Book 1

1. Of brother battle-lines, and reigns contested in alternation through unholy hatreds, and guilty Thebes laid bare, a Pierian fire falls on my mind: from where do you bid me begin, you goddesses? Shall I sing the origins of that dread race, the Sidonian rape and the inexorable pact of Agenor's law, and Cadmus searching the seas? Long is the chain that stretches back, if I should trace the trembling farmer of buried war, who sowed unspeakable battles in his furrows, and follow it deep — by what song Amphion bade the Tyrian mountains draw near to make his walls, whence came Bacchus's heavy wrath against his kindred city, what was the work of cruel Juno, against whom unhappy Athamas took up his bow, why the mother, doomed to fall with her companion Palaemon, did not dread the vast Ionian sea; and so for now I will let the griefs and the prosperous days of Cadmus pass: let the boundary of my song be the troubled house of Oedipus, since I would not yet dare to breathe of Italian standards, of triumphs in the North, of the Rhine twice brought beneath the yoke, the Danube twice subdued by law, and the Dacians hurled down from their sworn ridge, or the wars of Jove defended first in years scarcely past boyhood, and you, O glory added to the Latin name, whom Rome, as you take up early your father's fresh beginnings, desires to be forever her own — though every narrower boundary should drive the stars, and the bright tract of heaven sue for you, the region free of the Pleiades, of the North Wind, and of cleaving lightning, though the curber of the fire-footed horses should himself press upon your hair his radiant bow, or great Jupiter yield to you an equal share of the pole — remain content with the reins of men, master of waves and earth, and let the stars be your gift. A time will come when, stronger in Pierian frenzy, I shall sing your deeds: now I tune my lyre, content to tell the Aonian arms, the scepter ruinous to two tyrants, the rage that knew no measure even after death, the rebellious flames in the strife of the pyre, the funerals of kings deprived of tombs, and cities emptied by reciprocal slaughter, when blue Dirce blushed with Lernaean blood and Thetis shuddered as Ismenos, used to grazing his parched banks, came down to her with a mighty heap of corpses. Which of the heroes, Clio, will you give me first? Tydeus, boundless in his rage? Or the prophet, suddenly engulfed and crowned with laurel? Wild Hippomedon also presses on, driving before him a river choked with the enemy slain; and there are the wars of the bold Arcadian, to be wept for, and Capaneus, who must be sung with another dread.

Now, having searched out his guilty eyes with deserving hand, Oedipus had plunged his condemned shame in everlasting night and dragged out his life beneath a lingering death; yet as he hid himself in the dark, in the recess of his deepest seat, guarding a household unseen by heaven and its rays, still around him on tireless wings flew the cruel daylight of his mind, and in his breast the Furies of his crimes. Then he displays his empty sockets, that raw and pitiable punishment of life, to heaven, and with bloodied hands beats the hollow ground and prays in this savage voice: 'You gods who rule guilty souls and Tartarus narrow with its torments, and you, Styx, livid in your shadowy depth, whom I behold, and Tisiphone, so often summoned at my call, favor me; smile upon my perverse prayers. If I have earned anything well — if, when I fell from my mother, you cherished me in your lap and steadied my feet pierced by the wound; if I sought the Cirrhaean pools that lie between the twin-horned ridge, when I might have lived content with a false Polybus; if in the narrow strait of three-forked Phocis I tangled with the aged king and cut through the cries of the screaming old man while I searched for my father; if, by your prompting, I cunningly unraveled the riddling ambiguities of the unjust Sphinx; if I gladly entered upon sweet madness and the lamentable marriage of my mother, and again and again endured that unspeakable night, and fathered children for you — as you yourself know — and then, greedy for punishment, with my own self-rending fingers fell upon my eyes and left them in my wretched mother: hear me, if what I pray is fitting, and such as you yourself might prompt a madman. The sons I begot on whatever bed, left fatherless and stripped of his eyes and crown, they did not try to guide, nor to soften my grief with words; nay, look — proud, and (the pity of it!) already kings over my living burial, they mock my darkness and loathe their father's groans. Am I death-bringing even to these? And does the idle father of the gods look on at all this? You at least, due avenger, come here, and begin the punishment of all my descendants. Set on your brow the diadem that I, soaked in gore, tore off with bloodied nails, and, urged by a father's prayers, go between the brothers, let the bonds of kinship be cleft apart by the sword. Grant, queen of the Tartarean pit, the unspeakable thing I long to have seen, and the minds of the young men will not be slow to follow; only come worthy of yourself — you will know them for my offspring.'

