§ i  Tzetzes wrote this personalized, idiosyncratic, bitter/playful manual of cultural references partly on Imbros, with limited access to books, in the mid-12th century CE. He offers here, often from memory, tantalizing snippets of authors and works now lost to us, along with scatological assaults on rival intellectuals in Constantinople. He is writing, however, about a very dim past indeed, and that encyclopedic memory betrays him often enough to make him horrendously unreliable as a guide to history.
The manuscript version in print is a collection of 668 numbered topoi or historiai from history, philology, rhetoric, and mythology, punctuated with autobiographical rants, condensed into 12759 lines of (mostly) 15-syllable political verse, a modernish meter that uses stress accents rather than syllable length.
Their purpose is to illuminate the literary and other allusions in a series of letters Tzetzes published. The first 141 “histories” gloss a relentless flow of learned references in the “epistolion” (little letter), 308 lines in verse cautioning rival grammarian Lachanas against ingratitude and triumphalism. Tzetzes included the epistolion at Book 4, lines 472-786. The remaining stories provide explanatory footnotes to a volume of 107 letters in prose addressed to various personalities of the day and not included in this text (see Leone 1972 for the Greek edition). Tzetzes was responding to numbered lists (pinakes) quoting brief phrases from the letters, in the order they appeared. These lists have many overlaps and duplications due to Tzetzes' reuse of favorite historical allusions (e.g. Croesus). To save paper and time, Tzetzes summarized and cross-referenced overlapping allusions, citing the list numbers (hyperlinked below). Finding himself with a blank page at the end of his last list, he threw in some dubious biographic details on Homer.
The misleading modern name “Chiliades” or “Thousands” is inspired by an early editor's arbitrary division of the text into thirteen 1000-line “books” that ignore the work's internal logic. The first few lines are a crude attempt to illustrate “political” meter in English.

§ 1.1  Book of History of Ioannis Tzetzes in Political Verses (called Alpha) [or] Historiai of Ioannes the Grammarian Tzetzes from the things referred to in one of his letters.
My dearest friend, you ask to learn both scholarship unerring
And all that history can teach from this one single letter;
Attention give, accordingly, first to the tale of Croesus.

§ 1.4  (T1) CONCERNING CROESUS
Croesus was Alyattes' son, the ruler of the Lydians,
Whose capital and palace were establishéd at Sardis;
By which the flowing Pactolus, the rain-fed golden river,
From Tmolus mountain washéd down a waterfall of gold dust.
[end metrical translation]
Croesus became richest in gold of all kings.
Living delicately in wealth and countless treasures.
Friendly to everybody, he was also generous.
As Pindar the son of Daiphantus reports,
When Alcmaeon came to see Croesus once

§ 1.10  He bid him take gold, as much as he could carry.
Alcmaeon dressed himself in a very wide-breasted robe
And the wide-soled boots of tragic actors.
He entered the treasury and filled them with gold,
Up to his hair, holding it with his teeth.
Alcmaeon couldn't walk - the gold weighed so much.
The sight moved Croesus to laughter.
He told him to take two times more in addition.
While this is what Pindar the lyric poet wrote somewhere,
The writer Herodotus, the son of Oxylus,

§ 1.20  And Plutarch as well, describe Croesus
Sending to Delphi a thousand bricks of solid gold
To build a golden altar for Apollo.
Once he invited Solon, the lawmaker,
To Sardis, to spend time at his palace.
He showed him his treasures, and boasting over them he urged
That he account him blessed, renowned among the fortunate.
But Solon the philosopher, the law-giver,
Did not hold him blessed, and Croesus asked him:
“Where, Solon, do you know someone happier than I?”

§ 1.30  He replied, indeed I do, the general Tellus
And Cleobis and Biton, the sons of Cydippe.
The first one, Tellus the general, after defeating his enemies
Was glorified by many for his brilliant victory;
He was fortunate to die the very evening of his victory.
The children of Cydippe, the priestess of Hera,
Because their mother was sick, yoked themselves like oxen
And brought their mother to the Heraion precinct.
Their mother prayed for the best for them.
Both of them died that night, meeting a most beautiful end.

§ 1.40  “These ones I call happy, Croesus, and people like them
Who end their lives at a worthy end-point.
Your end is yet unknown; so I do not deem you fortunate.
No one should consider blessed a man whose end is not yet known”.
This is what Solon told the Lydian, prophetically.
For soon after Croesus was defeated in war
By Cyrus the Persian, the son of Cambyses and Mandane.
Fourteen whole days he was besieged,
And taken by storm, as a prisoner being dragged to the pyre.
“O Solon! Solon! Solon!” he shouted three times.

§ 1.50  He was snatched away from the fire when Cyrus learned it.
While this is what Herodotus says, Xenophon claims
Croesus suffered nothing unpleasant from Cyrus,
But indeed he reverenced his magnanimity.
For he says that on becoming a prisoner Croesus said
Now I draw out my life more happily.
Xenophon also wrote beautifully about the battle.
He says Assyria borders on Media.
The son of the king of the Assyrians then
When celebrating a wedding, went off to go hunting in Media.

§ 1.60  Since he had enough horsemen, he left off hunting
And began to plunder the borders of Media.
After Cyrus took counsel with his grandfather, they were defeated.
Whence a great war broke out between them.
When Astyages died, his son Cyaxares,
Cyrus' uncle, became king of all the Medes,
A stupid man given to soft-living and drink.
Endowed with the shadow and name of kingship,
While Cyrus was king in practice, and accepted the battle.
With the Medes, Persians and Susians under him.

§ 1.70  Whose king was Abradatas, the husband of Pantheia,
And others, many, who obeyed him.
Accomplices and allies of the Assyrians came;
Artacamas, the king of great Phrygia;
Gabaeus, the general of Hellespontine Phrygia;
And king Aribaeus of all Cappadocia
And many other people of countless nations came,
Along with them Maragdus, the king of the Arabians,
And Croesus the Lydian, about whom we are speaking.
As soon as Cyrus entered the battle, he cut them down

§ 1.80  And drove toward Sardis; On the second night
He sent up the Chaldaeans and destroyed the walls.
Ctesias the physician, the son of Ctesiochus,
Who had set out from Cnidus the Cyprian city;
Was detained by Artaxerxes as an ally of Cyrus.
He stayed among the Persians during seventeen years
And wrote twenty three books of Persika.
He says that Astyages, though overthrown by Cyrus,
Was made ruler of the Barcanians by the same man.

§ 1.89  Oebares, Cyrus' great general, he says,
Planted wooden masks at Sardis
On very long poles, during the night,
So as to frighten the Lydians and seize the city.
After the capture of Croesus, he asserts,
Cyrus sent Petesacas to Astyages.
When he arrived he saw Amytis with Astyages.
Amytis was Astyages' daughter.
When she saw this chief eunuch, the wretched Petesacas,
She understood that he was plotting against Astyages.
She gouged his eyes out and flayed him alive;
She impaled him on a cross and left him as a feast for birds.
Now, my dearest, you have the whole story of Croesus.
Shall we now start the story of Midas as well.

§ 1.102  (T2) CONCERNING MIDAS
Midas, the son of Gordias, was a king of the Phrygians,
Unnaturally fond of gold.
According to the myths, he made a bitter wish
That everything he held would be turned into gold.
But when even the food he ate turned to gold,
The wretch died hungry from a gilded famine.
Others, though, have written that he didn’t die.

§ 1.110  Instead, driving his chariot by the oracles an anchor held him.
He founded the Galatian city of Ankara at the Halys.
This way the famine and his destiny have been avoided.
This Midas is said to have had ass's ears.
But all this about Midas must be explained to you allegorically.
He worshipped gain and money; he was very greedy.
He shrank his stomach by selling what was edible
Just as Vespasian sold the horse dung
Although he was criticized greatly by his son Titus for this.
Whom he told, “Titus, my dearest son,
This gold from dung, sniff it, how does it smell?”

§ 1.120  Such a one was Midas, as already mentioned before,
For whom myths have been fashioned thus.
Later, having founded Ankara he got food from it.
They say, as I said, that he had ass's ears.
Meaning he was keen-eared, or else with very long ears
Or else that he had around him many spying listeners.
Donkeys, Aristotle says, have very sharp hearing.
There is a Phrygian village called “Ass’s Ears”.
It was settled by thieves. Midas conquered it

§ 1.130  And thus fell under the myth that he had Ass’s Ears.
I found that the Ankara mentioned above, in Galatia,
Was built by Octavius Caesar of the Romans.
Having killed Deiotarus, the tetrarch of Galatia.
It was not from the iron anchor of Midas’ chariot
That Ankara was named this way, but because it lies
Between the two Asiatic and Pontic seas.

§ 1.137  (T3) CONCERNING GYGES
According to some writers Gyges was a shepherd.
While he was shepherding he found a copper horse buried into the ground.
Inside this horse a dead man was lying, with a ring upon his finger.
This particular ring was taken by Gyges.
He found out it had the power, when the loop was turned,
To conceal its owner and make him reappear.
He killed Candaules and seized kingship of the Lydians.
Herodotus does not say he was a shepherd,
But says he was the son of Dascylus, Candaules’ squire.
Because Candaules loved his wife too much,
He secretly showed her nakedness to Gyges.
She was aware of it, said nothing, but sent for Gyges later

§ 1.150  And told him “Make a choice:
Either kill Candaules or be killed by him.
I will not stand having been seen by two men.”
He killed Candaules and took his kingdom.
Gyges had with Candaules’ wife a son Ardys.
Whose son was Sadyattes, and the latter’s son was Alyattes.
Alyattes’ son was Croesus, who was defeated by Cyrus.
But I can tell your struggle and impatience
To learn the real meaning of Gyges’ story.
It has been said that the shepherd Gyges became a general.

§ 1.160  The proud copper horse was the kingdom,
or rather the palace. The corpse: Candaules’ wife,
Who sat in the palace inactive.
Gyges took her ring and showed it to the bodyguards,
And with them he stealthily killed Candaules.
After returning the ring to the wife
He manifested himself to everyone and took the kingdom.

§ 1.167  (T4) CONCERNING CODRUS
The king of Athens, Codrus, the son of Melanthus,
Brings his lineage until Erichthonius,
Drawing a royal series of countless kings.
Cecrops was the first king of Athens.
After him it was Cranaus, and the third one Amphictyon,
Whom Erichthonius deposed and reigned himself.
He was a son of Hephaestus and Athena daughter of Cranaus.
He had a son, Pandion, with Praxithea.
Pandion and Zeuxippe gave birth to Erechtheus,
Leaving aside Procne, Philomela and Butes.
Erechtheus has a son, Cecrops, from Praxithea.
Cecrops had Pandion from Metadousa .
From this Pandion Aegeus was born, the father of Theseus.

§ 1.180  Acamas and Demophon were the children of Theseus.
Demophon fathered Oxyntes.
Oxyntes fathered Thymoetes, Thymoetes Melanthus.
From Melanthus came Codrus and, from Codrus, Neleus and Medon.
All these I mentioned were kings, as well as the following.
Some say the lineage was of this stock
Until Thymoetes, but Melanthus is not of this lineage.
For fighting in single combat with the Boeotian Xantheias
Thymoetes gave him the kingdom as a gift.
This Codrus was noble not only by lineage,

§ 1.190  But most noble of soul.
For once when the Laconians and Athenians were at war
An oracle was given to the Laconians, that they would be defeated greatly
If anyone killed the Athenian general.
Codrus learned this and dressed himself as a woodcutter.
He killed a Laconian with an axe and was killed in return.
Once the Laconians learned this, they left straightaway.

§ 1.197  (T5) CONCERNING MEGACLES
There have been two Megacles of Athenian lineage,
Both of them noble and of a good repute.
One of them, one hundred sixty two
Years ago, won three times the Olympic Games.
He was the son of the noble Coesyra.
The other Megacles was a Pythian games winner
Whose lineage reaches the wealthy Alcmaeon
Who was enriched, as already said, by Croesus.

§ 1.205  (T6) CONCERNING ALCMAEON
Alcmaeon was a nobleman, very wealthy,
Whose sons killed the two sons of Peisistratus,
The tyrants of Athens, Hipparchus and Hippias.
And freed the city; one of them was Cleisthenes.

§ 1.209  (T7) CONCERNING THE SONS OF BOREAS
Boreas the Thracian kidnapped Oreithyia from Athens.
They had two sons, Zetes and Calais, excessively fine-haired.
Defeating even Absalom in the hair department.
And whom the mythographers said to fly, hair-wise.
As if uplifted and made proud by their hair.
They are said to have sailed with the other Argonauts
And to have driven the Harpies away from old man Phineus,
The birds snatching the food from his mouth.
Along with the Harpies, they say, the brothers died as well.
To me the truth seems to be allegorical as follows.
This old man, Phineus, blind due to old age,
had daughters Eraseia and Harpyreia.
They lived a very sluttish and stupid life.
And all his livelihood was consumed by them.
Poverty followed, and deadly famine.
Zetes and Calais snatched them away,
And they somehow dropped out of sight in those places.
Whence the stories about them slipped into myth.
Apollonius tells this story.

§ 1.228  (T8) CONCERNING EUPHORBUS
According to Homer, Euphorbus was the son of Phrontis and Panthous.
But according to Orpheus, he was son of Abarbarea and Boucolion.
He had lovely braids among the delicate-haired.
He fought besides the Trojans for the sake of Helen.
He had his braid tied with much gold
And a bun with a grasshopper broach.

§ 1.235  (T9) CONCERNING NARCISSUS
Narcissus, the Laconian, was a young hunter, a lover of the beautiful.
Once, during the summer seaoson he got thirsty after hunting.
He leaned upon the water and saw himself in the bloom of youth.
He fell in love with his own shadow, as if it were somebody else.
Yearning to clutch at it, he drew a damp destiny.

§ 1.239  (T10) CONCERNING NIREUS
Nireus was a Greek commander, a real beauty
The handsomest of the Greeks after Achilles.

§ 1.241  (T11) CONCERNING HYACINTHUS
Hyacinthus was the beautiful brother of Cynortus.
His father was Amyclas and Diomede his mother,
From a land of noblemen, the Laconian Amyclaeans.
Apollo and Zephyrus were rivals for the young boy’s love.
Once when Apollo was throwing the discus with Hyacinthus,
Zephyrus blew hard and diverted the discus.
Striking the beautiful youth on the head it killed him.
The earth, then, gave back a flower with his name.
Just as it had when pitying the beautiful Narcissus.

§ 1.250  But the allegory of Narcissus is obvious to everybody,
That falling into the water the young man drowned.
As consolation in mourning, they exaggerate the beauty.
And say he fell into the water out of desire for his shadow.
The bit about the plants and trees is obvious,
Likewise of the stars and similar things.
The relatives of the dead, out of longing for them,
Named those things after them.
The rival lovers of Hyacinthus they point to
To emphasize the young man’s beauty,

§ 1.260  As if the sun rejoiced, turning to the young man
And the breath of the winds was charmed by him.
So when he was killed, throwing the discus with some youth,
When the wind turned the discus at his head,
They wove a tale that Zephyrus, contending with the Sun,
Deprived Hyacinthus of life and the brilliant light-bringer.
This story Nicander wrote in his Theriaca.

§ 1.267  To ask me to write for you the actual words of the wise
Is inopportune, curious, and rather sinister.
You don’t want to learn these things as an essay of Tzetzes,
And be grateful to your benefactors,
But rather as a prodigy who has learned so many books.
I have this experience of another ingrate.
Hence, it's enough to write only the name for you;
Let the memory of all these things remain with me.
You know well in any case, that I know whole books
By heart and readily will tell them orally.
A better memorizer than Tzetzes
God has never revealed, before or living now.
Hence, accepting this gift I thank the Giver.

§ 1.280  And if I live a meager life, being first of my lineage;
This readily appears, according to Aeschylus.
I consider trivial all in people’s lives,
When I have chosen life in the background.
If there is someone else claiming to have such a memory,
Since I cannot bring up any of the above,
Please, let him come in front of us; we won’t avoid the fight,
Although we’ve had decided to lead our life at home,
Just like Scyrian Achilles, the disciple of Chiron,
Not like Konnas at crossroads and the doors of inns.

