Book 2

2. Come now, daughter of Zeus, fair-ankled Phoebe, maiden of the golden girdle, twin offspring with Apollo, tell me which of men and mighty heroes lifted from your hand the far-famed lore of the hunt. About the feet of windy Pholoe the wild tribes, the beast-mingled tribes, men down to the loins, and from the loins below half-human horses, found in hunting their evening meal. Among men the first who reaped the Gorgon's neck, Perseus, the famous son of golden Zeus, devised it; but, raised on the swift wings of his feet, he seized both hares and jackals and the race of wild goats and swift gazelles and the breeds of antelopes and the very lofty heads of dappled deer. The mounted hunt the light-bringing Castor devised; and some he slew, striking straight with the well-aimed javelin, and others again, driving on swift horses, he took the beasts at the meeting-points of the midday course. For battles against beasts jagged-toothed hounds the Zeus-born Lacedaemonian Polydeuces first armed; for in boxing he slew dread men and with swift hounds he subdued the dappled beasts. Above all in the lists of the mountain contests the warlike son of Oeneus, Meleager, flashed forth. Nets again and nooses and the curved meshes first Hippolytus revealed to hunting men. And the famous daughter of Schoeneus, Atalanta, the boar-slaying maiden, found the winged death for beasts. Nightly snares, the all-cunning hunt of night, Orion, crafty of mind, first devised. So many were the strong leaders of the hunt of old. But many afterward keen love subdued; for no one, mastered by the goads of the lovely hunt, would willingly leave it again; unspeakable bonds hold him fast. How sweet is sleep upon the flowers in spring, and how sweet again in summer the lowly couch in a cave, and what delight there is on the crags for hunters to take their fill; and how great is the grace that attends them, as they themselves pluck the bloom of honey-sweet autumn; and the cold white water poured forth from the cave, what sweet drink and bath it is for the weary; and what welcome gifts they bring back in the thickets in sweet baskets from the goatfolds, the herdsmen.

But come now, let us first sing of the wholly jealous breed of bulls, and the countless and surpassing strife they waged, all wild, over the bridal-bed. One king, ruling the herd, far the best, lords it over the lesser bulls and the females; the herd trembles before its great horned leader, and the wild cattle dread their savage mate, whenever he bellows. But when, parted from the herd, another bull, stretching out his broad neck, goes off alone, himself a king ruling his own, then over them both an overpowering war is set. First, looking face to face at one another, they rage wildly with hot-tempered wrath and flash great fire, and breathe forth flame, and tear the earth with their feet, as if covering themselves with dust; from either side they challenge, crying sharply with warlike shouts. But when they have sounded the trumpet for the grievous battle, they rush unrestrained, and at once with their horns they wound each other's whole bodies in turn. And as in a sea-battle, when war upon the waves raises its strife, two ships pre-eminent, flashing with thick-set warriors against the foe, clash prow against prow face to face, driven by the fierce blast and the hands of the sailors; and about the bronze armour rings the din of men and of shattered ships; all Nereus groans with the swell; such a din from the bulls too reaches the sky, as they strike untiringly and are struck by the horns, until at last one wins the dear victory that turns the tide. But the loser bears no slavish yoke; ashamed and groaning heavily he comes to the shadowy wood; and alone among the crags, as the years come round, he feeds, withdrawn in the mountain-haunting thickets, like one in training; and when he sees his strength grown mighty and his power a match for the other, at once he cries out from the hills; and the other answers, and the wood resounds; but when he has taken courage in his stronger cries, then straight from the mountains he comes against his foe, and easily wins; for he has trained his body with pasture far off in the thickets, away from strength-marring Cythera.

