his ashes in the land of Gortyn; when, as he breathes out his life, he shall bewail the fate of his son and his wife, whom her husband shall slay and himself next pass to Hades, his throat cut by the hands of his sister, the own cousin of Glaucon and Apsyrtus.
[812] And having seen such a heap of woes he shall go down a second time to unturning Hades, having never beheld a day of calm in all his life. O wretched one! how much better had it been for thee to remain in thy homeland driving oxen, and to harness still the working stallion ass to the yoke, frenzied with feigned pretence of madness, than to suffer the experience of such woes!
[820] And he again – the husband seeking for his fatal bride snatched from him having heard rumours, and yearning for the winged phantom that fled to the sky – what secret places of the sea shall he not explore? What dry land shall he not come and search? First he shall visit the watching-place of Typhon, and the old hag turned to stone, and the jutting shores of the Erembi, abhorred by mariners. And he shall see the strong city of unhappy Myrrha, who was delivered of the pangs of child-birth by a branching tree; and the tomb of Gauas whose death the Muses wrought – wept by the goddess of the Rushes, Arenta, the Stranger: Gauas whom the wild boar slew with white tusk. And he shall visit the towers of Cepheus and the place that was kicked by the foot of Hermes Laphrios, and the two rocks on which the petrel leapt in quest of food, but carried off in his jaws, instead of a woman, the eagle son of the golden Sire – a male with winged sandals who destroyed his liver. 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.
[847] 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 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 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 Hopolosmia, 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 a goddess to a 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 waves of the brine cleanse them, nor the long rubbing of the rainy shower.
[877] 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 Asbytians, 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 Tenthedron from Palauthra, king of the Amphrysians of Euryampus, and the lord of the Wolf that devoured the atonement and was 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 Perhaebic 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.
[909] One evil fate after another shall god arouse, presenting them with grievous calamity in place of return to their homes.
[911] 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 Thrascias 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.
[930] 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 wretchedman, 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 country, he shall consecrate in the shrine of Myndia.
[951] 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 they 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.
[978] And many shall dwell in 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. There the unhappy men shall build a city like Ilios, and shall vex the Maiden Laphria Salpinx by slaying in the temple of the goddess the descendants of Xuthus who formerly occupied the town. And her image shall shut its bloodless eyes, beholding the hateful destruction of Ionians by Achaeans and the kindred slaughter of the wild wolves, when the minister son of the priestess dies and stains fir the altar with his dark blood.
[992] And others shall take to them the steep Tylesian hills and sea-washed Linos’ hilly promontory, the territory of the Amazon, taking on them the yoke of a slave woman, whom, as servant of the brazen-mailed impetuous maiden, the wave shall carry wandering to an alien land: slave of that maiden whose eye, smitten as she breathes her last, shall bring doom to the ape-formed Aetolian pest, wounded by the bloody shaft. And the men of Croton shall sack the city of the Amazon, destroying the dauntless maiden Clete, queen of the land that bears her name. But, ere that, many shall be laid low by her hand and bite the dust with their teeth, and not without labour shall the sons of Laureta sack the towers.
[1008] Others, again, in Tereina, where Ocinarus moistens the earth with his streams, bubbling with bright water, shall dwell, weary with bitter wandering.
[1011] And him, again, who won the second prize for beauty, and the boar leader from the streams of Lycormas, the mighty son of Gorge, on the one hand the Thracian blasts, falling on taut sails, shall carry to the sands of Libya; on the other hand from Libya again the blast of the South wind shall carry them to the Argyrini and the glades of Ceraunia, shepherding the sea with grievous hurricane. And there they shall see a sorry wandering life, drinking the waters of Aias which springs from Lacmon. And neighbouring Crathis and the land of the Mylaces shall receive them in their bounds to dwell at Polae, the town of the Colchians whom the angry ruler of Aea and of Corinth, the husband of Eiduia, sent to seek his daughter, tracking the keel that carried off the bride; they settled by the deep stream of Dizerus.
[1027] Others wanderers shall dwell in the isle of Melita, near Othronus, round which Sicanian wave laps beside Pachynus, grazing the steep promontory that in after time shall bear the name of the son of Sisyphus and the famous shrine of the maiden Longatis, where Helorus empties his chilly stream.
[1033] And in Othronus shall dwell the wolf that slew his own grandfather, yearning afar for his ancestral stream of Coscynthus. Standing in the sea upon the rocks he shall declare to his countrymen the compact of the sailing army. For never will the ally of Justice, the Telphusian hound that dwells by the streams of Ladon, allow the murderer to touch with his feet his fatherland, if he has not spent a great year in exile. Thence, fleeing from the terrible warfare of the serpent-shaped vermin, he shall sail to the city of Amantia, and coming nigh to the land of the Atintanians, right beside Practis shall he dwell upon a steep hill, drinking the waters of Chaonian Polyanthes.