As he spoke thus, the cruel goddess turned her stern face toward him. She chanced to be sitting beside the unlovely Cocytus, and had loosed the snakes from her head to let them lap the sulphurous waters; at once, swifter than the fire of Jove or falling stars, she leapt up from the gloomy banks: the empty crowd withdraws and dreads to meet its mistress; she, through the shadows and the fields dim with the swarm of souls, seeks the irreversible threshold of the Taenarian gate. Daylight felt her coming; Night, facing her in a pitch-black cloud, threw her shining horses into confusion; far off, towering Atlas shuddered and let the sky slip on his faltering neck. At once, rising again from the valley of Malea, she seizes the familiar road to Thebes: for no other ways does she travel, going and returning, more swiftly, nor does she prefer her kindred Tartarus. A hundred horned serpents standing upright shadowed her face, the menacing throng of her dread head; deep within sat an iron light in her eyes, such as the toil of Phoebe reddens through the clouds by Thessalian craft; her skin, steeped in venom, is stretched taut and swells with corruption; a fiery breath comes from her black mouth, by which long thirst and sickness and hunger and a single death come upon whole peoples; on her back stiffens a horrid robe, and the dark-blue knots meet again across her breast: Atropos and Proserpina herself renew this attire. Then in her wrath she shakes both hands: this one flashes with the fire of the pyre, that one lashes the air with a living water-snake.

When she stood where Cithaeron rises sheerest from its crag to meet the sky, with her green hair she doubled her wild hissing — a signal to the lands, by which all the shores of the Achaean sea and the realms of Pelops echoed far and wide: mid-heaven's Parnassus heard it, and rugged Eurotas, and the crash drove wavering Oeta upon its ridge to one side, and the Isthmus scarcely held back its twin seas. The mother herself snatched away her son Palaemon as he wandered on his curving dolphin, and pressed him to her breast.

And when, headlong, she first halted on the Cadmean summit and infected the household with her accustomed cloud, straightway in the brothers' hearts rose troubled passions, and an ancestral fury entered their minds, and envy sick at another's joy, and fear, the parent of hatred; then the savage love of ruling, the alternations broken, and ambition impatient of a second turn, and the sweetness of standing alone at the summit, and discord, the companion of shared kingdoms. So when the farmer seeks to yoke chosen bullocks from the wild herds together beneath the plow, they, indignant — bulls whose lofty necks have not yet sunk into their knotted shoulders under much plowing — pull in opposite directions, slacken the bonds with equal strength, and confound the furrows with a wandering line: not otherwise does headlong discord goad on the untamed brothers. It was agreed to exchange their ruler by exile under the law of alternate years; thus by a malignant rule they bid fortune pass between them, so that the one holding the scepter should always be pressed, by a hurried pact, by a new heir. This was the brothers' love, this the only delay to battle, nor would it endure into the second king's reign. Not yet did golden paneled ceilings gleam thick with metal, nor halls upheld high on Grecian marble shine, spacious enough to spread out crowds of clients; no spears watched over the uneasy sleep of kings, no guards groaned at their alternating shifts of arms, no care to set gems afloat in unmixed wine, or defile gold with food: but naked power armed the brothers; the fight is over a beggar kingdom. And while it is disputed which of them should turn over the squalid acres of cramped Dirce, or, no higher on the throne of a Tyrian exile, exult, right and law and good have perished, and all shame of life and death. To what end do you stretch your wrath, ah, wretched ones? What if the boundaries of either pole were sought by such great crime — the bounds that the Sun, sent forth from the Eastern gate, beholds, and that he beholds again sinking toward the Iberian harbor, and whatever lands he touches afar with his slanting beam, remote, whether cold under the North Wind or warm and drenched with the fire of the South? Not if the wealth of Phrygia and of Tyre were brought together under one rule. The dreadful place and the accursed citadels sufficed for their hatred, and to have sat, bought with monstrous madness, in the seat of Oedipus.