Many are the forms and countless the ways of bulls. By the bright-fruited banks of Egypt's Nile, the wheat-bearing, many-channelled river, there are bulls snow-white in colour, by far the greatest of all in size; you would say a deep-keeled ship was moving over the land; gentle they are in spirit and familiar with men, for, since mortals tend them, kindly they submit. The Phrygian bulls are conspicuous in colour, yellow and flame-bright; deep is the flesh on their necks; and on top a rounded mane stands high aloft. A strange nature is fashioned in their horns; for they are not fixed firm above the head, but they slope their horns and bend them to either side. The Aonian are single-hoofed, a dappled breed, one-horned, and from the middle of the forehead a dread horn rises up. The Armenians have a double horn, but curling in shape, a great affliction, twisted backward with their spear-points. The Syrian bulls, the breed of the Chersonese, who dwell about steep, well-built Pella, are tawny, strong, great-hearted, broad-browed, field-haunting, sturdy, strong-horned, fierce of spirit, loud-bellowing, grim, jealous, broad-jawed; but they are not fat to weigh down their ample bodies, nor again lean and feeble in body; thus they bear the famous gifts of the gods, blended, both swift to run and strong to fight: those which, the tale was, Heracles, the son of Zeus, mighty in his labours, drove of old from Erytheia, when on Ocean he fought against Geryon and slew him on the crags; for he was to accomplish another labour, not for Hera nor at the commands of Eurystheus, but for his comrade Archippus, leader of holy Pella. For of old, before the feet of Emblonus, the whole plain was flooded; for great Orontes ever sped onward in haste, and forgot the grey sea, burning for the dark-eyed nymph, daughter of Ocean; he lingered among the rocks, and covered the fertile land, unwilling to leave the ill-starred longing for Meliboea. On both sides he was ringed round by encircling mountains, which on either hand stretched their heads against each other; from the east came the lofty form of Diocleium, and from the west the left horn of Emblonus, while he himself, rushing in the midst of the plains, ever swelling and journeying near the wall, poured his waters over the mainland and the island alike, my own city. Therefore the son of Zeus was straightway to measure out for both the streams with his club and his mighty hands, and to guide the waters apart from the plain, of the fair-tressed lake and the well-wheeling river. He performed a mighty labour, for he cut through the crown of the encircling mountains, and loosed the stony bonds, and let the river forth, belching at its outlets, swelling unrestrained and roaring wild, and guided it to the shores; and the loud sea roared, and the dark body of the Syrian beach resounded. Not such, on either side of the loud-roaring sea, are the two opposing rivers that descend with their fierce water; on one side the Ister, cutting the white reins of Boreas, through Scythia roars greatly everywhere on every hand, dragged along by cliffs and water-beaten headlands; on the other the holy stream of Egypt from Libya, breaking about it, makes the far-sounding sea tremble. So the great river Orontes gurgled round the shores with a terrible roar; and hugely the shores cried out as they received in their bays the swell of the new-come sea; and the dark-skinned, udder-rich land took breath, rising up from the wave, the new field of Heracles. Everywhere even now the fields wave with corn-ears, everywhere the works of oxen weigh down the teeming threshing-floors about the Memnonian shrine, where the Assyrian dwellers lament Memnon, the famous offspring of the early-born Dawn, whom once, when he came to help the sons of Priam, the bold husband of Deidameia swiftly subdued. But these wide beauties of our homeland we shall sing in due order with the lovely Pimpleian strain; now I turn back to the famous song of the hunt.

There is an irresistible breed among the murderous bulls, which they call Bisons; for they come from the homeland of Bistonian Thrace; and they have got such forms as these: a bristling mane they shake over their shoulders, on fat necks and about their soft chins; just as the shaggy lions, lords of beasts, yellow-haired and grim, have a conspicuous look; and the sharp points of their fire-tipped horns are like curved bronze hooks; but, not as in other beasts, opposite one another the points of the hateful horns lean crosswise, and the deadly goads look upward to the sky. Therefore, whenever they come up with and reach either a man or some beast, they lift it high aloft. Their tongue is narrow but exceedingly rough, like the work of iron-devouring iron; and with their tongue, drawing blood, they lick the flesh away.