[1047] And near the Ausonian false-tomb of Calchas one of the two brothers shall have an alien soil over his bones and to men sleeping in sheepskins on his tomb he shall declare in dreams his unerring message for all. And healer of diseases shall he be called by the Daunians, when they wash the sick with the waters of Althaenus and invoke the son of Epius to their aid, that he may come gracious unto men and flocks. There some time for the ambassadors of the Aetolians shall dawn a sad and hateful day, when, coming to the land of the Salangi and the seats of the Angaesi, they shall ask the fields of their lord, the rich inheritance of goodly soil. Alive in a dark tomb within the recesses of a hollow cleft shall the savages hide them; and for them the Daunites shall set up a memorial of the dead without funeral rites, roofed with piled stones, giving them the land which they desired to get, – the land of the son of the dauntless boar who devoured the brains of his enemy.
[1067] And the mariners of the descendants of Naubolus shall come to Tecmessa, where the hard horn of the Hipponian hill inclines to the sea of Lampeta. And in place of the bounds of Crisa they shall till with ox-drawn trailing ploughshare the Crotonian fields across the straits, longing for their native Lilaea and the plain of Anemoreia and Amphissa and famous Abae. Poor Setaea! for the waits an unhappy fate upon the rocks, where, most pitifully outstretched with brazen fetters on thy limbs, thou shalt die, because thou didst burn the fleet of thy masters: bewailing near Crathis thy body cast out and hung up for gory vultures to devour. And that cliff, looking on the sea, shall be called by thy name in memory of thy fate.
[1083] And others again beside the Pelasgian streams of Membles and the Cerneatid isle shall sail forth and beyond the Tyrrhenian strait occupy Lametian waters Leucanian plains.
[1086] And griefs and varied sufferings shall be the lot of these – bewailing their fate which allows them not to return home, on account of my haling to unhappy marriage.
[1090] Nor shall they who after many days come gladly home kindle the flame of votive offering in gratitude to Cerdylas Larynthius. With such craft shall the hedgehog ruin their homes and mislead the housekeeping hens embittered against the cocks. Nor shall the ship-devouring hostile beacons abate their sorrow for his shattered scion, whom a new-dug habitation in the territory of Methymna shall hide.
[1099] One at the bath while he seeks for the difficult exits of the mesh about his neck, entangled in a net, shall search with blind hands the fringed stitching. And diving under the hot covering of the bath he shall sprinkle with his brains tripod and basin, when he is smitten in the midst of the skull with the well-sharpened axe. His piteous ghost shall wing its way to Taenarus, having looked on the bitter housekeeping of the lioness. And I beside the bath shall lie on the ground, shattered by the Chalybdic sword. For she shall cleave me – broad tendon and back – even as a woodcutter workman on the mountains cleaves trunk of pine or stem of oak – and, sand-viper as she is, will rend all my cold body in blood and set her foot on my neck and glut her laden soul of bitter bile, taking relentless vengeance on me in evil jealousy, as if I were a stolen bride and not a spear-won prize. And calling on my master and husband, who hears no more, I shall follow his track on wings of the wind. But a whelp, seeking vengeance for his father’s blood, shall with his own hand plunge his sword in the entrails of the viper, with evil healing the evil pollution of his race.
[1122] And my husband, lord of a slave bride, shall be called Zeus by the crafty Spartiates, obtaining highest honours from the children of Oebalus. Nor shall my worship be nameless among men, nor fade hereafter in the darkness of oblivion. But the chiefs of the Daunians shall build for me a shrine on the banks of the Salpe, and those also who inhabit the city of Dardanus, beside the waters of the lake. And when girls wish to escape the yoke of maidens, refusing for bridegrooms men adorned with locks such as Hector wore, but with defect of form or reproach of birth, they will embrace my image with their arms, winning of mighty shield against marriage, having clothed them in the garb of the Erinyes and dyed their faces with magic simples. By those staff-carrying women I shall long be called an immortal goddess.