§ 1.290  You know now our nature and our state of mind.
I’ve learned to interpret all the books of former writers
Even if they’re full of dust, in the shadows or forgotten.
As Solomon has said, we wail for everything humans have made.
I’ve seen the beauty of our world and the delights of life
Under the sun; all this is vanity.
But, oh! I have to learn all useful things from wise men.
Prepare your ears so you can listen to what I have to say.
I do not have a heart of iron; I am compassionate.

§ 1.299  In his Theriaca, Nicander writes about Hyacinthus.
“...Depilatory, and the seed of mournful Hyacinth,
For whom Phoebus wept, when he slew the boy unwilling,
Throwing beside the Amyclaean river,
Hyacinthus in the bloom of youth, when the mass smote his temple,
Rebounding from a rock, and crushed the inmost sheath.”

§ 1.305  (T12) CONCERNING ORPHEUS
Orpheus was a Thracian, from Bisaltia the Odrysian homeland.
Son of Menippe, the daughter of Thamyris, and of Oeagrus,
Even if they call him, allegorically, the son of Calliope.
They say he charmed beasts and stones with his music.
As the poet Simonides wrote somewhere about him.
“Countless birds were flying over his head,
Even the fish stood upright from the blue water
To hear his beautiful songs.” These are the words of the myth.
To be precise, however, he charmed everyone with his music,
The gardeners, stone-workers, huntsmen
He caused them to neglect their work in order to follow him.

§ 1.316  (T13) CONCERNING AMPHION
The lyre-singer Amphion, together with Zethus
Were sons of Zeus, as Homer says, with Antiope their mother.
According to other chronicles and the Antiochean
They were sons of Theoboon and the mother I mentioned.
As children of an unwed mother they were immediately cast out,
But when they grew up enough, they undertook the kingdom.
They honoured their father’s name and fortified the city of Thebes.
It has been said Amphion was gifted with the lyre
And was able to drag the stones for building with his songs.
The truth: Amphion sang, holding his lyre
While the workers were setting the stones in place.
As later Alexander would undermine them
With mournful flute-music, as Callisthenes writes.
For Ismenias played the flute while Thebes was being sacked.

§ 1.330  (T14) CONCERNING THE SIRENS
About the Sirens, Homer, Lycophron, Euripides
And all the rest write that they charmed people with their music.
They destroy with their song, fulfilling every desire.
Only Odysseus managed to pass them, they say,
Wrapping the ears of his companions with wax
While he listened, suspended from the mast.
They say they are bird-shaped young women,
Leucosia, Ligeia and Parthenope,
Children of the river Achelous and Terpsichore
Others say of Melpomene, and give them other names.

§ 1.340  Their allegorical meaning has been stated often.
Some say they are the Seirenides rocks
Which, well-pierced, produce music from the waves.
Plutarch the younger has said they were prostitutes.
All the rest assert they are pleasures that conquer people,
Those who do not shut their companions' ears with wax,
That is, close the five senses against them,
And lift their mind upward, just as I tell you.
They are children of Terpsichore and Melpomene, I say,
(Such things accompany both pleasures and prostitutes.)
And of Achelous the river, and winged,
As pleasures flow like unstable prostitutes,
So delight in them is brief and flies away.

§ 1.350  (T15) CONCERNING MARSYAS
Marsyas the Phrygian, a philosopher, was the first to discover the flute.
He competed with the pipes against Apollo himself.
Defeated, he was hung on a pine-tree as a wineskin.
And the river still flows with the madness of the flute-player.
As is written in the Julianine accounts
And by Procopius of Caesarea and many others,
And before them, Nicander said the following in his epic verses.

§ 1.360  “Often the pine makes moan on the spot
Where Phoebus stripped the skin from the limbs of Marsyas;
the tree, lamenting in the glens his far-famed fate,
Alone utters her passionate plaint unceasingly.” [Nicand. Alexipharmaca 301, tr. Gow/Scholfield]
Others say Athena invented flute-playing.
She was then rebuked by Marsyas the Satyr:
“The shape does not suit you; leave off the flute,
Take up arms and spare your cheeks”
She leaned over the water, and seeing her cheeks swollen,
Gave this art form to Marsyas.

§ 1.370  He was the son of Hyagnis and teacher of Olympus.
Contending with the stronger, as they say, he was killed.
This contest was sung by Simonides in a hymn:
“He fitted dazzling gold about his shaggy temples
And back-tying leather straps to his eager mouth.”
But the Athena, Apollo needs allegorical explanation.
The art of flute-playing is a discovery of the intellect.
But cheek-swelling shames the appearance.
Hence flute-playing is unsuited for sensible men.
Nevertheless, the philosopher Marsyas I mentioned
Was proud of discovering it, and then going crazy
He drowned and carried up by the river he hung up on a pine.
He was seen under the sun as if a suicide.
Since Helios is very musical as well,
They asserted that they contended and, defeated, he was hanged.

§ 1.386  (T16) CONCERNING TERPANDER
Terpander was a citharode, Methymnaean by birth.
Once, when the Lacedaemonians were engaged in civil strife
An oracle prophesied they would reconcile
If Terpander from Methymna played his cithara to them.
And indeed, Terpander, played some tune on the kithara artfully
So they made peace immediately, as Diodorus writes,
Due to the harmony in the ode. Repenting
They wrapped arms about one another and kissed in tears.

§ 1.393  (T17) CONCERNING ARION
Arion was a Methymnaean, likewise a citharode,
In the time of Croesus and of Periander.
He went off to Italy and around Sicily.
He won and acquired much wealth. He embarked on a Corinthian ship
From Tarentum, sailing for home.
When the sailors wanted to kill him for his money.
He asked if he could wear his musical garb and play

§ 1.400  His death-song; he took up his lyre
(In cithara-singing there are seven modes in all).
When he began to singing the orthion mode delightfully,
A dolphin, enchanted, leapt up; Arion fell into the sea
And the dolphin carried him on its back to Taenaron.
When he arrived in Corinth, he told all this to Periander,
Who, skeptical, hid the man in prison.
When the sailors came, Periander investigated, found the story true,
And imposed the proper penalty for murderers.
The writer Herodotus has written down this story,
Along with him Oppian, most accurately.
The allegorical explanation, my child, here follows:
Being in danger, Arion struck up the Orthian mode.
Some Phoenician pirates in a dolphin-shaped ship
Took pity on him and took him to Taenaron.

§ 1.416  (T18) CONCERNING THE GOLDEN LAMB OF ATREUS
Atreus and Thyestes were brothers along with several others,
All children of Pelops and Hippodamia.
Chrysippus was their illegitimate brother, born to Axioche.
They were jealous of him because their father honoured him disproportionately.
Following Hippodamia’s counsel, Atreus and Thyestes
Drowned him into a well. When Pelops found this out
He banished all his children from his sight.
The oracle said Laius had kidnapped him.
They settled in different places. Atreus and Thyestes
Settled in Triphylia of the Peloponnese.
Each of them claimed the kingship for themselves.
Atreus on legal grounds, since he was the elder.
Thyestes was stubborn, dismissive of laws.
In time they agreed that the one who would become king
Was he who could show a portent to the appointed judges.

§ 1.430  In Atreus' flocks there was a golden lamb.
(Simonides says the lamb was purple.)
Atreus was about to show the lamb to the arbiters.
(According to Euripides, it was born on the advice of Hermes,
To bring harm and destruction on the descendants of Pelops
Since Pelops had killed Myrtilus, Hermes’ son, by treachery.
But Apollonius says Atreus had made a vow
To sacrifice to Artemis the fairest of his flock.
But when he saw the new-born, he smothered it and hid it away
Safely in a chest, given that it was a portent.)

§ 1.440  Atreus was about to show it to the judges.
Thyestes, though, had been having an affair, defiling his brother's marriage-bed.
He took the lamb from Atreus’ wife, Aerope,
Showed it to the judges, and took the kingship.
The Light-bearer could not stand the unfortunate things that happened
So he drove his chariot from the west to the east,
And along with him went the Pleiades as well.
Atreus found out he had been deceived by his wife Aerope.
He made a dinner of the three children Thyestes had with a Naiad,
Aglaus, Orchomenus and Calaeus, after killing them.

§ 1.450  He showed him afterwards their legs and arms and drove him away from the country.
The Sun returned after the disgusting dinner.
The other son of Thyestes, Aegisthus, was living in the mountains, taking care of goats.
Thyestes had this son with his daughter Pelopia or Mnesiphane.
Aegisthus returns from the mountain and kills Atreus
And takes back the kingdom that was rightfully his father’s.
He sends Atreus’ sons, Agamemnon and Menelaus,
To Polypheides, the king of Sicyon, to raise them.
He sends them on, in turn, to the Aetolian Oeneus.
After a short time they are brought to Tyndareus.

§ 1.460  They forced Thyestes seek refuge at Hera’s altar
And afterwards on oath to go and live in Cythereia.
They became husbands to the daughters of Tyndareus.
Agamemnon married Clytemnestra
After killing her husband Tantalus, the son of Thyestes,
And their newborn child; Menelaus married Helen.
The part about the Sun, actually happened, I think
With no need to allegorize it away.
Sheep bearing gold-colored fleece
Rheginus refers to Isigonus have painted them.
Know that Hermes is the planet [Mercury] and Artemis the moon.
What happened then was not seen as a good omen.
Myrtilus, the son of Hermes, a star born of him.

§ 1.473  (T19) CONCERNING THE BULL OF MINOS
Minos was a son of Zeus son of Asterios.
All kings were from the beginning called Zeuses.
As the planet Zeus, in the degrees of Leo,
Marking the horoscope and well-placed for birthdays
Produces kings and crown-wearers.
After the death of Zeus of Asterios,
When Minos was not permitted to rule Crete after him

§ 1.480  He said he would have the Cretan kingdom as gift of the gods.
That a strange sign from the sea would be revealed.
He vowed that, whatever it was, to sacrifice it to Poseidon.
Then a delightful bull appeared from the sea
And he straightaway possessed the kingdom of the Cretans.
He sacrificed a different bull to Poseidon
And sent the revealed bull to his cowherds;
Which bull his wife Pasiphae fell in love with
And had intercourse with it in Daedalus' contrivance,
And gave birth to Minotaur, a beast half man and half bull.

§ 1.490  Daedalus was the son of Eupalamus and Alcippe.
He was an Attic architect and and sculptor.
He threw from Attica’s Acropolis and killed
The son of his sister Perdix, whose name was Attalus.
For he, trained by his uncle Daedalus,
Invented the saw, using a serpent’s jaw
Sawing a small piece of wood. When his uncle saw that,
He envied the child’s genius, killed him,
And fled to Minos. There, with the slave Naucrate
He had a son, Icarus. Minos detained them

§ 1.500  As accomplices in his wife's adultery.
He was about to kill them, having locked them in the dungeon.
They escaped from the dungeon
Putting on wings and flying through the air.
During his escape,Icarus fell into the sea.
From him the Icarian Sea takes its name.
Daedalus was saved in Caminus of Sicily.
Minos came looking for him in Sicily
But died at the hands of the daughters of Cocalus;
By pouring boiling hot water and cold immediately after.

§ 1.510  Now, the bull and the intercourse need my explication
And the Minotaur and the wings made by Daedalus
And how, they say, Daedalus’ sculptures could move.
As Euripides has said in his play Hecuba:
“I wish I could speak through my arms,
Through my hands and my hair and my walking
And through Daedalus’ crafting or some God’s”
And Plato, the master of comedy, has said:
“Every sculpture made by Daedalus must be seen
To move; that is a wise man”.

§ 1.520  Minos, who was not permitted to be the ruler before,
Having consulted the seers, spoke to the Cretans.
He would be revealed a sign from the sea.
Commander Taurus showed up with his merchant ships
And Minos took the kingdom as if it were a god’s will.
It was this Taurus, the commander, not the bull,
With whom Pasiphae, the wife of Minos, committed adultery
In cooperation with Daedalus, who helped her
To be closed in the most guarded rooms,
The so-called wooden bull of Daedalus,

§ 1.530  Where she had a baby; since the child had two fathers,
Minos and Taurus, he was called Minotaur.
Know that the wings were the sails of cargo ships.
They fled by ship to Sicily.
Icarus shed his feathers by being drowned in a shipwreck.
Daedalus was saved in the house of Cocalus.
Daedalean statues are said to move for this reason:
Statues, in the years prior to Daedalus,
Were made without arms, legs or eyes.
Daedalus was the first one to make them with arms and legs
As well as fingers, eyelids and everything else.
That’s why they say his statues were capable of moving.

§ 1.542  (T20) CONCERNING CEPHALUS’ DOG
Procris, the daughter of Erechtheus and Praxithea,
Was the wife of Cephalus, Deioneus’ son.
She was bribed with a golden crown to sleep with Pteleon.
She fled to Minos after Cephalus discovered her.
Minos had secret intercourse with her
And gave her as a gift a true-flying javelin and a fast-running dog.
This dog could outrun and kill the swiftest beast.
She took these presents and returned to Cephalus.

§ 1.550  He received the gifts and went hunting.
He let fly a javelin toward a beast, and killed her.
Judged by the Areopagus, he went into exile.
At that time the Teumessian Fox
Was bringing disaster to the children of Thebes.
Cephalus went with his dog to hunt the fox.
As they raced, Zeus turned sly fox and hound to stone.
This story has been written by Apollodorus.
While the wise Palaephatus, a really intelligent man,
Explains a slice of it, or part of a slice.

§ 1.560  He says there was a commander named Alopex [Fox]
Who was fighting against the Thebans along with other rebels,
Whom Cephalus killed having been called from Athens.
I, too, agree with this version of the story, but explain the whole allegorically.
Minos had sex with Procris secretly
And after that, he sent her on a fast trireme
Along with commander Cyn [Dog] and many gifts to reconcile with Cephalus.
Cephalus then sent this Cyn to Alopex
To fight him as an enemy. Fighting on horseback
They unhorsed one another and were killed by the rocks.

§ 1.570  Or else Alopex escaped with his ships
With Cyn in pursuit, and on the rocks
Their ships were cast up, and they expired.

§ 1.573  (T21) CONCERNING MEGACLES
The Megacles mentioned here was son of Coesyra,
The most noble of all women under the sun.
His horse won a third time at Olympia.
Olympia was a place near Triphylia
Where the river Alpheus is still flowing.
There Heracles had offered to Olympian Zeus
A splendid context from the spoils of Augeas.

§ 1.580  For which the crown for the victors was a shoot of wild olive.
This contest took place every fifty months.

§ 1.582  (T22) CONCERNING CIMON
Cimon, according to some writers, was son of Miltiades,
According to some others, though, he was the son of Tisagoras.
He had a son with Isodice named Callias [NOT].
Cimon had his sister Elpinice,
As Ptolemy later had his sister Berenice,
And before them Zeus had Hera, and now the Persians.
Callias was fined fifty talents
So that Cimon, his father, would suffer no harm
For his shameful wedding, his incest with his sister.
Those who have written about this are too many for me to count them.
For they are infinite, those who wrote about this,
The comic poets, the rhetoricians, Diodorus and others.

§ 1.594  (T23) CONCERNING ARISTOPATIRA
Aristopatira [Callipateira] was the daughter of Diagoras of Rhodes.
Diagoras along with his sons and grandsons,
Being all together seven, in just one day
Won in boxing and wrestling in the Olympic Games.
He among the men, his sons as ephebes,
And his grandchildren in the boys' competition. All wearing wreaths

§ 1.600  They passed through the theater in splendid procession,
Damagetus and Dorieus along with Acusilaus,
Euclon and Pisirrothius along with Lelegetes.
They erected stelai for them at Olympia.
During the next Olympiad
Aristopatira came to watch the games.
There was a law that forbade women
From showing up and watching the Olympic Games.
The Hellanodicae didn’t allow her to enter and she replied to them:
“Why don’t you let me watch the contest?