Yes, and the earth has reared the breed of swift-footed deer, fair-horned, large-eyed, conspicuous, dapple-backed, spotted, splendid, river-crossing, high-headed, fat in the back and slender in the legs; worthless is the neck and very small again the tail; fourfold the nostrils, four the channels for the breath; feeble the heart and the spirit weak within, and the points of their horns rise up, but blunt; for never would they fight head to head, not against strong beasts, nor against grievous hounds, nor even against the very cowardly shaggy-shanked hares. But rough is the love of deer and great their Aphrodite, and their spirit toward the bed burns the whole day long, like that of the ever-rutting fighting cocks and all the flower-plumaged, feather-clad birds. In their flanks within, beneath the very belly, they hide twin ducts; and if one should cut these away, at once he makes the male a female, and reaps from its head the sharp-haired, much-wrought, dappled growth of horns. Not as with other beasts is the marriage-law for the bed of these, but strange desires are their care; for neither standing in the field-haunting glens, nor reclining on the low flowers of the grass do they bed in company with the female deer, but, running on swift feet, he overtakes her as she runs; and as she flees he seizes and holds his mate in his arms; yet even so he does not persuade her; carrying her husband on her back she steadily flees, with an utterly merciless heart; but he, following on his two nimble feet, does not let go his desire, and fulfils the laws of wedlock. But when afterward, as the months come round, the female gives birth, she avoids the path of men, because the trodden ways of mortals are profane to beasts. Above all among beasts they pride themselves on their splendour, the fair-horned males, having the much-wrought growth; for indeed when the well-cloven horns fall in their season, they dig a pit in the earth and bury them, so that no one may find them, meeting with them in the furrow; and they themselves hide in the innermost shaggy thickets, ashamed to appear before the beasts with such heads, bare, which before were raised aloft. Amphibious are deer; for they tread the dry land and also cross the sea, swimming in convoy with one another a seafaring voyage, when they make their way over the sea; in front one leads the deer along the lines, like a helmsman handling the rudder of a ship; and another, leaning his back behind upon him, follows with his neck and head, crossing the sea; and so, one bearing another, they cut the sea. But when first weariness seizes the one swimming, he leaves the line and comes to the rear of the column, and rests, leaning on another, a little from his toil; and another in turn takes the rudder and journeys over the sea; and all, as they swim, leaders by turns, with their feet, as with oars, row the dark water, and lift on high the lovely form of their horns, as if entrusting to the winds the sails of a ship. A relentless hatred toward one another they ever have, the whole race of serpents and of deer; and everywhere the deer in the mountain glens searches out the bold creeper. But when it sees, woven in long coils, the serpent's track, exulting greatly it comes near the den, and sets its nostrils to the hole, drawing on with fierce breath to battle the deadly reptile; and the one unwilling to fight it forces out by its breath from the innermost bed; for at once it sees its foe, and lifts high to the air its baleful neck; and it bares its white teeth, sharply bristling; and the venom-bearing beast clatters its jaws, hissing with thick-set whistlings. But straightway the deer, like one smiling, carves with its mouth the foe fighting in vain, and as it writhes about its knees and about its neck steadily devours it; and over the ground are poured many quivering, gasping remnants in slaughter. And you might soon pity, savage though it is, the flesh-eater, flung in much-mangled slaughter. On the borders of horse-feeding Libya there roams a vast, deadly, gleaming host of creeping things; but when the deer, reclining on the sandy headlands, is alone, at once from all sides the hostile swarm of countless serpents rushed upon it, and the hateful battalions, venom-bearing; and they fastened their bitter teeth in its hide, poured all about, standing round all the deer's joints; for some, turning their heads from above, gnaw with their jaws the brows and forehead, others the slender neck and the chest beneath and the flanks and belly they carve through with their mouths, others again cling to the ribs on either side, others feed upon the thighs and the back above, and one and another hangs fixed, hostile, from this side and that. But the