[1141] And to many women robbed of their maiden daughters I shall bring sorrow hereafter. Long shall they bewail the leader who sinned against the laws of marriage, the pirate of the Cyprian goddess, when they shall send to the unkindly shrine their daughters reft of marriage. O Larymna and Spercheius and Boagrius and Cynus and Scarpheia and Phalorias and city of Naryx and Locrian streets of Thronium and Pyrnoean glades and all the house of Ileus son of Hodoedocus – ye for the sake of my impious wedlock shall pay penance to the goddess Gygaea Agrisa, for the space of a thousand years fostering to old age your unwed daughters by the arbitrament of the lot. And they, aliens in an alien land, shall have without funeral rites a tomb, a sorry tomb in wave-washed sands, when Hephaestus burns with unfruitful plants the limbs of her that perishes from Traron’s peaks, and tosses her ashes into the sea. And, to fill the place of those that shall die, others shall come by night to the fields of Sithon’s daughter by secret paths and glancing fearfully, until they rush into the shrine of Ampheira as suppliants beseeching with their prayers Stheneia. And they shall sweep and array the floor of the goddess and cleanse it with dew, having escaped the loveless anger of the citizens. For every man of Ilios shall keep watch for the maidens, with a stone in his hands, or a dark sword or hard bull-slaying axe, or shaft from Phalacra, eager to sate his hand athirst for blood. And the people shall not harm him who slays that race of reproach, but shall praise him and grave his name by ordinance.
[1174] O mother, O unhappy mother! thy fame, too, shall not be unknown, but the maiden daughter of Perseus, Triform Brimo, shall make thee her attendant, terrifying with thy baying in the night all mortals who worship not with torches the images of the Zerynthian queen of Strymon, appeasing the goddess of Pherae with sacrifice. And the island spur of Pachynus shall hold thine awful cenotaph, piled by the hands of thy master, prompted by dreams when thou hast gotten the rites of death in front of the streams of Helorus. He shall pour on the shore offerings for thee, unhappy one, fearing the anger of the three-necked goddess, for that he shall hurl the first stone at thy stoning and begin the dark sacrifice to Hades.
[1189] And thou, O brother, most beloved of my heart, stay of our halls and of our whole fatherland, not in vain shalt thou redden the altar pedestal with blood of bulls, giving full many a sacrificial offering to him who is lord of Ophion’s throne. But he shall bring thee to the plain of his nativity, that land celebrated above others by the Greeks, where his mother, skilled in wrestling, having cast into Tartarus the former queen, delivered her of him in travail of secret birth, escaping the child-devouring unholy feast of her spouse; and the fattened not his belly with food, but swallowed instead the stone, wrapped in limb-fitting swaddling-clothes: savage Centaur, tomb of his own offspring. And in the Islands of the Blest thou shalt dwell, a mighty hero, defender of the arrows of pestilence, where the sown folk of Ogygus, persuaded by the oracles of the Physician Lepsius Termintheus, shall lift thee from thy cairn in Ophryneion and bring thee to the tower of Calydnus and the land of the Aonians to be their saviour, when they are harassed by an armed host which seeks to sack their land and the shrine of Tenerus. An the chiefs o the Ectenes shall with libations celebrate thy glory in the highest, even as the immortals.
[1214] And unto Cnossus and the halls of Gortyn shall come the woe of me unhappy, and all the house of the rulers shall be overthrown. For not quietly shall the fisherman voyage, rowing his two-oared boat, to stir up Leucus, guardian of the kingdom, and weaving hate with lying wiles. He shall spare neither the children of Meda the wedded wife, in the rage of his mind, nor the daughter Cleisithera, whom her father shall betroth unhappily to the serpent whom he himself has reared. All will he slay with impious hands in the temple, maltreated and abused in the Trench of Oncaea.
[1226] And the fame of the race of my ancestors shall hereafter be exalted to the highest by their descendants, who shall with their spears win the foremost crown of glory, obtaining the sceptre and monarchy of earth and sea. Nor in the darkness of oblivion, my unhappy fatherland, shalt thou hide thy glory faded. Such a pair of lion whelps shall a certain kinsman of mine leave, a breed eminent in strength: the son of Castnia called also Cheiras, – in counsel best and not to be despised in battle. He shall first come to occupy Rhaecelus beside the steep crag of Cissus and the horned women of Laphystius. And from Almopia in his wandering Tyrsenia shall receive him and Lingeus bubbling forth its stream of hot waters, and Pisa and the glades of Agylla, rich in sheep. And with him shall an erstwhile foe join a friendly army, winning him by oaths and prayers and clasped knees: even the Dwarf who in his roaming searched out every recess of sea and earth; and therewithal the two sons of the King of the Mysians, whose spear one day shall be bent by the Housekeeping God of Wine, who shall fetter his limbs with twisted tendrils; even Tarchon and Tyrsenus, tawny wolves, sprung from the blood of Heracles. There he shall find full of eatable a table which is afterwards devoured by his attendants and shall be reminded of an ancient prophecy. And he shall found in places of the Boreigonoi a settled land beyond the Latins and Daunians – even thirty towers, when he has numbered the offspring of the dark sow, which he shall carry in his ship from the hills of Ida and places of Dardanus, which shall rear such number of young at birth. 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.