§ 1.610  I am not like the other women.
You see, all seven of the winners,
That won in one day, are relatives of mine.
Diagoras is my father, and the other three are my brothers;
The children are my brothers’ sons,
Euclon and Pisirrothius along with Lelegetes.”
They then gave in to her words
And let her immediately enter and watch the games.
This story has been written by Pindar, the son of Daiphantus.

§ 1.619  (T24) CONCERNING SIMONIDES’ VICTORIES
There was a Simonides from Samos, of Amorgus.
Our Simonides, though, is son of Leoprepes from Ceos.
He was poor but charming, he always won in contests
Just like Konnas, the Olympic victor in flute-playing.
Aristophanes has written in his comedies about Simonides’ poverty.
Aristides has written about the man’s gratitude.
The majority say, he once found an unburied dead body
And honoured him with funeral rites; he saw the dead man in his sleep
Who told him “don’t sail, don’t follow the sailors”
So he refused to leave with them.
All the others were lost in a shipwreck.

§ 1.630  Simonides wrote a thankful epigram
Upon the dead man’s tomb.
“Here lies the saviour of Simonides the Cean,
Who, though dead, did a favor to the living.”
This Simonides died in Sicily.
Upon his tomb, there is the following epigram:
“Simonides, you who have fifty six victories
And tripods. You have fallen in the Sicilian plain.
The memory of Ceos misses you. Praise by the Greeks
Hereafter for your quick-witted soul.”

§ 1.640  (T25) CONCERNING STESICHORUS
Stesichorus was a lyric poet and his daughters as well.
His homeland was Himera, a city of Sicily.
He was contemporaneous with Abaris and Pythagoras.
He was opposed to Astypalean Phalaris.
Phalaris was husband of Erythea and father of Paurolas,
He was, also, the son of Leodamas and king of Agrigento.
This Phalaris killed Perillos, the bronzeworker
From Attica; he burnt him in the bronze bull.
Perillos had manufactured this bull by himself,
He made small tubes into the bull’s nostrils.

§ 1.650  He even made a door on one side of the bull.
He gave this bull to Phalaris as a gift.
Phalaris welcomed this man with other gifts
And ordered this device to be devoted to the gods.
Then, the coppersmith that made him such a gift
Told him about the savage characteristics of the device:
“If you ever want, Phalaris, to punish anyone of your people,
You throw him inside this bull and set fire below it.
His groaning will look like the bull is groaning,
And you’ll feel pleasure when you’ll hear the sound through the bull’s nostrils as if it were a flute.”

§ 1.660  Phalaris heard about this and felt disgusted by him
He said: “Bring it Perillos, you show it to us first,
You imitate the flute, present us your creation.”
While he was trying to imitate the sound of flute,
Phalaris closed the bull’s door and set it on fire.
Because he didn’t want to defile the work of bronze with the man’s death
He pulled him out half dead and threw him off the cliff.
Lucian the Syrian has written about this bull,
As well as Diodorus and Pindar and many others.
I have written to you this story
Based on the wise Phalaris’ letters.

§ 1.671  Stesichorus was an enemy to this Phalaris,
I think, because when he was going to Peloponnese by way of Pachynus
With Conon and Dropidas, they were seized by his men.
Phalaris killed Conon right away
While he honorably returned Dropidas to his homeland.
He had Stesichorus as a beloved friend,
For whom he paid ransom to the people of Tauromenium
One hundred talents; twelve years later,
When Stesichorus died, his daughters continued to write.

§ 1.680  Stesichorus’ daughters made hymns about Phalaris
And so that debt was over.
Here follows a song of Stesichorus:
“Oh Pallas, destroyer of cities, war-sustaining, pure creator,
Daughter of the Great Zeus, young maiden, unseen virgin.”
Similar is a song of Archilochus of Paros
With which he had won having sung it at the Olympic Games,
Singing only with his mouth for his tripe was cut.
They say even Pindar used to admire him.
Now hear this song of Archilochus:

§ 1.690  “Hurrah! Be glad, you, triumphant king Heracles,
Along with Iolaus, both of you true warriors.”

§ 1.692  (T26) CONCERNING TYRTAEUS
Tyrtaeus was a Laconian commander and a great poet,
The songs he wrote were encouraging for war.
These songs were sung by the Laconians when they were joining war
They were performing the war dance according to Lycurgus’ laws.
Dio Chrysostom wrote about this, too.
“You, sons of glorious fathers of Sparta, who raises great men,
You hold the shield with your left hand and use the spear with courage,
Do not spare lives; it is not proper for Spartans.”

§ 1.700  (T27) CONCERNING HANNIBAL
Hannibal, according to Diodorus and Dio
As well as according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
Was a commander of Sicily, the son of Hamilcar.
Hamilcar had conquered the entire Iberia
And the Iberians had plotted against him and killed him.
He, then, commanded all his army to leave
And join his sons and die for them.
He would have avoided the plague if he had left with the others.
His son Hannibal was only fifteen years old
And the other, Hasdrubal, only twelve; he went upon the hill,

§ 1.710  His head was seen by the Iberians.
All of them attacked him
The ones who left were lucky to be saved.
When he made sure his army was safe, he went back
And started to counter attack the Iberians.
The Iberians encircled him and fought him hard,
He let go of his weakened horse
And fell into the waters of the river Ebro.
He was hit by a javelin.
He was found neither drowned nor dead by the Iberians.

§ 1.720  Such was his strength; he was dragged by the waters.
Hannibal was a descendant of such a hero.
Along with his brother-in-law, he marshalled against Iberia
And plundered it entirely, to avenge his father’s death.
Meanwhile, the Ausonian Romans
Defeated in battle many times the Sicilians.
They made a strict law for themselves
Never to fall under their sword.
When Hannibal was twenty five years old,
Apart from the senators and the aristocrats,

§ 1.730  He caught the brightest and the smartest of the young men
About one hundred or maybe more; by plundering Iberia
He made a living and increased his army with young men.
Such a number was able to win hundreds of men.
He managed to run thousands and millions of men.
His army became huge and one of the most dreadful
The soldiers had followed him without money or gifts.
Such news travelled quickly to the Romans.
All of them were formed in order for the infantry and navy.
There must have been seventy seven thousands.

§ 1.740  He went to get ready the Sicilians, just like one rubs a pine.
The Sicilians begged Hannibal to stop
And not to utterly destroy the lands of Sicily.
He heard them talk and brag about themselves.
He did not sit and wait for the attack of the Romans.
He left alone from Sicily going forward to Italy
Going from above, passing through the Alps.
They were hard to pass through, but Hannibal cut into pieces the rocks
And six months later he confronted the Roman armies.
He killed many of them during a lot of battles.

§ 1.750  His brother Hasdrubal, who had stayed back to wait,
He too walked through the Alps.
It took him fifteen days to come next to Hannibal.
He brought with him a great army. When the Romans found out,
They attacked him secretly and managed to take him down.
They brought his head and threw it to Hannibal.
He lamented, as it was proper, his beloved brother
And later he marshalled against the Romans at Cannae.
The commanders of the Romans were Paullus and Terentius.
Cannae was a plain near Argyrippe.

§ 1.760  Argyrippe was a city built by Diomedes.
The city’s name means “a horse from Argos” in the language of the Greeks.
These plains used to be inhibited by the Daunians
And later by the Iapygians, and after them by the Salantians.
And nowadays we say the Calabrians live there.
They have been the borders between the Calabrians and the Longobards.
That dreadful war took place there.
When that terrible war broke out
A fearful earthquake happened; it set apart the mountains.
A storm took place where rocks were falling from the sky.

§ 1.770  The soldiers did not stop fighting but fearlessly continued.
At the end many men of the Romans fell down.
Then, the commander Hannibal sent back to Sicily
The rings of the Roman commanders and of the other glorious men
Which were worth many medimnoi and choenixes.
The first and noble women of the Romans,
They ran lamenting to the temples in Rome
And cut their hair as it was proper when grieving.
Later they were mixed with the slaves and the barbarians
Since the land of the Romans was deprived of men.

§ 1.780  They were afraid their roots would be vanished.
Then Rome itself had lost all of its men
Its gates were wide open, the people stood on the street
Ten were sitting before the gates,
They were lamenting for the disaster the poor city had suffered.
They were watching for the remaining people, so nobody would leave the city.
While such a misfortune was upon the great Rome
Hannibal neglected to destroy it completely.
He was so keen on victories and drinking and having good time
That he did not take notice of the Romans that gathered around Rome.

§ 1.790  Then, he left for the third time to marshal against Rome.
Suddenly, while the weather was nice, a terrifying hail started
And the darkness it produced changed Hannibal’s march.
Hannibal, then, was envied by the Sicilians.
While he was in need of food, they refused to supply him.
The one who earlier courageously won was now defeated by hunger.
He was also chased by the Roman Scipio
And he was actually to blame for the disaster of the Sicilians.
He died by taking poison somewhere in Bithynia
Near a village known by the name Libyssa.

§ 1.800  He expected to find death in Libyssa, his homeland.
There used to be an oracle about Hannibal’s death.
“The soil of Libyssa would cover Hannibal’s body.”
The later emperor of the Romans, Severus,
Who was a descendant of the Libyans, he put upon this man’s
Tomb a white piece of marble to honour the commander Hannibal.

§ 1.806  (T28) CONCERNING BUCEPHALUS
You already know Bucephalus’ story
For he was a furious horse; he devoured men.
He only listened to Alexander the Macedonian.
He earned the name Bucephalus as following:
He had a head of a bull marked on his thigh,
Not because he had a head of bull.

§ 1.812  (T29) CONCERNING THE HIMATION OF ANTISTHENES THE SYBARITE
Such was the himation of Antisthenes:
Made of souson, fifteen cubits long.
With animals and gods and Persian embroidery,
Picked out in pearls and valuable stones.
On one sleeve was depicted Antisthenes
And on the other Sybaris, his homeland.
Dionysius, who ruled Sybaris formerly,
For one hundred and twenty talents,
Sold it to the Carthaginians; I think Plutarch has written about this.

§ 1.821  (T30) CONCERNING CROESUS CROSSED THE HALYS WITHOUT GETTING WET
When Croesus was about to cross the Halys,
Thales dug a semicircle, crescent-shaped ditch
And rechanneled the flow of that river behind.
Thus, without having crossed it, he found himself on the other side.
Herodotus records this story.

§ 1.826  (T31) CONCERNING THE BRIDGE MANDROCLES BUILT IN THE HELLESPONTINE BOSPORUS
Mandrocles the Samian was an architect
Who, when Darius was about to march against the Scythians,
Made a bridge of ships across the Hellespontine Bosporus.
Either near Damalis or near the Heraion.

§ 1.830  Darius disembarked countless soldiers in Europe.
Herodotus has mentioned this story as well.
There are two Bosporoi, and now learn where they are.
The Scythian or Cimmerian, through which Lake Maeotis
Mingles with the Euxine sea of Pontus.
The other Bosporus is our Thracian, the Hellespontian,
As we are accustomed to call it.
Learn now where it starts and how long it is.
It comes from the strait of Abydos
And until the bridge of Blachernae it is known as Hellespont,

§ 1.840  It also includes the Bebrycian Sea
And the Thracian Heraclea, formerly known as Perinthus.
About this two parts of Bosporus
And the sea map of Hellespont no one has written,
As far as I know, among the many historians.
Well, you should know that Tzetzes has told only the truth so far,
He has been the most accurate of all the known historians;
He has written about everything up to the modern times.

§ 1.848  (T32) CONCERNING XERXES
Now hear how Xerxes, the Persian, campaigned against Greece.
The former tyrant Hippias, the son of Pisistratus,
After being exiled by the Athenians, went as a suppliant to Darius
And convinced him to campaign against Athens.
As the Panathenaicus of Aristides writes.
According to Herodotus, though, it was Aristagoras
Who convinced the Athenians to sack Sardis.
At the beginning, Darius sent Mardonius to confront them;
But he suffered shipwreck around Athos and lost thousands of men.
Darius, then, removed him from this duty.
He sent to the Athenians demanding basket [?σπυρίδα], earth and water;
But they dumped the ambassadors in a well.

§ 1.860  Then Darius sent Datis and Artaphernes,
His nephew, along with six hundred ships.
They conquered Naxos and Eretria, cities of Euboea.
Datis made an offering to Apollo at Delos,
Of three hundred talents of first-quality incense.
They encamped near Marathon.
Hippias the tyrant was accompanying them.
They were defeated by Miltiades and Stesileus
As well as by Callimachus and Cynegeirus.
Those who returned told the news to Darius.

§ 1.870  He boiled over with anger and for three whole years,
Prepared his fleet and gathered a large army,
Already about to campaign against Greece.
But suddenly, in the fourth year, Darius passed away.
Xerxes, his son, took over the kingship
And the implacable war against Greece.
He had warships, battleships
Two thousand two hundred and seven.
Noncombatant rabble and armed fighters
They were all in all nearly five million.

§ 1.880  Daily food for his whole army
Was four hundred talents, for basic rations.
So Xerxes was urging to attack Greece,
He even wanted to break into pieces the elements of nature.
He tried to imitate his father Darius in everything.
Just like when Darius wanted to attack the Scythians
And crossed the Damalite Bosporus to Europe,
Upon the bridge Mandrocles the Samian had built;
Likewise Xerxes commanded that the strait of Abydos be bridged.
When bridge from Sestus to Abydos collapsed,

§ 1.890  He gave the sea two hundred lashes.
And hurled two pairs of iron foot-fetters
Into the sea as if binding a slave.
He ordered now two bridges instead of one.
Perpendicular to the current they filled cargo ships
Holding them with anchors to remain unmoving;
From the land of the one side to the opposite shore
They dragged frightful ropes over the cargo ships,
One on the ships' prows and the other on the stern.
A cubit-length of rope weighed three talents.

§ 1.900  They were stretched tight from each shore,
They nailed on wooden trunks, like those in stables.
This way they fortified the ground; the ropes
On both sides they then made totally stable
So nobody would fall into the water from the sides.
As the two bridges were linked to each other
The trunks were dig deep into the ground of the bottom sea,
This way it was made a way of land; after doing this
Sweet bay and myrtle were sprinkled upon it.
This way the sea was turned to land with bridges,

§ 1.910  Imitating his own father, Dareius.
He made Athos sea-girt with a deep canal,
So through that trench two triremes could sail.
Instead of where Mardonius was shipwrecked earlier,
And an army of 20.000 was destroyed by the waves.
For the trench of Athos, now the “Holy Mountain”,
Multitudes of folk came from Eleos
Their stern taskmaster the satrap Bubares,
And Artachaeus with him, five cubits tall.
When all was done, and near the Hellespont

§ 1.920  A marble throne was built, a theater for Xerxes.
Once the work's completion was announced to him,
From Lydia he began to make his course.
In Celaenae of Phrygia, with all his army
Pythius the Lydian hosted him, who in the past to Dareius
Had given a climbing vine and plane-tree all of gold.
Just so then he made a gift to Xerxes,
Two thousand talents of unworked silver;
And darics of the best stamped gold
Four hundred myriads (4 million) in number.