deer, encompassed with pains of every kind, first wishes to escape on its swift feet, but has not the strength; such a marvellous throng, gleaming and ruinous, of creeping things besets it. Then, weighed down, it stands fast under strong necessity, and devours with its mouth the boundless hostile tribes, roaring with pain; and turning this way and that it ravages the creeping race, sparing none. And they do not let go, but, perishing, hold fast, having a stubborn heart in the shamelessness of their minds; and some it tears with its jaws, and others with its feet and hooves it slays, and over the earth runs endlessly the bloody ichor from the serpents; and the limbs of the beasts and their half-eaten joints quiver on the ground; others again, half-mangled, it crushes against its ribs; for even dead they still hold fast with their strong teeth, and only their heads, fixed in the hide, remain shut tight. But it, knowing the gift it has received from the god, searches everywhere for the dark stream of a river; there, having mastered crabs with its dear jaws, it has a self-taught remedy for the woeful ruin; and at once the remnants of the bitter beasts fall to the earth from its hide, rolling of themselves down past its feet, and the wounds on either side close up over the teeth. And the deer lives again a long time; and in truth the race of men has named it the four-crows-aged. Others again men call broad-horned; they are wholly deer, but above they bear such a nature of horns as the name proclaims to those beasts. And there are those they call iorci in the thickets; these too have the body of a deer, and on the back a hide all spotted they bear, all-dappled, just as the seal-marks of leopards gleam upon the skin. The Bubalus again is smaller in body than the broad-horned, smaller than the broad-horned, but far better than the gazelle; bright of eye, lovely of hue, fair to look upon; and his horns grow straight from the head, the points stretched forward, and then again up toward the back they bend backward with their inward-curving tips. Above all this tribe loves its own home, its familiar couches and its dear lair in the glens; and if hunters, having bound it with twisted snares, should lead it at once to other regions, and far off in the glens leave it free there, easily it comes back to its sweet home, where it dwelt, nor would it endure to wander, a stranger, in foreign lands. Not to men alone, then, is the homeland dear; some longing too is instilled in the hearts of the dappled beasts.

Yes, and the conspicuous breeds of the swiftest gazelles, their form, their size, and their strength we all know alike. The fierce partridges, fiery-eyed, gleaming-necked, have made friendship with the gazelles in the loved glens, and they are familiar and share one home with one another, and have their couches close, and do not feed apart. Truly afterward they soon tasted bitter comradeship and joyless friendship, when cunning men devised against the wretched creatures a clever thing, making the partridges a snare for their dear gazelles, and again the gazelles in turn a snare for their partridge friends. Of goats again and of sheep there are wild tribes, not much larger than these fleecy sheep and shaggy goats, but swift to run and strong to fight, armed on the head with twisted horns. The strength of the sheep again is in their grievous foreheads; often, charging in the thickets, they have laid even rushing boars gasping on the ground. There are times when, charging face to face at one another, they fight; and a mighty din reaches the sky; nor is it lawful for them to avoid the foe, but to bear off victory from one another is unshakable necessity, or to lie a corpse; such strife has arisen for them. In the wild goats there is, through the very teeth, a slender pipe of breath, in the midst of the horns, whence then straight to the very heart and lungs it goes; and if one should pour wax about a wild goat's horns, he has shut off the paths of life and the channels of breath. Above all the mother tends her young, still tender babes, her children; and in old age the children tend the mother. As mortals, when their father is fettered in the grievous bonds of old age, heavy in foot, shrunken of limb, feeble of hand, trembling of body, dim of sight, cherish him and hold him very dear above all, repaying the care of their own grievous rearing; so the kids of goats tend their dear parents when old, when the much-groaning bonds fetter their limbs; they offer them dewy, flowery fodder, plucked with their mouths; and drink with their lip-tips they bring from the river, drawing up the dark water; and tending all the body with their tongue they make it bright. And if you should take the mother alone