[1281] So many are the woes, hard to bear, which they shall suffer who are to lay waste my fatherland.
[1282] 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.
[1291] 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 afterward 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 contended when they had taken like for like; but sent 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 maiden Arisba.
[1309] 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.
[1322] 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.
[1341] 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.
[1351] 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.
[1362] 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 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.
[1369] First there shall come a Zeus who bears the name of Zeus Lapersios; who shall come with swooping thunderbolt to burn all the habitations of the foe. With him shall I die, and when I flit among the dead I shall hear these further things which I am about to utter.
[1374] And, second, the son of him that was slain in a net, like a dumb fish, shall lay waste with fire the alien land, coming, at the bidding of the oracles of the Physician, with a host of many tongues.
[1378] And third, the son of the woodcutter king, beguiling the potter maiden of Branchidae to give him in his need earth mixed with water, wherewith to set on a tablet his finger-seal, shall found the mountain monarchy of the Phtheires, when he has destroyed the host of the Carians – the first to fight for hire – what time his wanton daughter shall abuse her nakedness and say in mockery of marriage that she will conclude her nuptials in the brothels of barbarians.
[1388] And then, again, the fourth, of the seed of Dymas, the Codrus-ancients of Lacmon and Cyrita – who shall dwell in Thigros and the hill of Satnion and the extremity of the peninsula of him who of old was utterly hated by the goddess Cyrita: the father of the crafty vixen who by daily traffic assuaged the raging hunger of her sire – even Aethon, plougher of alien shires.
[1397] And the Phrygian, avenging the blood of his brothers, will sack again the land that nursed the ruler of the dead, who in loveless wise pronounces relentless judgement on the departed. He shall spoil the ears of the ass, lobes and all, and deck his temples, fashioning a terror for the ravenous blood-suckers. By him all the land of Phlegra shall be enslaved and the ridge of Thrambus and spur of Titon by the sea and the plains of the Sithonians and the fields of Pallene, which the ox-horned Brychon, who served the giants, fattens with his waters.
[1409] And many woes, on this side and that alternately, shall be taken as an offering by Candaeus or Mamertus – or what name should be given to him who banquets in gory battles?
[1412] Yet the mother of Epimetheus shall not yield but in return for all shall send a single giant of the seed of Perseus, who shall walk over the sea on foot and sail over the earth, smiting the dry land with the oar. And the shrines of Laphria Mamerse shall be consumed with fire together with their defence of wooden walls, and shall blame for their hurt the prater of oracles, the false prophesying lackey of Pluto. By his unapproachable host every fruit-bearing oak and wild tree flourishing on the mountain shall be devoured, stripping off its double covering of bark, and every flowing torrent shall be dried up, as they slake with open mouth their black thirst. And they shall raise overhead clouds of arrows hurtling from afar, whose shadow shall obscure the sun, like a Cimmerian darkness dimming the sun. And blooming for a brief space, as a Locrian rose, and burning all things like withered ear of corn, he shall in his turn taste of homeward flight, glancing fearfully towards the oaken bulwark hard at hand, even as a girl in the dusky twilight frightened by a brazen sword.
[1434] And many contests and slaughters in between shall solve the struggles of men, contending for dread empire, now on land, now on the plough-turned backs of earth, until a tawny lion – sprung from Aeacus and from Dardanus, Thesprotian at once and Chalastraean – shall lull to rest the grievous tumult, and, overturning on its face all the house of his kindred, shall compel the chiefs of the Argives to cower and fawn upon the wolf-leader of Galadra, and to hand over the sceptre of the ancient monarchy. With him, after six generations, my kinsman, an unique wrestler, shall join battle by sea and land and come to terms, and shall be celebrated among his friends as most excellent, when he has received the first fruits of the spear-won spoils.
[1451] Why, unhappy, do I call to the unheeding rocks, to the deaf wave, and to the awful glades, twanging the idle noise of my lips? For Lepsieus has taken credit from me, daubing with rumour of falsity my words and the true prophetic wisdom of my oracles, for that he was robbed of the bridal which he sought to win. Yet will he make my oracles true. And in sorrow shall many a one know it, when there is no means any more to help my fatherland and shall praise the frenzied swallow.
[1461] So much she spake, and then sped back and went within her prison. But in her heart she wailed her latest Siren song – like some Mimallon of Claros or babbler of Melancraera, Neso’s daughter, or Phician monster, mouthing darkly her perplexed words. And I came, O King, to announce to thee this the crooked speech of the maiden prophetess, since thou didst appoint me to be the warder of her stony dwelling and didst charge me to come as a messenger to report all to thee and truly recount her words.
But may God turn her prophecies to fairer issue – even he that cares for thy throne, preserving the ancient inheritance of the Bebryces.