§ 1.930  Xerxes took nothing of this, but admired his stance.
He pushed on to the Hellespont and the bridge-making.
From the army’s horse stooping to drink,
The Maeander or Scamander dried up completely,
As later did the Peneios near Thessaly
And the Ilissos near Athens. But this was afterwards.
When Xerxes himself arrived in Hellespont,
He ascended that high throne;
When he saw all around an army more than flowers and leaves,
Almost equalling the grains of sea-sand,

§ 1.940  At first he thought himself blessed by prosperity,
But then brought to mind the shortness of men's lives
And suddenly his eyes were full of tears.
His uncle Artabanus noticed and told him:
“You weep for mankind's short life;
Know, o king, that this short life
Seems very long to most, through the cruelty of life's disasters,
And their prayer is that it be shorter.”
Thus it was for Xerxes, and thus for Artabanos.
As they made their way toward the bridges

§ 1.950  The army was crossing on an unvarying basis
Numbering seven whole days and nights.
Finally, Xerxes crossed over by chariot
with an advance guard of ten thousand picked men.
What all should I mention and describe in detail?
When the whole army had crossed to Europe,
Every river dried up; every tree was devoured;
The sun was hidden by Persian arrows;
Earth and sea shuddered and the nature of trees.
Leonidas the general with three hundred men,

§ 1.960  Stood up against them near Artemision,
Killing a limitless host of barbarian magnates,
And two beloved brothers of the king,
So as to bring Xerxes himself down from his horse.
And fight the men in hand-to-hand battle.
But they were pressed tight together by a host of barbarians,
With the roads betrayed by some local man.
Either, as Diodorus the Sicilian reports,
General Leonidas along with his men
Fell on the barbarian camp during the night

§ 1.970  And was cutting them all down until the sun's rays.
Or else he fell after being encircled by them.
This was the first taste of war for Xerxes and the barbarians.
He was defeated in a sea battle off Salamis
By two hundred and seventy ships
When he had, they say, two thousand cargo vessels,
And two hundred and seven very fast ones.
When the fleets joined battle
Xerxes went up to Aegaleos Mountain,
Which lies just opposite Salamis.

§ 1.980  Sitting on a golden throne he watched the battle.
And secretaries stood by to write it down.
How bitter was the omen of the sea battle.
They were defeated by the fleet at Attica.
To their infantry as well storms were coming.
A little earlier they had defeated some old men of Athens,
Whom they burnt, the ones who had set up a wooden wall
Beside the fortress of Athens, deceived by oracles.
So as he was pressing again toward an infantry battle
He was watching himself worsted by the Athenians;

§ 1.990  And their Greek allies much emboldened.
He heard they were about to destroy the bridges as well.
He left strategos Mardonius to take charge of the battle
Along with the Persian Masistius, him of the golden breastplate,
While he retreated in haste with part of his army,
Most of whom died of cold or hunger on the way.
From Strymon he embarked on a Phoenician ship
With the best of the Persians; then the sea roughened
And Xerxes ordered them to jump into the sea
(Which indeed they did, after reverencing him,
To lighten the ship and save the king).

§ 2.1  Barely, after a myriad misfortunes, he crossed to Asia.
Those with Mardonius the Athenians killed,
And Masistius himself, who as I said before
Wore a golden, scaled breastplate,
On account of which a mighty battle broke out among the Greeks.
But Xerxes, after experiencing such a defeat,
Being in love with the wife of Masistius,
Lived with this woman, and reveled in the city of Sardis,
Inasmuch as he set up splendid large trophies

§ 2.10  He who destroyed the splendid youth of Persis,
Such things even now many of the defeated do.
In the end, he came to his homeland Persis,
And announced suffering a complete disaster.
Aeschylus and Herodotus, Lysias, Aristides,
Diodorus and Plutarch report these things, along with others.

§ 2.16  CHILIADES BOOK 2, TRANSLATED BY GARY BERKOWITZ
(T33) CONCERNING CLEOPATRA AND THE PHAROS
The kinswoman of Ptolemy, mistress Cleopatra,
The Egyptian, the wise and most lovely,
Persuasive and eloquent, pouring out the charms of the Sirens,
Charming, with her beauty, all people and the nature of beasts,

§ 2.20  And particularly Gaius Julius, or Caesar,
And after him Antony, the brother-in-law of Octavian,
(On account of whom she was made captive, died from asps
And as a mummy was conveyed to Rome for a spectacle;
And her children paraded before Octavian,
The one called Helios, and the daughter Selene)
Cleopatra, along with the Cypriot architect Dexiphanes,
After making the sea of Alexandria into dry land
For about four stadia, or a little more,
She constructed the great tower of Pharos,

§ 2.30  To show a light of safety to cargo vessels in the waves.
Virgil mentions this Cleopatra,
And Lucian and Galen, and Plutarch with them,
And Diodorus, George the Chronicler, and others,
And lately John of Antioch after them.

§ 2.35  (T34) CONCERNING TRAJAN AND THE BRIDGING OF THE DANUBE
Trajan, who was neither an Italian nor even an Italiot
But an Iberian foreigner, a commander in Germania,
In the following manner became king of the Romans.
After the rule and suicide of Nero,
And Domitian’s slaughter by Stephanus,

§ 2.40  Nerva, an old man, entirely good in his manners,
Was hastily appoined by the Romans as their king.
He lasted a year and one third
Plus nine days, during which he was weak from old age,
Vomiting and disregarding all food;
But putting the welfare of the commonwealth ahead of fammily,
He dismissed all of his relatives, dismissed his friends.
And having convened the entire Senate of the Romans,
It was Trajan, then in Germany,
Whom he clearly proclaimed as emperor of Rome,

§ 2.50  Calling from the acropolis these words exactly:
“For the good fortune of the Senate and people of the Romans
And my own, I make Trajan emperor.”
And immediately, he sent a letter to Germania for Trajan,
“May the Danaans pay for my tears with your arrows.”
And upon coming to Rome as king, Trajan, son of Nerva,
Was loved as a good man by all the Romans together.
After doing many useful things for Roman cities,
And spending time around Rome,
He campaigned against Decebalus, the king of the Dacians,

§ 2.60  Who had rebelled, withholding tribute to the Romans,
Concealing treasures by the Sargetia River.
But having reached the Ister, Trajan immediately
Ferried the Romans with vessels across to the Dacians;
The other part of them was on the opposite shore.
Wherefore he made a bridge toward the landing point.
The setting of the bridge is more or less as follows:
There are twenty huge, solid square stones,
With a width of sixty feet, and with regard to the height, excepting the foundations,
Reaching one hundred and fifty feet.

§ 2.70  The stones stand one hundred and seventy feet
Apart from one another, and they are united by arches.
In this way Trajan bridged the Ister.
After putting all Dacia under the Romans
And founding cities in it, he turned back towards Rome,
Bringing the head of Decebalus with captives,
And for these things there was a victory celebration with all of the Romans
While this is how Trajan bridged the Ister,
Hadrian son of Hadrian Afer,
Though an in-law to Trajan through Trajan's sister,

§ 2.80  Destroyed the bridge once he received the kingdom of the Romans,
Lest it be a road for the Dacians against the Mysians.
He even killed Apollodorus the bridge maker,
Being of a nature to bear grudges despite being a philologist.
Dio Cassius has written this story,
And many other officials who wrote chronicles.
This bridge on the Danube
Is recorded by Philetaerius [or, his colleague] in the construction of harbours,
And maritime installations,
Theophilus, a proconsul, patrician, quaestor,

§ 2.90  And eparch of this reigning city [Constantinople],
Saying that Apollodorus bridged the Ister,
After framing a coffer for the initial foundations,
With a length of one hundred and twenty feet,
And eighty for the width. This is what men say.
They say that Trajan had the ears of a he-goat:
Which I myself have not found recorded in writings.
Either from being sexually attracted by hearing alone,
For the man was salacious after the manner of the goats,
And would intelligently pursue even such sexual mingling,
Or, by campaigning against enemies from inaccessible places,
And by only giving ear to enemies that meet Rome.
For a goat delights in cliffs and inaccessible places.

§ 2.102  (T35) CONCERNING ARCHIMEDES AND SOME OF HIS MACHINES
Wise Archimedes, the engineer,
Was a Syracusan by birth, an old geometrician,
Who though seventy-five years old,
Contrived many mechanical capabilities:
With the three-pulley machine, using his left hand only,
He hauled a 50 thousand medimnos trading vessel.
And when Marcellus, the Roman general,

§ 2.110  Was attacking Syracuse by land and sea,
Archimedes hoisted up some of the ships
Suspending them along the Syracusan wall
And sent them to the bottom with all their crew.
When Marcellus removed his vessels a little bit,
The old man, in turn, made each of the Syracusans
Able to raise stones weighing a wagon-load,
And to sink the ships, each man launching his stone.
When Marcellus removed his ships to bow-shot distance,
The old man constructed some sort of six-angled mirror.

§ 2.120  And in a space equal to the mirror
Set small fourfold mirrors,
Moved with plates and hinges;
Having set that in the sun's rays
Noonday, summery, wintry
With all the rays reflected into this,
Suddenly there was a fearsome firing of the ships,
Reducing them to ashes from a bow-shot away.
In this way, the old man defeated Marcellus with his machines.
And he spoke in Doric, the Syracusan language:

§ 2.130  “Give me where to stand and my lever will move the whole earth.”
This man (according to Diodorus, when this city of Syracuse
Was altogether betrayed to Marcellus,
Or, according to Dio, when it was destroyed by the Romans,
As the citizens at that time were celebrating a night-festival to Artemis)
Died in such a manner by some Roman:
He was bent forward, drawing some mechanical diagram,
But some Roman standing near him dragged him in an attempt to take him prisoner.
And Archimedes, being then wholly engulfed in his diagram,
Not knowing who was dragging him down, said to that man:

§ 2.140  “Stand away, o man, from my diagram.”
But as the Roman was dragging him, Archimedes twisted up, and, recognizing that he was Roman,
Shouted, “Someone, give me one of my mechanisms.”
But the Roman, excited, immediately kills him,
A decayed old man, divine in his works.
And Marcellus, immediately upon learning this, lamented,
And illustriously buried this man in the paternal tombs,
In the company of the best of the citizens and all of the Romans;
But the killer of Archimedes, I think Marcellus killed with an axe.
Dio and Diodorus write the story,

§ 2.150  And with them, many men mention Archimedes:
Anthemius first, the writer of paradoxes,
Heron and Philo and Pappus and every writer on engineering,
From whom we can read about reflective ignition
And all other engineering knowledge,
Such as the lifting screw, pneumatics, and water-finding,
And from the books of old man Archimedes.

§ 2.157  (T36) CONCERNING HERACLES [relying heavily on Pseudo-Apollodorus, Bibliotheca])
Heracles, the son of Alcmene, Amphitryonides.
By one account was called Amphitryon’s son,
But in truth, he was the son of Zeus, a lord and astrologer.
I have said how they used to call all kings Zeuses.
This Zeus used to have sex with random women he met,
Whom they also call mortals, and had children with them.
That they used to call random women mortals,
And queens goddesses, Ptolemy also writes
In his Tetrabiblos, writing to Syrus:
“As many men as have Aphrodite in their nativity,
Are mingling with such divine and eminent destinies.”
And so that magician astrologer king
Had, from different women, countless children.

§ 2.170  When, Alcmena was at the point of childbirth by him,
About to bear her son Heracles,
Archippe was also pregnant then by Zeus
But with an incomplete, seven-month child, Eurystheus;
King Zeus, the great astrologer,
Only then had been deceived. For seeing the stars
All well situated, and in kingly places,
And knowing that Alcmene was pregnant for nine months,
And that it was then the time for the baby’s birth,
Not having looked ahead whether the baby would be born then,

§ 2.180  Or the one child held back, the other born unfinished,
Looking only at the natal stars,
Gods wise and ruling. This I proclaim (Zeus says):
“The son born today from a mortal woman,
Is going to take the sceptre of my kingdom
And rule over all those born to me and to mortal women.”
This is what he said, thinking that Heracles was being born.
But this child was large-bodied at birth,
Occupying all the space in the womb,
And they said Hera was holding back his birth,

§ 2.190  But rather since Iphicles was being born together with Heracles;
Alcmene, having a difficult delivery, after some days
Gave birth in the tenth month. But Archippe then
Gave birth to a seven-month baby under kingly stars.
Eurystheus, who ruled then over Heracles.
In this way I have explained the allegory more mathematically;
Now now I will speak more ethically in the manner of rhetors.
There was a certain Zeus, a king, childless with his lawful wife,
But having pregnant mistresses, Alcmene and Archippe.
Alcmene in her ninth month, the other in her seventh month.

§ 2.200  Seized by much love for Alcmena,
Knowing that Alcmene was about to give birth,
And Archippe had no prospect of giving birth,
Zeus wrote in his sworn testament, without naming names:
“Whichever son is born to me today, from whatever woman,
Let him have the royal sceptre and power.”
And thus, as I said before, when the births happened,
Eurystheus outran the months and held the sceptre,
Dragging Heracles into enduring slavery,
Ruling, by destiny, over the strongest man of all.

§ 2.210  Pontic Herodorus says in writing that Heracles
Had a height of four cubits and one foot.
I suppose everyone can shout out the man's feats of strength.
While still a small child having killed someone with a kithara,
He was sent to the cowherds by his father Amphitryon.
And while herding in Cithaeron at the age of eighteen,
He killed a lion that was devouring cows and wore the hide.
I, however, refuse to accept wild lions
In Thebes and Nemea and such places,
Unless, perhaps, driven mad out of some other places

§ 2.220  As a monstrosity they erupted into the places referred to.
And Thestius, knowing that he killed the lion, entertained him as a guest.
He had fifty daughters with Megamede,
He made Heracles drunk and had all of his daughters sleep with him
During fifty nights, one night for each,
In order that they might conceive with him, and bear children.
Having done this, Heracles killedErginus
Who had made war upon Thebes; he made the Minyans pay tribute,
In return for which he received Megara from Creon.
Maddened and having burned Megara’s children with fire,

§ 2.230  Heracles by an oracle went to Mycenae, the city of Eurystheus,
And served him for twelve years, accomplishing the labours.
First, having shot the Nemean Lion, he strangled it with his hands,
And brought its hide to Mycenae for Eurystheus.
Terrified at Heracles’ irresistible power,
Eurystheus forbade his entrance into the city;
Instead, he bid Heracles to display all of his labours before the gates.
Second, Heracles killed the nine-headed Hydra of Lerna,
Nine warlord brothers sharing a single soul,
For whom general Carcinus (Crab) was an ally and friend.

§ 2.240  These men Heracles destroyed with trouble and violence.
For whenever one of this army was killed,
Two others would emerge from their stronghold.
Therefore Heracles was barely able to kill them,
When from the other side Iolaus set fire to the city;
Wherefore Eurystheus did not accept this Labour.
There is a truer Hydra in very ancient times,
Seven generations before Heracles,
The fifty-headed one, residing in Lerna.
When one head was cut off, two would sprout

§ 2.250  Heracles, though not being present, destroyed it even then.
This though, is the heads of the sons of Aegyptus,
Which the Danaids threw into the water of Lerna,
One after another, each woman bearing the head of another man,
Having killed them at their father's advice.
Later, when Lynceus alone escaped with his life
And assembled a trial, all of the women — through just reason
(which I assert Heracles to be), and the glory of the land)—
Received the punishment befitting each of them.
The fifty-headed hydra is some wickedness,

§ 2.260  That arouses, frequently, many occasions for malice,
Which hydra Heracles, as Reason (logismos), killed with the help of Iolaus,
Who is the justice that gladdens well-meaning people.
But whereas these two were unadvantageous to Heracles,
The former was suitable to the offspring of Alcmene.
Third, Heracles held down with his feet the golden horned deer,
Which Taygete left sacred to Artemis,
Adorning its horns with gold and an inscription.

§ 2.268  Next, Heracles goes to the Erymanthian Boar.
As an incidental deed he killed all the centaurs.
For Pholus the centaur entertained Heracles,
Opening the common wine pithos of the Centaurs.
And they came and were ill-disposed toward Pholus,
Whence Heracles killed them with his bow.
The affairs of the Centaurs, though, I will explain allegorically in detail when necessary.
The boar was ruining Phocis in every way.
Having pursued it out of the thicket into deep snow,
Heracles bound it with slip-knots and brought it alive to Mycenae.

§ 2.278  Fifth, Heracles carried out the dung of the three thousand cows
That belonged to the lord of the Eleans, Augeas the Phorbantid
(Or the son of Poseidon, or of Helios according to others).
Having been promised that he could take a tenth of these animals,
He turned the river Alpheus against the pens,
And cleaned out the dung in a very short time.
When Augeas did not give what was promised,
Phyleus dared to speak against him: “how unjust you are, O father;”
He settled in Dulichium, ostracised by Augeas;
Having been deceived Heracles sacked Elis,
But later, and not in the time immediately after.
Nor didEurystheus accept the cleansing of the dung,
Saying that it was for a tenth of the cows and as a wage-payment.