in your snares, at once you would take in your hands also the new-suckling lambs; for you would think she was driving off her children with words, beseeching them with such bleatings from afar: "Flee from me, dear children, the foe-meeting hunters, lest, subdued, you make me a wretched, childless mother." You would think she said such things; and those standing before her first, you would say, sing a mournful strain about their mother, and then utter a human voice, breaking into a bleat, and from their mouths cry out such words, like those who speak and like those who beseech: "By Zeus we beseech you, by the Archer-goddess herself, release for me my dear mother, and accept this ransom, all that we, wretched, can bring for our pitiable mother, we, ill-fated; bend your savage heart, in reverence for the law of the blessed gods and your father's old age, if indeed a father is left to you in your gleaming home." Such things you would think they say in their pleading. But when they behold a heart utterly merciless, oh how great is their shame, how great their longing for their parents! self-bound they walk and of their own accord they pass over. There are yellow sheep at the farthest ends of Crete, in the low Gortynian land, four-horned; a purple fleece is wreathed about their skin, thick and not soft; it would soon rival a goat's with its rough hair, hard to handle, not a sheep's. Such a yellow-faced look the soubus has, gleaming in colour, but no longer shaggy, nor again fitted with four horns, but with two strong ones above its very broad forehead. Amphibious too is the soubus, for it also journeys by sea; for whenever it goes to the deep, cleaving the swift waves, then a great throng, journeying together over the sea, a fishy company, follows, and licks its joints, delighting in their dear horned one, the tender-skinned soubus. Above all the sea-breams and the worthless melanuri and the needle-fish and red mullets and lobsters follow round about. A marvel this was, a marvel unspeakable, when beasts are afflicted by strange longings and surpassing love-charms. For not only toward one another a law of equal love, a binding ordinance, did the god give, nor only so far that their tribe should grow up in everlasting life. A marvel, then, is that too, that mindless tribes are subdued by lovely bonds and learn kindred love-charms, and mingle in one another a desire they do not understand, just as for men understanding and mind opened the eyes and received love in the heart; but even in alien love-charms they rage on high. Such is the longing of the conspicuous deer for the woodcocks; how great upon the long-horned gazelles is the partridges' love; and how again in swift horses the bustards delight, whose ear is ever most shaggy; again the parrot and the wolf feed with one another; for ever the wolves long for the grass-coloured bird. Mighty Love, how great you are, how boundless your strength, how many things you devise, how much you rule, how much, O god, you play! The earth is fixed, yet by your shafts it is shaken; unstable is the sea, yet you have fixed even that; you came to the upper air, and great Olympus feared you; all things dread you, and the wide heaven above, and all that is beneath the earth, and the wretched tribes of the dead, who drew beneath their lips the soothing water of Lethe and fled all pains, yet still shudder at you. By your might you pass even far off, as far as the shining sun never beholds; and to your fire even the light yields, in fear, and the thunderbolts of Zeus alike yield. Such, O savage god, are the fiery arrows you have, piercing, ruinous, mind-destroying, maddening, breathing consumption, incurable, with which you have startled even the beasts themselves to unyoked desires. A marvel, when over the horned hind the winged woodcocks, leaping upon her dappled back, or the partridges on the gazelles, casting their thick wings, cool the sweat and soothe the spirit from the parching heat, fanning with their wings; or when before the loud-hoofed horse there goes the bustard, gliding lovely through the air, and the saragi fall upon the goatfolds; and about the soubus the whole wandering tribe of swimming creatures is stirred, and all follow together, when it cleaves the wild waves, and crowd together on either side rejoicing, and around the sea foams, shaken with their white fins; but it, caring nothing for the strange friendship, all-lawless, devours its sea-companions with bloody jaws, feasting; and they, seeing their doom before their eyes, not even so do they hate it, nor leave the slayer. Wretched soubus, evil-doer, against you yourself hereafter the hunters will prepare a sea-borne destruction, crafty though you are and a slayer of fish.