Now the honor, deferred by lot, had passed from Polynices. What, then, was that day to you, cruel one — what day was it, when alone in the empty hall you looked round and saw all the right was yours, and all men lesser than you, and nowhere a head that stood your equal? Already the murmurs of the Echionian people creep abroad, and the silent crowd sets itself against its prince, and (as is the way of peoples) the one to come is loved. And someone, whose mind was bent to wound the great with humble poison, and who would never bear willingly the rulers set on his neck, said: 'Has harsh fate brought this turn upon Ogygian affairs, so often to change our dreaded masters and bend our doubting necks beneath an alternating yoke? Divided, they twist the destinies of peoples and with their hands have made fortune fickle. Shall I always in turn be made to serve exiles? On you, highest of the gods and sower of the lands, did it settle to put this purpose into the partners? Or is it from this that the old omen for Thebes extends, ever since Cadmus, an exile, bidden to seek through Carpathian waters the alluring weight of the Sidonian bullock — and sought in vain — found a kingdom across the Hyantean fields, and from the gaping of the teeming earth sent down the augury of fraternal battle-lines to his late descendants?' You see how, with menacing brow, power risen up, fiercer now its consort is removed, threatens raised on high; what threats it carries on its face, with what pride it crushes all! Will this one ever be a private man? Yet that other, to a suppliant, was gentle and kind in speech and more patient of what is fair. What wonder? He was not alone. We, a cheap rabble, our hands ready for every chance, prepared for whatever master, just as on this side the cold North Wind, on that the cloud-bringing East drag the sails, and the fortune of the ship between them wavers — alas, the harsh lot held suspended in uncertain fear, to be endured by no people! — this one commands, that one threatens.'

But at Jove's command, above the halls of the swift heaven, in the inner pole, a chosen company had gathered to the council of the gods. From there all things lie close at hand — the homes of the first dawn and the setting sun, and all that is spread beneath every land and sea by day. The lofty god himself enters among the gods, shaking all things yet with a calm face, and takes his place on a star-bright throne: nor at once did the heaven-dwellers dare, until the father himself with a tranquil hand bade them have leave to sit. Soon the throng of wandering demigods, and the Rivers kindred to the highest clouds, and the Winds, keeping their murmurs pressed down in fear, fill the golden halls; the vaults tremble, mingled with the majesty of the gods; the rooftops shine with a greater calm, and the doorposts flower with a secret light. After quiet was commanded and the awe-struck world fell silent, he begins from on high — a grave and unalterable weight attends the holy words, and the fates follow his voice: 'I complain of the crimes of earth and the mind of mortals, insatiable to the Furies: to what point shall I be wearied out in punishing the guilty? It tires me to rage with the flashing thunderbolt; long since the laboring arms of the Cyclopes grow faint, and the fires fail on the Aeolian anvils. And so I had borne the horses of the Sun let loose under a false driver, and the heaven scorched by the wandering wheels, and the world laid waste by Phaethon's embers — nothing was gained; nor that you, brother, gave the sea to go far through the forbidden with your strong trident. Now I come down to punish two houses, whose blood I myself begot. One splits off to Perseus's Argos, the other flows from its source to Aonian Thebes. The same mind set upon all remains: who could be ignorant of the funerals of Cadmus, and how the host of Eumenides, so often roused from their lowest seats, has made war — the wicked joys of mothers, the wild wanderings of the groves, and the crimes of the gods that must not be told? Scarce in a day's space, scarce in a fled night could I number their ways and their unhallowed race. Nay, even to climb his father's chamber this impious heir desired, and to defile the womb of his guiltless mother, turned back — a monstrous thing! — to his own beginnings. Yet he paid the gods eternal atonement and cast away the day, and no longer feeds on our upper air; but his sons — a deed without precedent! — trampled his fallen eyes. Now, now you have your prayers fulfilled, dreadful old man! Your darkness has earned, has earned the right to hope for Jove as avenger. New arms I shall hurl upon the guilty realms, and tear up by the root the whole deadly stock. Let the seeds of war be for me Adrastus the father-in-law, and the marriages joined under sinister gods. This race too it is decreed to assail with punishments; for not from my secret heart have treacherous Tantalus and the outrage of the cruel banquet perished.'

So the almighty father; but she, wounded by his words, turning over in her inflamed heart an unforeseen grief, Juno replies thus: 'Do you bid me, O most just of the gods, do you bid me make war? You know how I have always favored the citadels of the Cyclopes and the scepter of great Phoroneus, famed in renown, with men and with wealth, though there, shameless, you put to death by sleep and slaughter the guardian of the Pharian heifer, and entered, turned to gold, the walled towers. Your lying beds I pardon: it is that city I hate. Whose face you openly own when you approach, where you wield the thunder, the sign of our great bed, and brandish my own lightnings. Let Thebes pay for its deeds: why do you choose Argos for your enemy? Nay, come — if the discord of the sacred chamber is so great, raze with arms both Samos and ancient Mycenae, overthrow Sparta to the ground. Why anywhere on a festal day does the altar of your wife grow warm with blood, why with a heap of Eastern incense does it glow rejoicing? Better do Mareotic Coptos and the mourning streams of the Nile of Acrisius smoke with vows to you. But if peoples atone for the ancient crimes of their founders, and this late sentence comes to the aid of your concerns — to review the old age of the world, at what time at last it is enough to abolish the frenzies of the earth and to amend the ages back — then long since begin from those abodes, where the wave-wandering Alpheus glides past, seeking far away his Sicilian love. Here the Arcadians — and there is no shame in it — have set your shrines in unholy places; there the Martial chariot of Oenomaus, and a herd more fit to be stabled under Getic Haemus, where even now the broken faces of the unburied suitors stiffen among the scattered remains. Yet here the honor of a temple is welcome to you; you favor guilty Ida and Crete, which lies of your ghost. As for me standing on Tantalus's lands — what envy is this at last? Turn aside the tumults of war and have pity on your own race. Wide are the impious realms you have, which will better bear guilty sons-in-law.'