§ 2.290  For the sixth labour, with a bronze rattle and his bow, Heracles killed birds,
Having shot them with feathered arrows in the Stymphalian Lake.
For the seventh labour, he overpowered the Cretan Bull and brought it back alive,
Whether this was the bull that ferried Europa across to Crete,
Or the one Poseidon brought from the sea,
Which grew excessively wild and was damaging Crete,
Eurystheus let the bull loose.
It went through Marathon, and was a bane to the people of Attica.

§ 2.299  Eighth, the man-slaying horses of Diomedes, King of the Bistonians and son of Cyrene and Ares,
Heracles brought them to the sea. As they ran in arms,
He killed all the men of Diomedes and Diomedes as well.
But Abderus, the son of Erinus and a friend of Heracles,
The horses tore in pieces, devouring him with their teeth.
Abderus was from Locrian Opus, and a guard of these horses;
Heracles, after he founded the city Abdera for him,
Brought the horses to Eurystheus;
Grazing at Olympus, they supplied meat for the beasts of prey.
For the ninth labour, Heracles ran after the girdle of Hippolyta

§ 2.310  Since Admete, the daughter of Eurystheus, wanted it.
Crossing to the Amazons with one ship,
In the coasting voyage he sacked all of Bebrycia,
And gave it to Mysian Lycus, the son of Deipylus,
After defeating the brothers Amycus and Mygdon.
Lycus called the city Heraclea,
Honouring Heracles who granted him the country.
Heracles sailed to Themiscyra itself,
Defeated the Amazons and took the girdle.
In passing, he rescued Hesione from the sea monster.
Then, the guest-slaying sons of Proteus,
Tmolus and Telegonus, Heracles killed after wrestled them down.

§ 2.320  For the tenth labour, the purple cows of three-bodied Geryon,
Whether as master of three islands or a desire of three brothers—
For not now would I say that the “tripartite” aspect of the year is more natural
Geryon phaia, Heracles the sun,
And the rest of the things contributing to the accounts touching time.
But let me speak more like a rhetor, as I said:
Heracles led the red cows of this three-island-leader,
Or of the leader being of one soul with two other brothers,

§ 2.330  Out of Erytheia, an island of the Ocean,
Which now is called Gadeira, and was previously called Cotinousa,
By which Cotinousa the river Baetis flows.
Heracles led away those cows after killing the dog Orthrus,
And, indeed, Eurytion, the cowherd of Geryon,
And Geryon with them, who, in pursuing Heracles, was shot by his bow.
With the cows, Heracles was carried on the stream of Ocean,
And running out of Erytheia back to Europe,
To Tartessus, a notable city of Iberia,
He stood up the two Pillars, Alybe and Abinna.

§ 2.340  Driving the cows through Iberia into Libya,
Heracles killd Dercynus and Alebion, sons of Poseidon,
As they were trying to take away some of the cows. Then to Tyrrhenia;
A bull sailed from Rhegium to Sicily,
And left behind the name Italy for the country.
For the Tyrrhenians somehow call a bull italon.
Eryx, the son of Poseidon, seized this bull,
Mixed it in with herds of Ida for the herdsmen.
Heracles, having crossed to Sicily, wrestled down Eryx three times,
Killed him, and drive the cows together.

§ 2.350  Having crossed to the Ionian gulf of Dyrrhachium,
Heracles went with difficulty through Thrace to Eurystheus;
Eurystheus sacrificed all the cows to Hera,
With all of these labours accomplished by Heracles
In a month and eight years, and not more.
But as Eurystheus did not count the labours of the hydra and the boar,
He orders an eleventh labour for the future:
To bring from the Hesperides, from the Hyperboreans,
The golden apples of Hera, which Zeus for his marriage regarded
As the best marital gift concerning Hera.

§ 2.360  The guard of these apples was a sleepless dragon, the son of Typhon.
Heracles, travelling through Illyria,
And the mountain of Pyrenaeus, and the streams of Eridanus
(Which are in the Celtic land), makes an inroad into Libya.
Heracles even kills sixty-armed Antaeus by wrestling him;
For Heracles had the stature of four fore-arms and a foot,
As Pontic Herodorus says somewhere in writing.
He went to Egypt and killed Busiris,
A son of Poseidon and Lysianassa;
Passing by Arabia he killed the son of Tithonus,
Emathion; In the Caucasus, he shot with his bow
The eagle that was eating the liver of Prometheus;

§ 2.372  Heeding the counsels of Prometheus, Heracles approached the Hyperboreans
And took three apples (μῆλα) from Atlas.
Others say that Heracles received the apples from the nymphs,
After he killed the dragon, the guardian of the apples,
Who was actually a shepherd, while the apples (μῆλα) were his flocks,
Golden-skinned, grazing in the Hyperboreans' territory;
This is in the mountains of the Hyperboreans;
For now it is unsuitable to explain the allegory more naturally,

§ 2.380  Saying the nymphs were the seasons, the apples the stars,
The dragon the horizon and the nature of the waters,
Whence the stars, fresh-bathed, rise up shining,
As the golden Calliope of Homer has made clear,
But in this way, as we said, appropriately for rhetors.
On his return he put in at Thermydron harbour of Rhodes,
And having detached one bull from a wagon, he slaughtered and ate it;
The cowherd cursed him from the mountain above.

§ 2.388  So then, having brought the apples to Eurystheus
He accomplished the twelfth labour, bringing up Cerberus,
Who was the terrible fifty-headed dog of Hades,
Having three dog heads, the tail of a dragon,
And down the back, heads of other beasts of all sorts.
When Heracles was about to accomplish this labour,
He hastened to Eleusis and was initiated by Eumolpus;
He was led down through Taenaron to Hades himself.
He raised up Theseus, but brought down the cowherd of Hades,
Menoetius the son of Ceuthonymus,
Breaking his ribs in wrestling and crushing him.
He found Cerberus in the gates of Acheron.

§ 2.400  Covered only by his lion skin and breastplate,
Without the rest of his weapons, as Pluton said,
Heracles held him down from the neck, while being bitten by the tail,
And by the rest of the heads along its back,
And carried it through Troezen to Eurystheus.
He straightaway brought it down to Acheron and Hades.
This Hades was the king of the Molossians,
Having, also, a very large dog which he called Cerberus.
This Hades, even holding down Pirithous, together with Theseus,
On the one hand killed Pirithous, but was guarding Theseus.
Having come to Acheron, Heracles saved Theseus.
And the rest is very obvious, so why speak at length?

§ 2.412   Now then, after the aforementioned labours,
Eurytus, defeated with his five sons by Heracles in archery,
Did not give his daughter Iole to Heracles in marriage,
Lest somehow, having begotten children from this woman, he go mad and kill her,
As he did with his sons who were born to Megara.
And not much afterwards, when Eurytus was defrauded of horses by Autolycus,
He judged the crime to be the work of Heracles.
Iphitus, the son of Eurytus, went to Heracles,

§ 2.420  Who had just saved Alcestis and returned,
And demanded these animals from Heracles. He was taken aback:
Seized with madness again by the anger of Hera,
He threw him from the walls of Tiryns and killed him.
Since Neleus of Pylos did not wish to cleanse him,
He was cleansed instead by Deiphobus, but then falling ill again
He got a Delphic oracle, release from the disease,
If, after being sold, he should be a slave for three whole years
And provide the wage for his service to Eurytus.
And upon being sold, he was a slave to Lydian Omphale,

§ 2.430  The daughter of Iardanus and wife of Tmolus.
Also, while a slave there, he binds the Ephesian Cercopes,
And Syleus the Lydian, who were forcing strangers
To dig their vineyards as if they were slaves.
He killed Xenodice, Syleus' daughter,
And uprooted his vineyard.
Musaeus also recounts this story
In his work on Hero and Leander, writing these verses:
“But bring me, as your suppliant, and bedmate if you wish,
Whom Eros took for you by hunting, striking me with his arrows.

§ 2.440  As swift Hermes with wand of gold conveyed bold Heracles
To serve the Iardanian bride,
But Cypris sent me to you, and wise Hermes did not bring me.”
Having completed this time of service,
With six triremes Heracles sacked the city of the Trojans
And that of the Coans, and killed king Eurypylus,
The son of Poseidon and Astypalaea.
Then, at Phlegra, Heracles worked with the gods against the Giants.
They say kings are gods (we said this many times).
Heracles sacked Elis next, and killed Augeas,

§ 2.450  And Cteatus and Eurytus, sons of Actor, by treachery.
And he sacked Pylos, and wounded even Hades;
And gave the kingdom of the Laconians to Tyndareus
Having killed Hippocoon the ally of Neleus.
And going against Calydon he defeated Achelous,
And married Deianira, the daughter of Oeneus.
At the wedding-feast he killed Ennomus the son of Architeles,
And fled to Ceyx near Trachinia,
Near Evenus, Heracles shot Nessus,
Who wished to forcibly dishonour Deianira.

§ 2.460  This Nessus gave his blood to Deianira,
Telling her to use it to anoint Heracles’ chiton
When she should perceive him loving any girl.
Later, doing this very thing, Deianira killed Heracles.
But then, Heracles, travelling in Dryopis,
Slaughtered and ate a cow of Theiodamas.
He also sacked the country and killed Laogoras.
And Cycnus, the son of Ares and Pelopia,
Heracles destroyed while going through the Itonian land.
And while going into Trachis, he leads an army against Eurytus.

§ 2.470  After plundering Oechalia, and even taking Iole,
Heracles came to anchor near to Cenaeum, the cape of Euboea,
And set up an altar of Zeus. About to sacrifice there,
Heracles sends his attendant Lichas to Deianira
To declare his arrival and victory.
Deianira, being suspicious of his desire for Iole,
And considering the words of Nessus as true,
Anointed some undergarment with the blood of Nessus
And sent Lichas with it to Heracles.
Having put it on, Heracles perished in an utterly bad manner.

§ 2.480  For the blood of Nessus the Centaur, mixed together
From the poisons of the missiles from an arrow of the Hydra
Was something deadly from which none escape, bringing onto the things anointed with it
An immeasurable itching and a biting sensation, and blisters.
Wherefore that little amount destroyed Heracles
The man who cleansed all of the land and sea of evil.
All of the people brought up by accounts of the story
Almost recounted the things inside and outside.
But Quintus, I think, has written these labours

§ 2.490  Cutting together with words, Quintus Smyrnaeus.
The words are in this way, which I will prevail to reveal:
“First in Nemea he destroyed the stout lion.
Secondly, in Lerna, he killed the Hydra with many necks.
For the third, moreover, in addition to those, he killed the Erymanthian Boar.
Fourth after these things, he caught the high-horned stag.
Fifth, he pursued the Stymphalian Birds.
Sixth, he fetched the radiant girdle of the Amazon.
Seventh, he cleaned much of the dung of Augeas.
Eighth, he drove the fire-breathing bull out of Crete.
Ninth, be brought the horses of Diomedes out of Thrace.

§ 2.500  Tenth, he drove the Cattle of Geryon out of Erytheia.
Eleventh, he brought the dog Cerberus out of Hades.
And twelfth, he carried golden apples to Greece.
The thirteenth labour involved the daughters of Thestius.”
In this way, Quintus himself has written, having arranged among the labours
The false-thirteenth labour, this not existing one.
For you yourself have all of the labours written in,
And the bye-works of the labours. And why do I speak at length?

§ 2.508  (T37) CONCERNING SAMSON
Samson was a son of Manoah, an Israelite judge,
Born in times and periods of captivity.
This man wished to take Enthamnatha for a wife.
As he was beginning then at some time to chat about marriage,
He killed a lion with bare hands, having met with it face to face.
A little later, he found honey from a honeycomb
In the mouth of the lion, the very lion which he himself destroyed.
And after eating the honey, he put forward a riddle, having contrived it at the wedding feast,
Saying “meat came out of the mouth of the one eating.”
Not having the power to know this riddle, they learned from the bride,
And they fine Samson the problem-contriver
Thirty robes together, and thirty pieces of fine cloth.

§ 2.520  As Samson was greatly angry at the affair,
The father of the bride did not give her for marriage.
But Samson, taking three hundred foxes,
And from behind, kindling torches underneath their tails,
And then sending them away, set on fire every ear of corn of the people of the other tribe.
They, in turn, burn the house of the bride and those inside of it.
But when Samson struck together war upon them,
Every one of them, drawn up in battle order against the Judeans,
Were searching for Samson; and the Judeans, bound him
And gave him to the people of the other tribe. But Samson, having broke through the bonds,

§ 2.530  Killed a thousand of them with a jawbone of a donkey.
From there, he went to the city of Gaza to a prostitute.
And when the barbarians circled around the man,
In the middle of the night, having lifted the gates of the city on his shoulders
He ran out. Later, he loved Delilah,
And had her as a bed-fellow. The satraps of the barbarians, though,
Present one thousand one hundred pieces of gold to the woman
Who shaved Samson’s locks of hair while he was sleeping.
For the Samson just now spoken about, and Pterelaus and Nisus,
Men who acquired golden hairs on their heads to one result,

§ 2.540  Had their strength in these hairs they. When shaved clean of these hairs
(The latter men by daughters—Nisus by Scylla,
Pterelaus by Comaetho—, and the former man by the Maenad),
Now weakened, they found vengeance from their enemies.
But the affairs of Pterelaus and Nisus I am running over.
After blinding Samson, who was already weakened in the above manner,
The people of the other tribe shut him in a terrible prison.
Some of them, moreover, were holding festivities and choral dances for the suffering of Sampson.
At last, they bring him out from the prison,
Desiring that he behave in a drunken and mocking manner.

§ 2.550  But Samson, groaning deeply from his much-affected heart,
Shook down the pillars and the entire household,
And along with himself he also destroyed all of the barbarians together,
Who happened to be much more in number than those who were being destroyed previously,
Whom Samson destroyed while living and flourishing in the might of his strength.

§ 2.555  (T38) CONCERNING POLYDAMAS OF SKOTOUSSA
This Polydamas was from the city of Skotoussa.
Known to devastate, with bare hands, lions as if they were lambs,
And with winged feet, to surpass swift-running chariots,
With his hand, he even resisted some collapsing cave.
Diodorus Siculus writes the story.

§ 2.560  (T39) CONCERNING MILO THE WRESTLER
This Milo was an athlete from Croton,
Contemporaneous with that philosopher Pythagoras.
Six times Milo won the Olympic Games in wrestling.
At one time, while being a leader of war for the people of Croton
And, with his Olympic wreath springing forward in the front like Heracles,
With only ten divisions of ten thousand men of Croton,
Milo killed three hundred thousand men.
Diodorus writes even this story,
Along with Herodotus, and many other prose writers.

§ 2.569  (T40) CONCERNING AEGON, IDAS, LYNCEUS, HERACLES AND LYTIERTES
Aegon of Croton was a very strong boxer,
Who did not eat less than Idas and Lynceus,
But ate the same amount as Bouthoina and, in any event, Lytiertes;
For eighty loaves of newly kneaded wheat-bread
Aegon the pugilist himself has eaten up in Lacinion.
For the little biscuit is not a loaf, but call it dry stuff,
For a loaf is not any sort of dry stuff, but soft and fresh1.
Even when he was running in the mountains, Aegon was wont to overcome bulls with his feet
And, with his hands, to draw up their hoofs while they were still alive.
Carrying these bulls on his shoulders, he was gratifying
Friends, maidens and women, such as Amaryllis,

§ 2.580  As Theocritus relates, writing the words as so:
“And there, at east-facing Lacinion, where the pugilist
Aegon alone devoured eighty loaves,
He even carried a bull from a mountain, having grasped
It by the hoofs, and gave it to Amaryllis. And the women
Cried out loudly, and the cow-herd laughed aloud.”
The affairs of Idas and Lynceus happen to be clear beforehand
As even the affairs of Heracles which were related by me in this work.
For each of these men had eaten a fourth of a bull.
Idas, moreover, had eaten a half cut of a bull,

§ 2.590  While Heracles had one entire bull in Lindos,
And the bull of Theiodamas in Dryopis.
Now Lytiertes, being an illegitimate son of Midas,
Was emptying out a whole jar of wine by drinking it,
And munching on loaves of wheat bread, he ate the load carried by three donkeys,
As in the Daphne, Sosibius says with iambics:
“He was a counterfeit illegitimate son of that man.
Of what sort of a mother, the woman who brought him forth knows.
On the one hand, he eats loaves of wheat bread to the order of three whole pack-saddles.
Within a short day, he drinks at once

§ 2.600  A ten-amphora jug, though calling it a one-amphora size;
And he works at light things for the loads that he eats”.