There is a sharp-horned beast that haunts the thickets, the fierce-spirited oryx, most chilling to beasts; its colour is like spring milk, only about the face with darkening cheeks; double behind are its haunches, fat with suet; and the sharp points of its horns rise up aloft, piercing, with a dark-coloured look, and they are stronger than sharpened bronze and chilling iron and jagged stone; and they say that nature is venom-bearing in those horns. The spirit again of the oryx is overweening and harsh; for it does not tremble at the barking of the keen-scented hound, nor at the snorting of the field-haunting boar among the crags, nor does it flee the strong bellowing of the bull, nor shudder at the joyless cry of leopards, nor flee the great roaring of the lion himself, nor heed men, in the shamelessness of its mind; often on the slopes a strong man has perished, a hunter, meeting the bloody oryx. But when the oryx beholds a strong-hearted beast, either a tusked boar or a jagged-toothed lion, or the deadly boldness of chilling bears, at once on the ground it droops its head and presses its forehead wholly down, stretched out, and fixing its bitter darts by the ground awaits the charging one, and slays it, killing first. For tilting its little horned forehead aslant, watching with sharper weapons, it falls upon the beast; but the beast cares not, and charges straight, irresistible, bristling with rage, pressing itself upon the sharp points. And as when, in the thickets, with a lion charging, a brave man graced with the gifts of Artemis, holding a flashing spear in his strong hands, stands firm with legs well astride, and receives the wild raging beast on the two-edged bronze held out before him; so the oryxes await the charging beasts then, self-slain, mastered by their own folly; for easily the points slip into their breasts, and much dark blood from the wounds on either side, pouring out, they soon lick with their tongues; nor is it possible for them to escape, even if they wish; but they destroy one another with mutual slaughter. And some field-dweller, or a herdsman, or some ploughman, meeting the twin corpses beside his feet, has a happy catch, with a heart of great wonder.

Next among the horned beasts it is fitting to sing the breeds of countless elephants; for they have in their jaws two overweening weapons, like tusks rising to the sky; others say these are the deadly teeth of the multitude, straying in error; but we are pleased to call them horns; for thus the nature of horns declares to us. The signs are not obscure to mark them apart; for in beasts the growths from the jaws above, all those that are horny, dart upward; but if they droop downward, plainly they are teeth. In those twin elephant horns the roots first grow from the head, great from the great, as in beasts; and then below, hidden by the hide, meeting at the temples, they are thrust into the jaw; and bared of the jaw they have given to most men a false notion of teeth. Yes, and another sign clear to men there was; for all the teeth in beasts are unbending, nor do they yield to art, but remain unsoftened; which, if the horn-carver should wish to make broad, they refuse outright; and if they are forced, they break short, unyielding; but from horns round bows and countless works are wrought; so those horns, which they call teeth, yield to be bent and widened by the ivory-cutters. The size of these beasts is such as no other beast upon the earth bears; you would say, seeing an elephant, that either a peak of a boundless mountain or a dread cloud bearing a storm for wretched men was journeying over the dry land. Mighty is the head upon smaller ears, hollow and smooth; but the eyes are smaller than that body warrants, great though they be. Between them runs out a great nose, slender and curved, which they call the trunk. This is the beast's hand; with this they do what they wish easily. But the measure of the feet is not equal; for in front they are lifted much higher. The hide again, hard to handle, covers the body, uncloven and strong, which not even the mighty, sharpened, all-subduing iron could cut through. Its spirit is boundless in the shadowy wood, savage; but among mortals it is tame and kind to men. In the green, many-slope glens it has stretched the oaks and wild olives and the high-headed breeds of date-palms, roots and all, upon the ground, striking them with its sharpened, boundless jaws; but when it comes into the strong hands of men, it forgets its spirit, and its savage heart leaves it; it endures the yoke and takes the bridle in its lips, and carries children on its back, masters of its tasks. There is a report that elephants speak to one another, muttering a human voice from their mouths; but the beast's cry is not audible to all, and only the men who tame them hear it. A marvel too I have heard, that the mightiest elephants have a prophetic heart in their breasts, and in their spirit know the necessity of their own death that is at hand. Not among birds alone, then, are there the prophetic swans that sing their last lament, but among beasts also this tribe, foreseeing its own end of death, makes ready its dirge.