Juno had ended, mingling reproaches with her prayers. But he, not grieved by her words, though they were harsh in their stirring, made this reply: 'Indeed I did not think you would bear with a kindly mind whatever I should resolve concerning your Argos, however justly, nor, if the chance were given, does it escape me that you would say much in defense of Thebes, and that Dione would dare to speak. But reverence for our authority forbids it. For by the dread waters, the Stygian streams of my brother, I swear — a word abiding and beyond recall — nothing shall be that can bend me from my decree! Therefore go, swift on your wings; go before the winds that bear you, offspring of Cyllene, gliding through the clear air and into the shadowy realms, and say to my uncle: let aged Laius raise himself to the upper airs — Laius, whom, slain by his son's wound, the farther bank of deep Lethe has not yet received by the law of Erebus; let him bear my commands to his dread grandson: his brother, relying on exile and swollen with the Argive welcome that he himself willingly seeks, let the impious one bar far from his hall, denying him the alternate honor of the kingdom. Hence will come the causes of wrath; the rest I shall lead on in a fixed order.'

The son of Atlas obeys his father's words, and then swiftly binds to his feet the winged sandals, shrouds his hair, and tempers the stars with his hat. Then he set in his right hand the wand by which he was used to drive away or to summon again sweet sleep, by which to enter black Tartarus and to give life to the bloodless shades; he leapt down, and as the thin air caught him, he shivered. Without delay, sublime, in headlong flight he cuts through the void and marks the clouds with a vast arc.

Meanwhile the son of Oedipus, long a wandering exile from his native shores, ranges by stealth through the deserts of Aonia, and even now in his heart he conceives the kingdom ill owed to him, and groans that the long year stands still while its signs delay. One care, returning by day and by night, holds the man: whether he might ever see his brother step down, humbled, from the throne, while he himself takes possession of Thebes and its wealth; for this light he would bargain his life. Now he complains of the slow losses of his exile, but soon he lifts up a leader's pride, and proud, with his brother now cast down, he thinks himself enthroned: anxious hope draws out his mind and consumes his joys in long desire. He is then resolved to make the journey, undaunted, to the Inachian cities and the fields of Danaus and Mycenae, dark with the broken sun, whether the Fury leads him on before, or it was the chance of the road, or unmoved Atropos called him this way. He leaves the caverns howled over by the Ogygian frenzies and the hills fattened with Bacchic blood, then passes the tract where Cithaeron, gently sitting, stretches out into the plain and slopes its weary mountain to the sea; from there, hanging by a narrow path on the cliffs, he leaves behind the infamous rocks of Sciron and the Scyllaean lands ruled by the purple-haired old man, and gentle Corinth, and in the midst of the plains hears the two shores.