§ 2.602  (T41) CONCERNING DAMOXENUS
Lucian the Syrian recalls the wrestler Damoxenus,
Saying that he happened to be the best among wrestlers,
In no way inferior to Milo and the other wrestlers.

§ 2.605  (T42) CONCERNING IPHICLUS
Iphiclus, a son of Phylacus, was the father of Protesilaus.
A man overleaping his peers in speed,
Iphiclus has been interpolated in the myths to run above ears of corn,
And, because of the lightness of his running, he did not break any of the husks;
Orpheus relates this story, saying somewhere:

§ 2.610  “Nor was anyone swifter than vigorous Iphiclus,
Who even used to run on asphodel plants, nor still
Does he damage the fruit as he bears his light as air limbs upon a dried crop”.

§ 2.613  (T43) CONCERNING EUPHEMUS
Euphemus was a son of Doris and Poseidon
(Or really, the son of Europa, daughter of Tityus; or the son of Mecionica,
Who was the daughter either of Orion or Eurotas),
And had, for a wife, Laonome, a sister of Heracles.
Euphemus was the lookout man of the Argo, as Pindar somewhere writes.
But Asclepiades says that from Poseidon, Euphemus
Had a gift, to travel on the sea without harm

§ 2.620  (Just as even Orion), and as someone travels on land.
In this way, the more allegorical version is thinkable to you.
Both of these lookout men are also helmsmen.
Though they more than surpassed all of the people who were babbled about long ago,
They were never hurt by sea waves.
Whence they were elaborated upon in such making of myths.

§ 2.626  (T44) CONCERNING PROTEUS
Proteus, a son of Phoenician Phoenice and Poseidon,
Living around Pharos, within what is now Alexandria,
Used to change, with his magical powers, into all things,
Into fire, water, into a dragon, a tree, into every form,
As Homer made clear, writing in the Odyssey.
Lucian, however, says that Proteus was a dancer
And simply imitated, with his dances, the forms of all things.
I say, though, that Proteus was a lecanomancer,
Foreshadowing all things through lecanomancy,
Whatever someone should wish to learn and about whatever someone should ask,
About trees, people and fire, waters and beasts,
Whether a natural philosopher, saying the forms of all things,
Or the most clever rhetorician, having written in ways befitting
Stones, beasts and the rest. But rather more as I said,
I think the man was a lecanomancer and a magician.

§ 2.641  (T45) CONCERNING PERICLYMENUS
Periclymenus, the son of Neleus and Polymede,
Was a brother of Nestor, that Nestor of Pylos.
Periclymenus possesses from Poseidon, his grandfather, this gift,
To change himself into every form of whatever living things he should wish.
Struck by a spear of Heracles, who at one time was waging war against Pylos,
Periclymenus was destroyed, though he had already turned into a fly.
The more allegorical account is in such a manner:
From the soul of Poseidon, who is fitting,
Periclymenus imitated all beasts in the wars,

§ 2.650  The quickness of leopards, the great strength of lions,
And the nature of a fly, which is hard to dissuade and full of a longing for bloodshed.
Wherefore even Homer speaks as he delineates the man:
“Both Nestor and Chromius and arrogant Periclymenus.”

§ 2.654  (T46) CONCERNING THETIS
They say that Thetis, in fleeing the company of Peleus,
Turned herself into fire, into water, and into the nature of beasts;
And continually still changing into the shape of a cuttlefish,
Peleus has her held down, with whom he was yoked in marriage.
Now here is the more allegorical version: not deeming Peleus worthy,
Thetis turned herself to fall down upon fire, and down upon water,

§ 2.660  And to be meat for beasts in inaccessible mountains.
Finally, Peleus has her held her down either while she was hiding herself in darkness,
Like a cuttlefish, hidden by the thick, dark juice of the black ink,
Or even while fleeing from that man beside the sea,
As Euripides has written this in his Andromache.

§ 2.665  (T47) CONCERNING MESTRA
Mestra was the daughter of Erysichthon Aethon,
A man of Thessalian birth, who was immeasurably hungry
Because he had foolishly cut down the grove of Demeter.
Mestra, in changing into all living things
And every remaining form, and then in selling herself,
Used to provide victuals to her father, taking away his hunger,
As Lycophron somewhere says this very mythically:
“The courtesan fox, who assumed all forms,
And who, with gains made by day,
Used to heal the peaking ravenous hunger of her father
Aethon, a man who was cleaving the ground with foreign ploughshares.”
These verses are rather mythic; it must be interpreted allegorically:
Erysichthon has sold and consumed his farmland.
Wasted by need and guilt-related hunger,
He was trying to live by prostituting his daughter,
with the result that one man gave money, another perhaps a sheep-skin,
Another gave either hares, birds, geese, or swans,
And the rest gave from the rest of their options, so that I do not weave words.
And I think even Palaephatus teaches it in this way,
Though he does not recount the cutting down of the grove of Demeter,
Which we said is a selling of possessions.

§ 2.686  (T48) CONCERNING CASTOR AND POLYDEUCES
They write that Castor and Polydeuces, the sons of Tyndareus,
By an act of Zeus, both happened (or rather just Polydeuces)
—against Lynceus and Idas, the sons of Aphareus,
And for Phoebe and Hilaeira, the daughters of Leucippus —
To join in a strongly contested battle, to determine who can have them.
The courses of the battle were around Taygetus.
Lynceus, who turned out as the most sharp sighted of all people,
Upon seeing Castor and Polydeuces in a hollow of the oak tree,
Kills Castor with his spear, and Polydeuces kills Lynceus,
Though Idas kills Polydeuces, and a thunderbolt kills Idas.
Now the father of Polydeuces, Zeus the astrologer,
Marked out the deceased sons in the stars
And has called Castor and Polydeuces the Twins.
Day by day, they say, these two are both living and dying.

§ 2.700  For in this way the stars of the Twins rise.
But others even alter the story a little,
Saying that Polydeuces did not die in battle,
But, for the hereafter, seeks after this gift from Zeus:
Both to be dead and to live with his kinsman Castor,
As somewhere even Pindar says. What, exactly, he relates, I do not know.
For there are sections of words, and they flee my memory.
But the truer account is as I have already said to you before.
Lycophron relates the story, and Euripides,
Simply all of the poets along with Apollodorus.

§ 2.710  Even, in addition to them, Stasinus, who writes the words in this way,
Speaking in heroic words: “And straightaway Lynceus
Went to Taygetus, trusting in his swift feet;
Upon going up to the very top, he was looking through the entire island
Of Tantalid Pelops. Quickly, the mighty hero beheld,
With his terrible eyes, both of them inside a hollow oak tree,
Horse-taming Castor, and prize-bearing Polydeuces.”

§ 2.717  (T49) CONCERNING AETHALIDES
Aethalides, the son of Hermes, was a clever rhetorician,
Always writing in books, one account being mournful and of funeral orations,
And another account of joyful things.
And according to Democritus himself along with Heraclitus,
Aethalides, crying and laughing at the same time over the unstable nature of life,
Was said to be both dead and alive always, day by day.

§ 2.723  (T50) CONCERNING ARISTEAS
Aristeas was a son of Caystrobius,
Of Proconnesus by race, being of those noble in race and of the foremost families.
Aristeas, having slipped into a smith’s shop, dies and falls down dead.
The smith, after immediately closing that shop,
Relates the terrible thing of Aristeas to his kinsmen.
All of them, running with lamentations to the smith’s shop
And opening it up, found nothing, neither a dead nor a living man.

§ 2.730  Aristeas, having appeared again after seven years,
Writes an epic poem called The Arimaspea.
Even again he disappears for a second time and dies.
And after two hundred forty years
It was in the time of Herodotus, and again Aristeas reappeared,
Just as Herodotus says; but if it is true, I do not know.
And who made an acquaintance with Aristeas, or who lived so long,
So that in later times he could say: “Herodotus, in your times,
This man is Aristeas of Proconnesus,
Who was dead for a long time, but has presently reappeared again”?
To me, it seems to be downright silly talk and a frigid story.

§ 2.741  (T51) CONCERNING THESEUS
Theseus was a son of Attic Aegeus and Aethra,
But they used to say that when Theseus was manly, he was a boy of Poseidon;
For they say that all high spirited men together, and all manly
Sons and friends, are lovers of Poseidon.
Theseus once agreed with his friend Pirithous
To seize from Zeus, that is, Zeus the king,
Some girl, and marry her; and at some time, having gone
To a place within the land of the Molossians, whose king was Hades,
Of whom the wife was Demeter, and the daughter was called Kore,

§ 2.750  (For the Molossians call all attractive females girls),
And the dog was a threefold Cerberus, causing a shudder from its size;
During the night, they made their attempt to take Hades’ daughter.
But soon they were detained, and Pirithous was eaten
By threefold Cerberus the dog, while Theseus is held fast in a prison.
And as Heracles at some time came to even Hades,
Ordered by Eurystheus to carry away the dog,
He also immediately freed Theseus from his bonds;
Wherefore they said that the latter man ran back from Hades.

§ 2.759  (T52) CONCERNING PROTESILAUS
This Protesilaus was a son of Iphiclus;
Having left his wife Laodamia, recently a bride,
He is campaigning with the rest of the Greeks against the Trojans.
But having leaped before everyone, he dies first of all.
Now the mythographers say that when Protesilaus was in the bloom of youth,
The girl Persephone had compassion as she saw
Him lamenting his deprivation of Laodamia.
She even asks Pluto to let this man live again,
And he has Protesilaus, who has fled Hades, sent to his wife.
Myths assert these things; but other details of the story
In the following manner, somehow, some people relate as being very real:

§ 2.770  That the above mentioned wife of Protesilaus,
After learning of the misfortune and death of her husband,
Makes a wooden image of Protesilaus’ shape,
And had it lie with her because of her desire for him,
Not at all enduring to conceal his absence;
But others said that during the night, an image of Protesilaus was always seen
By his wife, wherefore these stories of wooden images were formed.
But I know that Laodamia, upon learning Protesilaus’ fate,
Immediately donned her bridal mantle
And, with a radiant face, put a dagger into her heart.

§ 2.780  She died with her good and newly married husband,
Just as Evadne, having recently become the wife of Capaneus,
Threw herself into the funeral-pyre because of the desire for her husband.
Lucian and Philostratus write this story,
And some others relate it, both poets and young men.

§ 2.785  (T53) CONCERNING ALCESTIS
Alcestis, a child of Pelias and Anaxibia
In her marriage to Admetus, the son of Pheres and Periclymene,
Bore Eumelus and Perimela.
At some time, when Alcestis’ husband Admetus was about to die,
Apollo asked the Fates for this favour,
That Admetus, upon giving someone to die instead of himself,
Rejoice in the presence of the living who were most friendly.
And when the Fates nodded their assent, Admetus looks at everyone,
If in some way someone might consent to die instead of him.
But when everyone rejected him (saying that Admetus should die),
Namely, his father and old mother and entire band of friends,
Alcestis herself eagerly undertook her end on account of him,
And is dying and is covered completely, and would rise again,
For Heracles, running out to the horses of Diomedes,
Is being entertained in the house of the grieving Admetus.

§ 2.800  But in no way reporting his misfortune to his friend
Admetus feasted him most splendidly in some house.
But Admetus himself, with mighty grief and misfortunes and lamentations
Was accomplishing the bearing out of the woman’s dead body.
And Heracles, learning the whole thing from some house-slave,
Exceedingly and excessively in wonder at the friendship for the man,
And having compassion for someone deprived of such a woman,
Striking his knee mightily he spoke away from the heart:
“O heart having endured many things and my hand,
Show now what sort of son, I beg you, Tirynthian

§ 2.810  Alcmena, daughter of Electryon, brought forth to Zeus.
For it is necessary for me to save the recently dead woman.”
Saying such things to himself, Heracles proceeds secretly to the tomb,
And holding down Hades, who came for the blood,
He did not let go until Hades provided Alcestis to him.
Taking her and turning back, Heracles went again to Admetus.
And while Admetus was weeping, wailing, and beating his chest,
Heracles presented Alcestis still covered in robes,
Saying, “Admetus, guard this woman for me;
For I was holding her as a victory prize for a contest.”

§ 2.820  And when Admetus lamented more and did not cease,
Alcestis removes the coverings and reveals herself. And Admetus, recognizing her with difficulty,
With sacrifices began to honour the hero (Heracles) as a god.
These details are rather mythical; it must be interpreted allegorically:
Acting with her sisters, Alcestis, after she killed her father
Unwillingly because of the deceits of Medea, flees to Admetus.
To whom she is even joined in lawful marriage, though she was away from her race.
But her brother Acastus was demanding her (to Admetus’ disadvantage)
So that he could exact vengeance for the murder of his father.
But when Admetus did not give her up, Acastus detained him

§ 2.830  After marching against Pherae with a multitudinous army.
And as Admetus was about to be killed by him,
Alcestis gave herself up, so that Admetus was released.
And Admetus started to lament the misfortune and suffering of the woman.
But Heracles, upon appearing, brings the woman back to him,
Having saved her from death and the hands of Acastus.
This allegorical interpretation, my child (it seems to me),
Happens, I think, to belong to Palaephatus the Stoic,
Being something very good and not unsound, just as, for the most part, he writes.
At any rate, this seems to be of another writer, and that up to this point this does not happen to be mine.

§ 2.840  For neither do I want alien works to be made my own,
Nor do I want to be made pretty with feathers, by which the myth depicts
That jackdaw with alien, motley plumage.

§ 2.843  (T54) CONCERNING EURYDICE
Eurydice was the wife of Orpheus.
They say that this woman died after being bitten by a snake,
But was brought back to the light again from the nether regions
When Orpheus charmed Hades and Kore with muse-works.
But here is the more allegorical account: either Eurydice, struck by pain,
And swooning from a terrible disease around the heart
(As even both hands react when meet with the bite of dragons),

§ 2.850  Was delighted by Orpheus, who drew out her suffering with his musical skill;
Or Eurydice herself, actually bitten by a snake
And running the risk of dying, through the enchantments which Orpheus knows,
And through his shrewdness and music and much learning
(As previously David did to that evil spirit of Saul),
Was made to live by him; wherefore these things were related.
But that Orpheus was able to treat such things,
He himself says in the Lithica, writing the epic verses in such a way:
“But whoever of men a wise heart orders”
(so that somewhat fittingly I may say the greatest number of things last),

§ 2.860  “If he should wish to know, he will learn both as many
Secret things as men contrive in their breasts,
And as many things as air-wanderers have screeched among themselves,
Shouting an unutterable song to people,
Eagles, rapid interpreters of great Zeus.
Such a man will know both how to stop on the ground the whistling of the coming dragon,
And to check the poison of creeping snakes.”
In this way, Orpheus used to understand every single treatment.