The Rhinoceros has a body not much larger than the darting oryx, but a little above the tip of its nose there rises a dread horn, sharpened, a savage blade; with it, charging, it would pierce through bronze, and, wounding, would cleave a strong ravine. Even the strong elephant, when it has charged at it, it has often laid such a corpse in the dust. Faintly upon its yellow, fair-haired forehead and on its back the spots gleam purple in rows. All are males, and never is a female seen; and from where, I have not learned; but I tell as I have learned, whether from rock this deadly tribe has come, or whether they are earth-born and rise up from the ground, or whether from one another, a savage wonder, they are born without desires and without marriage and without birth. Already too in the wet depths of the water-traversing sea self-made and motherless tribes are bred, oysters and feeble small fry and the breeds of conchs, shells and whelks, which are born in the sands.

Dear Muse, it is not lawful for me to sing of small things; leave the worthless beasts, those that no strength attends, the grey-eyed panthers and the evil-doing wild cats, which arm themselves in dwelling-houses, and the small, tender, feeble dormice; these for the whole wintry season remain with eyes shut, their bodies drunk with sleep; luckless, neither taking food nor seeing the light; in their dens they have such sleep that they lie like corpses, having drawn a wintry doom. But when the first eyes of spring laugh, and the flowers in the meadows newly come to bloom, they move their sluggish bodies from the innermost lair, and open their eyes and behold the light of the sun, and remember the new delight of sweet food, and again they become alive and once more are dormice. I leave also the shaggy race of the worthless squirrel, which in the flaming hours of midsummer raises its tail as a shelter, a self-roofing dwelling; just as the peacocks shade their splendid form, painted, conspicuous, dapple-backed; than which the counsel of Zeus has devised nothing more delightful for men to behold with bright eyes, neither among all that walks the all-bountiful mother earth, nor all that journeys on wings through the wide air, nor all that cuts the wild waves in the deep; so upon those conspicuous birds there gleams fire blended with purpling gold, ablaze. I will not tell of the chilling race of the jagged hedgehog, the smaller kind; for to the sharp-haired hedgehogs belong twin grievous forms and a chilling encircling fence; for some are small and worthless, bristling with little jutting spines; but others are far greater in size, and on either side bristle sharp with stronger points. I leave the threefold breeds, the evil likeness, of apes; for who would not loathe such a race, shameful to behold, feeble, hateful, hard to look upon, of shifting counsel? They, having borne two ill-shaped dear children, do not divide their love equally between the two, but love the one and hate the other in their wrath; and in the very arms of their parents the loved one dies. Nor indeed do the songs wish to sing of the earth-born tribes of moles, grass-eating and blind, even if an unbelievable rumour has crossed to men that the moles boast descent from the blood of king Phineus, whom the famous Thracian hill reared; for once Phaethon the Titan was angry with Phineus, wroth over the victory of prophetic Phoebus, and robbed him of his light, and sent the shameless tribes, the Harpies, winged, bitter, hearth-haunting breeds. But when, journeying after the golden prize on the Argo, toiling with Jason, the two famous sons of Boreas, Zetes and Calais, pitied the old man and then slew those tribes, and gave sweet food to his wretched mouth. Yet not even so did Phaethon lull his anger, but at once he made him a race of moles that were not before; therefore now it remains blind and ravenous in its feeding.