And now Titanis, rising over the borders of the spent Sun-god, borne up high over a silent world, had thinned the cold air with her dew-bearing pair of horses: now flocks and birds fall silent, now Sleep has crept upon greedy cares and nods, leaning down from the sky, bringing the welcome forgetfulness of life's labor. But the clouds gave no promise that the gleam would return to the crimson sky, nor, as the shadows thinned, did the long twilight shine with Phoebus thrown back: denser from the earth, and pierced by no flame, black night weaves a curtain beneath the poles. Now the barriers of frozen Aeolia, struck, resound, and the storm to come threatens with hoarse voice; the winds, roaring crosswise, clash, and tear the firmament from its uprooted hinge, while each seizes the sky for himself; but most of all the South Wind heaps up the night, twisting its dark folds, and pours down rains, which rough Boreas with his dry maw freezes hard beforehand; nor any less do the sudden lightnings quiver, and the aether, rubbed, is split by a sudden flame. Now Nemea, now the high heads of Arcadia, bordering the Taenarian groves, run wet; in a great column rushes down Inachus, and Erasmus rising into its icy floods. Streams once dusty and dried-up no delays held back with banks, and Lerna was poured back to its depths in pools and foamed with its ancient venom. Every grove is broken; the gales tear the ancient arms of the forests, and the summer haunts of shady Lycaeus, beheld by no suns through all the ages, lay open. But he, now marveling at the rocks that fled from the cracked ridges, now fearing in his ear the cloud-born torrents from the mountains, and the homes of shepherds and of flocks snatched up everywhere by the mad whirlwind, no less frantic and uncertain of his way, through the black silences drains his vast journey; fear strikes him on every side, and on every side his brother. And as a sailor caught on the wintry sea, to whom neither the sluggish Wain nor the Moon with a friendly star shows the way, stands helpless of reason amid the tumult of sky and sea, and now, now expects either the rocks sunk in the malignant shallows, or that the foaming crags should rush upon the upreared prow with their sharp peak: so the Cadmean hero, threading the dark of the woods, hastens, shaking with his vast shield-boss the fearful dens of the beasts, and breaking the thickets with his bent chest; the grim force of fear gives spurs to his spirit, until from the Inachian dwellings, the gloom conquered, the Larissaean height flashed out, pouring its light upon the sloping walls. Roused by it with all hope, he flies forth, keeping on his left the Junonian temples of lofty Prosymna, on the other side the black pools of the Lernaean shallows, marked by the heat of Hercules; and at last he is borne through the unbarred gates, and straightway sees the royal vestibule. Here he flings down his limbs, stiff with rain and wind, and leaning on the doorposts of the unknown hall, invites scant sleep to his hard couch.

There ruled the people Adrastus, a king in tranquil times, from the middle limit of life inclining toward old age, rich in ancestors and tracing his descent from Jove on both sides of his blood. He lacked the better sex, but flourished in female offspring, supported by the twin pledge of his daughters. To him Phoebus had foretold — a deadly thing to tell, though afterward the faith was made clear — with fate as guide, that sons-in-law would come, a bristling boar and a tawny lion; this neither the father himself, nor Amphiaraus, learned in things to come, can read, for Apollo the author forbids it; only, settled in his heart, the care grows sick in the parent. But behold, leaving ancient Calydon by fate, Olenian Tydeus — the horror, conscious of his brother's blood, drives him on — under the same drowsy night treads the same wild places, and complaining of the like winds and rains, bearing on his back the ice melted and his face and hair streaming with the storm-clouds, enters under one roof, of which the earlier guest, sprawled on the cold ground, held the better part. Here indeed fortune brought to both a bloody madness: they would not suffer their fellow to share the night under the same shelter; a little while, in alternating words and threats, they hesitate; soon, when the bandied speeches had swollen their wrath enough, then indeed each, drawn up, bared his shoulders and provoked the contest hand to hand. That one was taller in stride, with long limbs, and at the same time whole in his years; but in strength his spirit bears Tydeus no lower, and the greater valor, poured through all his frame, reigned in his small body. Now they redouble their crowding blows about the face and the hollow temples, straining, like a hail of weapons or the storm of Riphaean hail, and with bent knee they batter the unguarded flanks. Not otherwise than when his own festivals return for the Pisaean Thunderer, and the dust burns with the raw sweat of men; and on this side the rivalry of the arena rouses the tender youths, and the shut-out mothers await the prizes: so, eager with hatred and kindled by no desire of praise, they rush together, and the hooked hand searches out the deepest of the face and enters, the eyes giving way, deep within. And perhaps — for so their wrath was carrying them — they would have bared the swords girt at their sides, and better, mourned by your brother, slain by hostile arms, you would have lain, young man of Thebes, had not the king, marveling at the strange clamor and the groans hissing from the deep breast amid the shadows of night, moved his steps — the king whose old age, sober with great cares, hung on a sleep already poorer. And as he came forward through the lofty halls with many lights, the bars drawn back at the facing threshold, he sees a sight terrible to tell: faces torn, and cheeks foul with a bloody shower: 'What is the cause of your fury, foreign youths — for none of my own citizens would dare raise his hands to such a deed — what implacable passion is this to drive out with hatred the tranquil silences of the night? Is the day so cramped, and so grievous, that you cannot for a little suffer peace in your mind and sleep? But declare at last: whence are you sprung, where do you bear your journey, what is your quarrel? For you no humble men, such great wrath teaches, and the great signs of a proud lineage shine through the spilled blood.'