§ 2.868  (T55 CONCERNING THALES, PYTHAGORAS, ANAXAGORAS AND EMPEDOCLES (STORIES 55-58)
Accept the group of four stories as one.
Thales, a wise Milesian, one of the heptad of wise men,
Being a pupil of Assyrian Pherecydes,
Was the first to discover eclipses and cycles of the moon,
Living in the times of Lydian Croesus, a man rich in gold,
To whom he even foretold that there would be a lunar eclipse.
When that event happened, Thales brought everyone then into amazement;
For an eclipse of the moon was still not experienced.
Some said that Thales was the discoverer of what I said;
But others attach those things to Endymion:
Wherefore they said that the Moon was in love with the man.
Others, instead of “Endymion,” name “the Arcadians,”

§ 2.880  Wherefore some even called those people “before the Moon.”
Some people, moreover, said that the Arcadians were “before the moon” as though they were insolent.
For among certain groups, “to treat with insolence” is called “to be before the moon.”
Meanwhile, most people attach those things to Thales,
As they attach both to Meton, a son of Pausanias, the terms of twelve years,
And the nineteens [year cycles] of the moon,
And to Ptolemy after Meton and to some quantity of others,
Although before everyone Orpheus wrote all of these things.

§ 2.888  [T56] Pythagoras was the son of Mnesarchus the Samian.
Not only did he himself foreknow everything well, But also, for those wanting to know things about to happen
He left behind various books of prognostication.

§ 2.892  [T57] Clazomenian Anaxagoras, in turn,
Foretold that stones would be brought down from the sky;
In Aegospotamoi (this was a city of Thrace)
It happened in a later time, as Anaxagoras was not mistaken.
And he even put an end to rainstorms and the force of winds,
Just as all the wise men, of whom I was speaking now.

§ 2.898  [T58] And Empedocles, more than all of the others,
Wherefore they called him “wind-blocker”,
As he had already once stopped a violent blast of wind.
Empedocles was the son of Melito, Agrigentine by birth,
A pupil of Pythagoras and later of Telauges
(Telauges the son of Theano and Pythagoras).
That Empedocles was competent to do such things,
Learn more clearly hearing these verses of his:
“As many remedies as there are, a defence against evils and old age,
You will learn, since for you alone I will accomplish all of these things.
And you will stop the strength of untiring winds, which upon the land
Arising, ruin the plough lands with their blasts,

§ 2.910  And again, if you should wish, you will bring in avenging blows,
And you will establish a timely drought out of a dark rain storm
For people, and you will also establish, out of a summer drought
Floods that nourish trees, and the things in the upper air will set themselves on the ground.
And you will bring out of Hades the strength of a ruined man.”
Even these things we had said about Empedocles.
Now since above we spoke about the heptad of wise men,
Let everyone learn them who is wanting to learn:
Solon, Thales, Periander and Pittacus and Chilon
And Bias and Cleobulus, the wisest seven.

§ 2.920  (T59) CONCERNING LAIUS
Laius was a philosopher in the times of Antiochus;
Both an initiator and a mystic and a wonder-worker,
When a great plague held down Antioch,
Having chiselled in a rock the face of Charon and set it in the city,
Laius expelled the great disease of the Antiochenes.

§ 2.925  (T60) CONCERNING APOLLONIUS OF TYANA
Apollonius himself, living in the times of Nero,
Of Tyana, entirely wise, foreknowing all things,
At Antioch, yes, truly, even at Byzantium, makes it so that
Gnats and other such things not slip in.
And from long ago and for all of time, upon carving marble storks,

§ 2.930  Apollonius drove out of Byzantium the real storks,
Who were throwing dead snakes in the cisterns of the Byzantines,
And with the poison, were killing in masses the people who were drinking.
For once, a barbarian nation was driving against the Byzantines
When the leader of the Byzantines was abroad,
And the barbarians attacked the city in masses.
A woman, being the wife of a man who prevailed over sensible people,
Somehow throwing snakes in dark jugs,
Gave them to all of the citizens of her fatherland
To sling from the wall onto the army of barbarians.

§ 2.940  As this is happening, destruction falls on the barbarians,
As if then, the snakes were waging war against them.
When, in the future, the barbarians turned towards their fatherlands,
The snakes waged war against the Byzantines,
Killing many of them with poison shedding bites.
Then, some army of storks drives back the snakes.
But when the storks were throwing the snakes into the very cisterns,
And were making even more destruction for the Byzantines,
Upon arranging the marble storks which I mentioned in a row,
Apollonius himself drives away the real ones.

§ 2.950  This man spoke in advance also of an earthquake for the city of Antioch,
Even about Nero himself, the tyrant, he spoke in advance.
The events happen after a little while, something great and something not great.
Both at one time, when Nero was drinking at a table,
A thunderbolt poured out of the sky and seized the cup from his hand,
But in no way was there harm for that tyrant.
And at another time, in turn, arrested with other astrologers,
Apollonius spoke to Domitian, who said that he would kill him:
“You will not kill me, since not to you am I destined.”
What is more, having had his large beard cut off,

§ 2.960  Apollonius was thrown in prison, about to be killed;
But with one turn of the scale, he appeared in the vicinity of Dicaearchia.
Then, standing near Ephesus, a city of Ionia,
While Domitian, the tyrant at that time, was being killed in Rome,
As if near that place and looking at all of these things,
Apollonius was shouting often, “strike the sinful man, strike him”.
But when it happened that the tyrant resisted for a little while,
And the enemy was about to attack, Stephan, in turn, was turning pale,
Until some second man, having come to be a helper,
Was encouraging Stephan, and they kill Domitian.

§ 2.970  I know countless things of this man Apollonius,
Predictions and wonders, and I can recount all of them at length;
Wherefore I am stopping here my account about this man.
These things that belong to our fathers and a multitude of chronologies they write:
Philostratus and Maximus together and Moeragenes,
And another very, very large multitude, whom I do not have the strength to recount.
It is ill-timed, child, both to investigate something that will cause you needless trouble
(Even clear things lie in some little books),
And to cut fresh into my leaves of paper uselessly in this way.

§ 2.980  (T61) CONCERNING DEMOCRITUS
Abderan Democritus, the son of Hegesistratus,
Was a pupil of Leucippus, who, in turn, was the pupil of Melissus.
As truly being a philosopher who knew all things well,
Democritus always used to laugh at the uselessness of life.
Now the people of Abdera, opined that Democritus was melancholic.
Upon sending gifts worth ten talents to Hippocrates,
They were beseeching that Democritus be healed by the Coan physician.
And the physician, though he was on a sea voyage, and without the things he needed,
Returned back to see Democritus himself.
As Hippocrates himself was healed more than he healed Democritus,
He was even granting thanks to all of the people of Abdera,

§ 2.990  Since he knew such a wise man on account of them.
This Democritus, then, having been an entirely wise man,
Did countless other wonders, they say,
And even checked Hades for three whole days
By entertaining him with hot blasts from loaves of wheat bread.
Many men say the things pertaining to Democritus, even Coan Hippocrates.
And some writer of epigrams writes the instance of Hades:
“And was anyone wise like this? Who accomplished such a deed,
As all-learned Democritus revealed?
The man who held death, present in his house, for three days,
And entertained him with hot blasts from loaves of wheat bread.”

§ 3.1  CHILIADES BOOK 3, TRANSLATED BY GARY BERKOWITZ
(T62) CONCERNING TRITAECHMES, THE SON OF ARTABAZES
The whole story of Tritaechmes [Tritantaechmes] at length
You have, lying precisely in the little letter:
“In so far as the Babylonian son of Artabazes
That high-minded Tritaechmes, used to pride himself in
Extraordinary cattle-keeping, and income of money.
For he had grazing horses, apart from all of the other animals,
Being counted at sixteen thousand,
Eight hundred stallions apart from the ones used in wars,
Dogs hardly able to be maintained in four districts,
A day’s income from the rest of the districts
Constituting a whole artabas full of golden coins.”

§ 3.12  (T63) CONCERNING ERICHTHONIUS
Let Homer himself now recount the story of Erichthonius:
“Moreover, cloud-gathering Zeus begot Dardanus first;
And Dardanus founded Dardania, when sacred Ilium not yet
Had been built as a city in the plain, a city of articulate people;
But they were still living at the foot of Ida with its many springs.
Dardanus, moreover, begot a son, king Erichthonius;
His three thousand horses used to graze throughout the meadow-land,
All female, and foals were under many of them.
Even the North Wind loved them as they were grazing.”

§ 3.21  (T64) CONCERNING JOB
Job was an Ausite man and foremost among prophets,
God-fearing, truthful, just, without blame,
Having large fields and much property,
Both camels and cattle, both oxen and donkeys,
Five hundred roaming donkeys, only females,
And five hundred yoked pairs of ploughing oxen,
And seven thousand cattle within a herd
And three thousand camels, and many other animals with them,
As the book of this man Job teaches all of these things.

§ 3.30  (T65) CONCERNING PYTHIUS THE LYDIAN
You also have the entire story of Pythius
Lying narrowly in the little letter of mine; writen extensively
I omitted to say this before, but I said it in other places.
The day’s feeding for the entire army of Xerxes
Cost four hundred talents for those being fed inexpensively.
But Pythius, entertaining Xerxes, then, with the whole army
Illustriously feasted all of them at the most splendid tables.
The things that he gave to Darius, and later to Xerxes,
The little letter has, written at length.

§ 3.39  (T66) CONCERNING HERACLIUS
Chosroes was lord of the Persians in the times of Heraclius.
In his palaces around Persia,
He had the sky fabricated on the roofs,
Out of which thunder and lightning bolts and rain storms, all contrived,
Used to burst forth to the amazement of ambassadors who were being feasted.
Now Heraclius, in seven seasons of wars with the Persians,
Digging into and kindling and burning the entirety of Persia,
Also burned down that fire-bearing sky
Together with the entirety of Chosroes’ palaces which I spoke of;
And Heraclius quenched the fire of the Persians, which was reverential,
A fire that on the one hand first came up out of a lightning bolt because of Perseus long ago,

§ 3.50  With firebrands always succeeding that illumination,
And with fires that were continuous, flame coloured, large, and very violent,
A fire that was being guarded carefully until that time,
When it was quenched by Heraclius, a great grief to the Persians.
The chroniclers say these things, and along with them Pisida.
Pisida himself even related, somewhere, that sky,
Writing In Templum with iambic verses, of which I will pass over the majority.
But I would like to say some of the verses from there, so that there can be plunder for you:
“And to what end do you use machines
To rain dew on the very sky of Chosroes

§ 3.60  Old contemporary Syracusan, land measurer,
Who draws up the earth with the three-pulley machine,
Shouting, ‘Where should I go and shake the land?’
Let him draw aside the unshaken boundaries,
Less than a woman with his well-mechanized machines.”

§ 3.65  (T67) CONCERNING PTOLEMY
The Chian Theocritus writes that Ptolemy,
The son of Ptolemy (the son of Lagus) and Berenice,
Happened to be king, at the same time, of
Thirty-three thousand four hundred and eighteen cities.
And what is more, learn, from here, even the words, according to what is stated:

§ 3.70  “He rules over many lands, and many seas.
There are both countless infinities and countless nations of men.
Three hundred cities have been subdued,
Then three thousand in addition to thirty thousand
And six, and among them thirty three.
Of them all, proud Ptolemy is king.

§ 3.76  (T68) CONCERNING GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR
Gaius Julius Caesar, the Roman,
Within a span of twenty years being at the prime of his lifetime,
Increased the boundaries of Rome and the sceptre of the Romans
Upon enslaving the barbarians as far as even the islands of the British.
Wherefore Julius was called divine by the Romans,
Having gained this fine surname from his deeds.
The Diodoruses and Dios and others in addition say these things.

§ 3.83  (T69) CONCERNING SESOSTRIS
That Sesostris, king of the Assyrians,
With the name Sesoosis according to Diodorus,
Being a monarch of the Assyrians, ruled the entire earth.
Yoking the kings to his chariot,
And being drawn by them, just as other men are drawn by horses,
Sesostris was called both ruler of the world and divine by the people of that time.
Once, one of the yoked kings restrained Sesostris’ vanity,

§ 3.90  Using riddles to show by example the lack of cohesion in fortune.
For although he himself was drawing the chariot, he was seeing the tracks made by the wheels.
And as he was looking in this way, he slowed the progress of the chariot.
And when Sesostris said to this man,
“Why are you working adversely in the face of the road, man? Say it quickly!”
That man, looking at the turning around of the wheels, says, “I am not running.” 1
Sesostris, therefore, knowing what that man was revealing,
Draws in his arrogance, and loosens the kings from the yoke.
And, within the remainder of his reign, to everyone he was both mild and moderate.
Ctesias and Herodotus, Diodorus and Dio,

§ 3.100  And Callisthenes with them, as well as Simocatus and others
Recall the story narrowly, but some also recall it loosely.

§ 3.102  (T70) CONCERNING CATO
Drawing his roots from Italian sons of Aeneas,
The Ausonian Romans, this renowned Cato
Was a very distinguished consul and a general of the Romans,
Bringing home both triumphs and countless trophies.
This man rears his own son well for everything,
He himself teaching accurately and putting all things in his son’s mind,
As much as will be beneficial towards the soul, towards the state,
Towards strength, towards courage, and towards every graceful movement.

§ 3.110  Cato was his son’s teacher in subjects
Greek and Roman, and, simply, in every form of rearing,
Although he also owned countless slaves who were scholars,
Among them even Salonius, a man who was renowned in letters.
For he did not think his son was worthy of being insulted by slaves,
Though when being taught by them he was even struck many times.
Nor was Cato willing to have any large debt to them;
And with good reason, for how truly is the teaching of letters a great thing;
And Cato himself, as I said, was a teacher of letters,
Of running, of wrestling and boxing, and of the discus and the double pipe,

§ 3.120  Of exercises, horsemanship, and every type of armed fighting.
Cato used to teach his son to endure burning heat and freezing cold,
And to carry himself across great flooding rivers;
To cling to all good things, to hate all paltry things;
Being a guard of the child as far as even where words were concerned.
For in this way Cato was guarding him, as if he was a priestly virgin daughter,
A priestess honoured with awe, a Vestal virgin,
So that never yet did the child speak a paltry word,
Nor did any member of Cato’s staff, be they free or enslaved,
When this child was present, speak any shameful word.

§ 3.130  In this way Cato was rearing his son decently in all things,
So that later, the general Paulus, in a state of wonder,
Made him the son-in-law for his daughter Tertia.
For when the entire army of the Romans was put to flight,
Cato’s son, with sword unsheathed, continued to cut down the barbarians.
But when, from continuous sword fighting, his blade fell,
He did not choose to flee with the rest of the Romans,
But first started to earnestly entreat some of his friends,
So that, after they turned around with him, he could find his sword.
And what is more, powerlessly driving with them against the barbarians,

§ 3.140  He made victory doubtful for the Romans;
But he did not stop searching for the blade before
He found it in the middle of countless corpses.
Wherefore he has even become son-in-law, as we said, of Paulus.
The above story pertains to the son of Cato. Now there were two Catos,
Both philosophers and generals of the Romans.
But the above Cato was the elder, in the times of Antiochus
(The man who held the kingdom after Alexander).
The other Cato, the younger, who took his own life,
Giving his wife to his friend Hortensius,

§ 3.150  Was a brother of Capito and friend of Pompaedius.
Even more philosophical than the first Cato,
The younger Cato lived in the times of Caesar and Sulla the tyrant,
Having a son (yes, even this Cato), but not rearing him in the same way.
Plutarch, Dionysius, Diodorus and Dio
Write the details of the Catos and of the Scipios.
Just as that Cato the Elder,
Even my father was a teacher of all things for me,
Making me ready for teachers at small intervals.
Within one day of my father’s teaching, an issue about letters

§ 3.160  Used to lift me up and push me forward more
Than a month’s time of the other teachers; but in an incomparable way
Through his words making me grow, after the fashion of the Aloadae,
A living fire, fortifying me, towering me over my adversaries,
Making me a Bellerophon, a winged-horse horseman,
Or a winged Perseus, slayer of Gorgons,
Free of woodland savages and monsters that turn things into earth,
Of leaders, of reputation, of prerogative, and of love of money,
Things that constrain all people who are not free.
So my father rears me, as Cato reared his son.