Scarcely had he spoken, when, with mingled outcry, glaring sidelong, they begin together: 'O king, gentlest of the Achaeans, what need of words? Do you yourself behold these faces streaming with blood?' These things, here and there, with the confused sounds of their bitter voices, they jumbled out: then, beginning in order, Tydeus went on: 'Desiring solace for my mournful misfortune, I left the wealth of monster-breeding Calydon and the Acheloian fields. Lo, this vast night covers me in your borders; who is this who forbade me to keep the sky off by a roof? Or is it because I first chanced to set my steps toward this threshold? They tell us the two-formed Centaurs share a stable together, and the Cyclopes in Aetna are settled as one; and even on savage monsters laws are imposed, and a right of their own: shall we not share the lodgings of the earth? — But why do I? Either today, whoever you are, you will go off rejoicing in your spoils, or you will find me — if my blood, worn out, is not numbed by a sudden grief — sprung from the stock of great Oeneus, and not degenerate from my father Mars.' 'Nor do we lack in spirit or in stock' — he answers in turn; but his mind, conscious of its fate, hesitates to declare his father. Then gentle Adrastus: 'Nay, come, and laying aside the threats that the night and the sudden chance, or your valor or your wrath, advised, come beneath my roof; now let your right hands join together as pledges of your hearts. Not in vain is this done, nor with the gods absent; perhaps a love to come has sent these wraths before it, so that the remembering may be sweet.' Nor in vain did the old man speak his words, since they say that by this faith, joined through their wounds, those two went on — as great as it shared its end with bold Pirithous and Theseus, or as Orestes, his mind empty, escaped the raging Megaera with Pylades set against her. Then too, while the king with his words soothed their harsh hearts, now grown easy — as the seas, contested by the winds, subside, and yet a surviving breeze lingers long, dying upon the slackened sails — they suffered themselves, and went beneath the household roof.

Here first he has leisure to survey with his eyes the dress of the men and their great weapons: on the back of this one he sees an empty lion bristling, its mane unkempt on either side, in the likeness of that one which through the Teumesian valley the son of Amphitryon, broken in his youthful years, had clothed himself in before the battle of the Cleonaean monster; on the other side, dreadful with bristles and curving tusk, the spoils struggle to wind around Tydeus's broad shoulders, the glory of Calydon. The old man stands fixed, amazed at the great omen, recognizing the divine oracles of Phoebus and the warnings given from the speaking caverns; in his gaze he holds his cold lips, and a glad shudder ran through his limbs; he felt that they were brought by a manifest power to be present — those whom Apollo the augur, in tangled riddles, had declared would be portended as his sons-in-law, with the deceiving face of beasts. Then thus, stretching his palms to the stars: 'Night, you who, embracing the labors of earth and sky, send the fiery stars across in their many-wandering glide, indulgent to renew the spirit, until the next Titan pours over the weary the nimble risings for living things, you of your own accord bring me the faith I sought through tangled wanderings, kindly one, and uncover the beginnings of an ancient fate: stand by my work and confirm your omens. Forever honored, when the years' orbits are measured out, this house will worship you; for you, goddess, dark herds with chosen necks shall be sacrificed, and the Vulcanian fire, drenched with new milk, shall consume the lustral entrails. Hail, ancient faith of the tripods and the obscure recesses! I have caught you, Fortune, and the gods!' So he spoke, and binding both by their hands, he goes forward to the dwellings of the inner hall. The fires on the altars still kept their slumbering ash and the offerings of the warm rite; he bids the hearths be kindled and the fresh feast restored; the servants, obedient to his words, hasten eagerly; the palace, struck, clamors with varied tumult: some cover with purple the slender couches that sound with gold, and lay the high tapestries upon them; others smooth with their hands the polished tables and set them in order. But others, undertaking to conquer the darkness and the murky night, stretch out the cords on the gilded lamps. For some the task is to roast on inserted iron the bloodless flesh of the slaughtered beasts; for some, to heap in baskets the corn ground on the stone; Adrastus rejoices that his house seethes with service. And now he himself shone in proud coverings, propped on an ivory throne. In another part the young men, their wounds dried with water, recline, and at the same time look on the faces marred with marks, and in turn forgive each other. Then the aged king bids Acaste — she who was the nurse of his daughters, and the same their most faithful guardian, chosen to conceal the holy shame owed to chaste Venus — be summoned, and murmurs into her silent ear.

No delay to his commands, when straightway both the maidens came forth from the secret chamber: a wondrous sight, they bear faces equal to those of arms-clashing Pallas and quivered Diana, only with less terror; then the new sight of men seemed to them a thing for modesty: equally pallor and blush drained their crimson cheeks, and their shy eyes returned to their holy father, after, when in the order of the meal hunger was conquered, the son of Iasus by custom asked his servants for a bowl finished with figures and gleaming with gold, from which Danaus and the elder Phoroneus were used to pour libation to the gods; this holds carved images of deeds: a golden winged one holds the snake-haired Gorgon with neck cut off, and now, now into the wandering airs — so it seemed — he leaps; she barely moves her heavy eyes and languishing face, and grows pale even in the living gold. On this side the Phrygian hunter is lifted up on tawny wings, Gargara sinks as he rises and Troy recedes, his companions stand mournful, and the dogs in vain weary their sounding mouths, and seek the shadow and bark at the clouds. This bowl, pouring out the foaming wine, he uses to invoke in order all the heaven-dwellers, Phoebus before the rest; Phoebus to the altar he summons with the praise of all his companions and servants, his hand bound with chaste foliage, he for whom is a festal day, and the fires, refreshed with abundant incense, shine on the vaporing altars. 'Perhaps, young men, you may ask in your minds what these rites are, and for what causes we beseech the special honor of Phoebus,' the king says: 'no ignorant religion has prompted it; the Argive people, once tried by great disasters, make this offering; turn your minds to me, and I will unfold it. After the god struck down the winding coils of the dark-blue monster, the earth-born Python, who clasped Delphi in seven black circles and bore on his scales the trees of ages, while, sprawled at the Castalian springs with his three-forked mouth, he gaped, thirsting for nourishment from his black venom — the god struck him, his weapons spent in countless wounds, and stretched him out, scarcely at last unrolled, over a hundred acres of the Cirrhaean field; then, seeking new atonements for the slaughter, he reached the not-wealthy dwelling of our Crotopus, whose daughter, in the first years just entering youth, of wondrous beauty, kept the dutiful household undefiled by any bed — happy, had she never joined to Phoebus a Delian theft and a hidden love! For when, having yielded to the god at the wave of the Nemean river, Cynthia with full face resumed her tenth orbit, the bride brought forth a starry grandson for Latona; and, fearing punishment — for that father would not have granted pardon to a forced bridal — she chooses the pathless fields, and stealthily entrusts her son among the fenced sheepfolds to a mountain-wandering keeper of the flock to be reared. No cradle worthy of so great a stock, my boy, did the grass give you for your couch, and a house woven of oaken wicker; your limbs grow warm under the bark of the strawberry-tree's rind, and the hollow reed-pipe coaxes light sleep, and the ground is shared with the flock. But the fates did not grant him even that hearth: for, cast carelessly on the green turf of the earth and drawing the open sky with gaping mouth, the dread madness of dogs, feeding with bloody bite, tore him apart. And when as a messenger this reaches the mother's astonished ears, from her mind were driven father and shame and fear: of her own accord, mad with savage lamentations, she fills the house, and bearing her breast bare of its covering runs to her father confessing all; nor is he moved, and bids her — unspeakable! — die by a black death, though she herself desired it. Too late mindful of the marriage, Phoebus, you prepare for her mournful death a solace, a monster conceived in deep Acheron in the chambers of the Eumenides, which had a maiden's face and breast; an everlasting hissing rises from its crown, and a snake parts its iron-gray forehead. This dire plague then, squalid in its nocturnal pace, would glide into the chambers, and snatch souls fresh from the stock from their nurses' laps, and devour them with bloody bite, and grow fat upon a father's grief. But Coroebus, outstanding in arms and in spirit, did not bear it, and of his own accord offered himself among the chosen youths, who, first in strength, were ready, careless of their lives, to extend their fame; she was going, ravaging the new homes, at the fork of the gates — two little bodies hang at her side, and now her hooked hand clings to their vitals, and her iron nails grow warm beneath the tender heart — the youth, a crowd of men thronging on every flank, meets her, and buried his huge sword beneath her hard breast, and, searching out with his flashing blade the deepest hiding-places of her life, at last gives her own monster back to be held by deep Jove. It is a joy to go and look close on the eyes livid in death, and on the unspeakable discharge of her belly, and her breast squalid with thick gore, where our souls had perished. The Inachian youth stand amazed, and even after their tears their great joys still are pale. Some, with hard logs — a vain solace for grief — trample her lifeless limbs, and crush rough millstones into her cheeks: their power cannot fill their wrath, and you, unfed birds flying with nocturnal hissing around her, fled, and the mad force of dogs and the dry mouths of trembling wolves, men say, gaped after her. Fiercer against the wretched, robbed of the avenging fate, the Delian rises up, and sitting in the high shadow of twin-peaked Parnassus, with his cruel bow, unjust, hurls his pestilent arms, and sets the plains and the high dwellings of the Cyclopes ablaze under a thrown-on cloak of mists. The sweet souls slip away; Death with his sword reaps the threads of the Sisters, and holding the captured city carries it in his hands. To the leader asking what was the cause, what sinister fire from the sky reigned, and why Sirius held the whole year in its sway, the same author, Paean, again bids go as bloody offerings to the monster the young men who had won the slaughter. O fortunate of soul, and worthy through the ages to deserve a long-remembered day! You do not, degenerate, hide your dutiful arms, nor tremble to meet a certain death. Bearing his face close, on the threshold of the Cirrhaean temple he stood, and roused the sacred wrath with these words: 'Not sent, Thymbraean, nor as a suppliant do I come to your household; my own piety and conscious valor have driven me these ways. I am he who by slaughter subdued, Phoebus, your mortal outrage, whom under black clouds and a squalid day, whom by the dark corruption of the sinister sky you seek, unjust one. But if savage monsters are so dear to the great gods, and the death of men is a loss cheaper to the world, and so great is the harshness in the cruel heaven, what have the Argives deserved? Me, me, best of the gods, me alone it were better to have set my head against the fates. Or is that more pleasing to your heart, that you see the dwellings of the homes desolate, and every field, its tillers given to the fire, shines? But why with talk do I delay your weapons and your hand? The mothers await, and the last vows are made for me. It is enough: I have deserved that you should not wish to spare. Therefore move your quivers, bend your sounding bows, and send down my notable soul to death; but that pale sphere which hangs above over Inachian Argos, while I die, drive it away.' An even lot looks upon the deserving: a reverence for the slaughter held back the burning son of Latona, and, humbled, he grants the man the sad honor of his life; the evil clouds flee from our sky, but you, entreated, go from the threshold of the astonished Phoebus. Thence these appointed rites are renewed every year with solemn feasts, and a new honor appeases the Phoebean temples. By chance you visit these altars — you, what offspring? Though Calydonian Oeneus and the rights of the house of Parthaon are yours, if rightly the cry went some while since to my ears: declare it, who you are who come to Argos, since these are the hours for various talk.'

Straightway the Ismenian hero cast his mournful gaze to the ground, and silently toward the wounded Tydeus turned his eyes aslant; then he broke his long silence: 'Not over these honors of the gods are you to ask of me whence my race, what land is mine, what order of ancient blood flows down: it shames me to confess it amid the sacred rites. But if your cares bid you to know my wretched self, Cadmus is the origin of my fathers, the Martial land is Thebe, Jocasta is my mother.' Then Adrastus, moved by the laws of hospitality — for he recognized him: 'Why hide what is known? We know,' he said, 'nor does fame roll so turned-away a course from Mycenae. The kingdom, and the furies, and the eyes that knew shame are known, and whoever shudders at the Northern suns, and whoever drinks the Ganges, or enters the dark Ocean at its setting, and any whom the Syrtes abandon on an uncertain shore. Cease to complain, and to number the misfortunes of those before you to yourself: in our blood too piety went much astray, nor does the fault bar the descendants. Only do you, unlike them, deserve in prosperous things to make excuse for your kin. And now, with the pole turned back, the icy carrier of the Hyperborean Bear grows faint. Pour wine on the hearths, and let us sing again and again in our vows of the son of Latona, the savior of our forefathers. Phoebus our father, whether the Patarean thickets of Lycia keep you on their snowy ridges, or it is your love to dip your golden locks in the chaste dew of Castalia, or whether you, the Thymbraean, hold Troy, where fame says you willingly bore the Phrygian millstones on your thankless shoulders, or whether the Latonian Cynthus delights you, striking the Aegean with its shadow, and you do not seek out Delos, constant on the sea: yours are the weapons, and the bow to be bent from afar against fierce foes, and to you the heavenly parents granted as a gift that your cheeks should flower forever; you, skilled to foreknow the unjust hands of the Fates and the fate beyond, and what will please highest Jove, what year is death-bringing, to what peoples wars, what scepters comets change; you bring the Phrygian beneath the lyre, you for your mother's honor stretch the earth-born Tityos out on the Stygian sands; green Python and the Theban mother shuddered at you exulting in your quiver; the avenging, grim Megaera for you presses fasting Phlegyas, lying beneath the hollow rocks, in an everlasting confinement, and goads him on with unholy feasts, but loathing mixed in conquers his hunger. Be present, O mindful of the welcome, and favor with your right hand the Junonian fields, whether it please you to be called rosy Titan in the manner of the Achaemenian race, or whether Osiris, the grain-bringer, is better, or Mithras, beneath the rocks of the Persian cave, who, indignant, twists the resisting horns.'