§ 3.170  But if anyone even wants to understand what sort of man Cato was,
Let him look at me, an animate painting of Cato
And wise Palamedes, the son of Nauplius.
For they were both of good stature, with respect to their age,
Lean, grey eyed, of pale complexion, with hair red and thick,
Just as I am in all things. But if Palamedes
Should never be made angry, so let the accounts show it;
He had only this difference in comparison with us,
Being the same as me in all things pertaining to body and soul,
As to even acquire dry hair like us.

§ 3.180  This dryness had met with both of us because of a lack of washing;
For we have hair that is beautiful and delicate by nature,
But Cato differed from us in not being made angry,
If up to this time the accounts of the prose writers are not untrue.
For such combinations are both hot and cold.
From us, at any rate, as we said, he differed in this,
By being both most loving of gain and thrifty;
But in all other things we happen to resemble one another,
In terms of the body, as I revealed, and in terms of things most pertaining to the soul.
It belongs to me, more than the man Cato,

§ 3.190  To not be overpowered by money, and I am attended by a fire breathing spirit
For just things, just as the spirit that used to attend the younger Cato.
Indeed, for the younger Cato, having been acquainted
With Sulla the tyrant, came to his house
With Sarpedon, his entirely wise pedagogue.
When Cato saw the heads of illustrious men being carried out,
And the men carrying those heads lamenting quietly,
He spoke to his pedagogue: “How is it that someone does not kill this man?”
And when the pedagogue said, “They are all scared of him,”
Cato said: “Therefore, let some sword be given to me,

§ 3.200  And I will deliver the fatherland of cruel tyrants.”
Even for me there is some such a spirit for just things,
And a great zeal for the sun, burning my heart,
As even I now would kill priests for their dishonour,
If it had been possible for me, looking at such misdeeds:
At leading-priests willingly being slaves to the leaders
(Both living as captives in ways that love gain,
And tyrannically making secular slaves),
And again, at dishonourable priests, or, indeed, even at deacons
(Destroyed together by dishonourable deeds, just as if by gangrene),

§ 3.210  And at the Cretan abomination, whose absolute ugliness
(Utterly tearing, with a fleshy crowbar, all of the floor marble up from
The very house) gives to the noble man
Both every other most beautiful thing and a countless amount of money,
So that the impure man and the polluted man
Alienate from the sufferings of the night-battle
Their leading priesthood, which is compensation for those sufferings.
For the Goth in Gothia acts as their mediator,
Although he is full of an ill odour, and has never read more than thirty pages,
The one-eyed Cyclops, or rather, a man without eyes,

§ 3.220  Who, being blind like Aman, makes all things blind.
For when justice is made blind, all things are blinded at the same time.
And how straightly would the affairs regarding a city be managed,
Where the blind man is a guide for those seeing?
As the man who has never read more than thirty pages is for the entire assembly,
Drawing and guiding and dragging it where he wishes,
So once Orion, being blind, acted with regard to Cedalion.
But, O highest power looking at all things,
Send vivid lightning bolts, kindle and set on fire,
And do not anywhere overlook divine things being insulted,
Especially sacred leaders being bought by impure men,
As if the impure men coexist as their helpers.

§ 3.232  (T71-T73)CONCERNING CATO, SOLON AND THEODORUS (STORIES 71-73)
How Cato reared his son, I was just now saying.

§ 3.233  [T72] Solon, I was saying in the beginning, spoke these things to Croesus:
“Do not pride yourself in wealth and money and the rest;
The end, which distinguishes lives, is still unclear.”

§ 3.236  [T73] Now the physician Theodorus, sent by Maurice,
Made a friend of Chaganus, who was of the Romans by race.
Theodorus told the story of Sesostris, which I spoke of,
And through it, the unclear and changeable nature of fortune,
Mmost wisely alluding and persuading him,
Theodorus brought that man over to friendship and a treaty.

§ 3.242  (T74) CONCERNING HECUBA
The story of Hecuba is very clear to all,
That being queen of the Trojans and wife of Priam,
She becomes a captive to the Greeks and a slave.
Seeing many misfortunes even after being taken,
In the end she is even stoned to death, while dogs are rabid over her fate.
Wherefore she cursed the Greeks with curses due to murderers;
For this very reason, they formed the myth that she had become a dog.

§ 3.249  (T75) CONCERNING POLYMESTOR
Polymestor was king of all of the Thracians,
Whom the strong flowing Hellespont used to shut within.
Now being a disaffected friend, when Troy was destroyed,
Polymestor killed Polydorus, the son of Hecuba.
Since, according to Pindar, no one does anything without being observed,
The great eye of justice, not overlooking the defilement,
Reveals the sinister deed to Hecuba by way of dreams.
And she, doing something sinister in return, summons Polymestor
Together with his children, his descendants, whom she kills with the help of Trojan women.
Hecuba blinds Polymestor, using weaving shuttles to deprive him of his eyes.
Euripides uses tragedy to write both these events.

§ 3.260  (T76) CONCERNING AJAX THE SON OF TELAMON
Ajax was the son of Telamon and Eriboea,
The husband of Lysidice and the father of Philius,
And the father of Eurysaces by the captive woman
Tecmessa, the daughter of Teuthras. Ajax (the tower of the Greeks,
Sensible, understanding, numbering among those who were firmly established,
Correcting and causing everyone to understand just by the sight of him)
Was deprived of the arms of Achilles because of an unjust decision.
Boiling over in his heart, Ajax was utterly deprived of his wits,
And thinking they were animals, he slaughtered Greek people.
In the end, recovering just a little and recognizing the symptoms of madness,

§ 3.270  Ajax himself becomes murderer for himself.
Sophocles, the son of Sophilus, writes the events concerning Ajax.

§ 3.272  (T77-T88 CONCERNING AGAMEMNON, DIOMEDES, IDOMENEUS, AMPHIARAUS, PELEUS, THESEUS, THE SONS OF CLEOPATRA, THE SON OF PERSEUS THE MACEDONIAN, THE MISFORTUNES OF MAURICE, PHOCAS THE MOST HONOURABLE KING, GELIMER THE MAURETANIAN AND BELISARIUS THE GENERAL
The nameless, storyless story of these people
Is rather both abounding in names and abounding in stories,
But when told jointly, the story seems to belong to the nameless variety.
For after Polymestor with Ajax and Hecuba,
You would find other countless numbers of people who changed in life;
Passing over the majority of which, let us run over just a few.

§ 3.278  Agamemnon turned out as king of all Greeks.
After the erection of the trophies for Troy, and his return to his fatherland
(As though Clytemnestra, his wife, was being adulterous),
Agamemnon is killed, along with a certain number of the best of men, near the table,
By the contrivances of Aegisthus and his deceitful wife Clytemnestra.
Seven years later, Agamemnon’s son Orestes would kill these murderers,
Who had possession of his paternal sceptre.

§ 3.280  [T78] And Diomedes has drunk a drink of adultery:
For after the erection of trophies for Troy and the exercise of manly virtues,
Diomedes puts off going through life with his wife Aegialeia
And the adulterer Cometes, and instead flees to Daunia.
And there, doing things in a heroic manner that resulted in many trophies
He was fortunate to have a foreign tomb, a man foreign to his own fatherland.

§ 3.291  [T79] Idomeneus, that king of the Cretans,
When he himself returned to Crete from Troy
Found many misfortunes in his own house:
His wife, Meda, and daughter Cleisithera
Slaughtered in the temple at the hands of his foster child
Leucus, the son of Talos, murder-polluted Leucus);
He fled somewhere far, fled the island of Crete,
Pursued by the powerful Leucus.

§ 3.299  [T80] I pass in silence over Amphiaraus and the old man Peleus, The former, in gold-crazed Thebes, dead from his wife,
In a mad after gold city, from his own wife Eriphyle;
[T81] And moderate Peleus, great, once, with trophies,
But later ruined by sharp allotments of bad luck.
For in trembling old age, he lamented much for
The eminent man among heroes, Achilles, his famous son,
Destroyed treacherously by Paris in Troy.
After a little while Peleus cried to the goddess in her own person
That even Achilles’ cub was cut into pieces
In Delphi by the hands and swords and tricks of Orestes.

§ 3.310  [T82] I omit Aegeus’ once-blessed son Theseus,
Later very unfortunate, as his son was killed;
[T83] I am leaving out all of the people written in the parchments of the tragic poets.

§ 3.313  (T83 and T84) CONCERNING THE CAPTIVITY OF THE CHILDREN OF CLEOPATRA AND THE SON OF PERSEUS
I omit describing the children of Cleopatra,
And the son of Perseus (I mean of Perseus the Macedonian),
How, brought up nobly with sceptres and the purple
They see Rome with the bad luck of captives.

§ 3.316  (T85) CONCERNING THE DESTRUCTION OF MAURICE, AND THOSE DEAREST TO HIM
I omit declaiming tragically on the misfortunes of Maurice,
How (with wife and children) by Phocas, who as acting as tyrant,
He was extirpated root and branch in the midst of a chariot race.

§ 3.320  [T86] I omit telling how Phocas was destroyed,
And all those people the chroniclers and tragic poets celebrate.

§ 3.322  [T87] Gelimer was a king of the Mauretanian nations,
Who, defeated by Belisarius and all of his strength,
For a considerable number of days with wife and children
Was hiding in the mountains, hunting after deliverance.
But as hunger was unbearably squeezing them,
And a tear was trying to pour forth from the eyes like a fountain,
Gelimer writes some sort of passionate letter to Belisarius:
“Send me, Belisarius, a harp, a sponge, and a loaf of bread,

§ 3.330  The former, so that I can represent in tragedy my heavy misfortune,
A sponge, as I am wiping away the floods of tears,
And a loaf of bread, as I would observe even the mere sight of it;
For already, much time flowed past me being without food.
For the spindle of the Fates constrained me to this,
To prevail completely over all of the heaviest of misfortunes.”
Gelimer, brought as a captive to the city of Constantine
And standing at the hippodrome with the prisoners,
Said “Vanity of vanities all.”

§ 3.339  CONCERNING BELISARIUS THE GENERAL (T88
This Belisarius, the great general,
Being a commander in Justinian times,
Having spread victories into every quadrant of the world,
Later blinded by jealousy (O unstable fortune!),
Holding a wooden drinking cup, he used to shout to be heard by a mile,
“Give an obol to Belisarius the commander,
Whom fortune magnified, and jealousy makes quite blind.”
Some of the chroniclers say that Belisarius was not blinded,
But, from those having civic rights, became utterly deprived of those rights,
And, in turn, came into a restoration of his former magnificence.

§ 3.349  CONCERNING DARIUS WHOM ALEXANDER DEFEATED, REGULUS THE ROMAN, AND XANTHIPPUS THE SPARTIATE (STORIES 89-91)
The nameless story of the ancients is as follows:
Darius the later, being king of Persia,
Whom Macedonian Alexander the Great defeated,
Died at the hands of Bessus and Ariobarzanes,
Persian men, whom the Macedonian killed by crucifixion.
This was the end for Darius the Persian,
In return for the honour he had previously, in return for his kingdom.
For Marcus Regulus, the Roman commander
Seized by the Sicels, learn what sort of end he had:
Cutting off the lids of the eyes with a knife,
They left the eyes of that man open.

§ 3.360  Then shutting him in a small, very narrow hut,
And maddening a wild beastly elephant,
They were moving this animal against him, so that it pulled him down and scraped him.
Being pursued in this way, the great general
Exhaled his life in an end that was made miserable.
Xanthippus the Spartiate also dies at the hands of the Sicels.
For around the Sicel city of Lilybaeum
War raged between Romans and Sicels,
Lasting about twenty four years
The Sicilians, defeated many times in the battles

§ 3.370  By the Romans, were trying to hand over the city into slavery.
Now the Romans did not in any way believe that this attempt to surrender was real,
But told the Sicilians to go out of the city naked;
Meanwhile, the Spartiate Xanthippus, coming from Sparta
With one hundred soldiers (or alone, according to some,
And according to others having fifty soldiers),
Sailed in toward the Sicels, though they were shut in,
And through an interpreter had many conversations with them.
He finally emboldened them against the enemies; and joining in battle
He, together with the Sicels, cut down the entire army of the Romans.

§ 3.380  From the beneficiaries, Xanthippus received compensation
That was worthy and appropriate for the Sicels’ evil nature:
For these scum put Xanthippus on rotten ship,
And sank it in the swirling currents of the Adriatic,
Begrudging the hero and his bravery.
This story and that of Regulus are related by
Diodorus Siculus; and the story of Darius is written
By Callisthenes the prose writer, along with many others.

§ 3.388  (T92) CONCERNING THE WOODEN CORPSE
The prose writer Herodotus, the son of Oxyles,
Records that at the meals of the Egyptians this was performed:

§ 3.390  A household slave, bringing around a wooden corpse at the meals,
Enlightens all of those reclining in this way, somehow,
Shouting, “It is necessary to eat and drink while looking at this.”

§ 3.393  (T93) CONCERNING THE DRUNKENNESS OF THE LACONIAN HOUSEHOLD SLAVES
The Laconians, making their household slaves drunk
And introducing them to their own children,
Even though the slaves were ridiculous from unmixed wine and drunkenness,
Used to turn their children away from everything unseemly and base.
To say precisely the prose writer for this story,
Whether it is Herodotus, Plutarch, or another, I do not know.

§ 3.339  (T94) CONCERNING DARIUS THE FATHER OF XERXES
In a loose manner, the content of a letter diagrams
The entire story of Darius clearly for you.
About Darius, the father of Xerxes, let this letter say to you:
“For Darius, the king, going to Babylon,
Being a shield-bearer, not a king, in those times,
Received a gift from Syloson, a flame coloured upper-garment
(Syloson was a brother of Polycrates of Samos).
When afterwards, he was in possession of the kingdom,
The barbarian Darius was not forgetful of the gift.
But after an investigation, he makes Syloson the king of Samos,
Saying, ‘Darius never forgets favours.’”
The prose writer Herodotus writes the story.

§ 3.411  (T95) CONCERNING BELESYS THE BABYLONIAN AND ARSACES THE MEDE AND THE TAKING DOWN OF SARDANAPALUS THE ASSYRIAN
Belesys was Babylonian in race,
A man wise and understanding, quick to decide what needed to be done.
This man, seeing that Sardanapalus was like a woman,
Sumptuously, carelessly, and light-heartedly incapacitated,
Ruling the empire of the Assyrians in a totally bad way
(Indeed, for shut inside his palace
He was seen only by eunuchs and concubines,
Working in wool, having himself shaved and made up with rouge,
Both refining his voice by imitation of the woman,

§ 3.420  And wearing the clothing that women also wear,
Happening, aside from his manly sex, to be a whole woman.
Once within the year, from on high as a god, to everyone
He used to hold out, from a lofty tower, the loose sleeve,
Before which kings and all great men used to prostate themselves,
But all of the other things in the remaining times of the year were steered
By the orders of eunuchs, whether there was a war or something else),
Looking at such things, Belesys did not endure the insolence.
Fashioning together sayings of oracles and prophecy,
He was rousing Arsaces the Mede for insurrection.

§ 3.430  And in the first assault, they were defeated immediately;
But in the second assault, Sardanapalus, learning
That the Nile was overflowing (for this was an omen),
Takes refuge in the palace and sets it on fire,
Burning up, together, himself and the concubines and the treasuries.
Arsaces, marching in with Belesys,
Held the kingdom with a clear victory;
Wherefore the power of the Assyrians fell to the Medes.
Arsaces even gives a gift to his accomplice Belesys,
Even the very gift which Belesys asked for: the ashes of everything that was burned.

§ 3.440  Belesys,—receiving the ashes to the disadvantage of Arsaces, who was needy,
(For Arsaces had it merely stripped of its treasuries, the kingdom stripped of its treasuries)—
According to some, is only said to have been denounced,
As if after receiving all of the money with crafty intent
He gives nothing to Arsaces, who had no benefit from the money;
And according to others, Belesys is also said to be punished by that man.
But as he won his case, Arsaces acquitted him, saying
That Belesys helped him more than the deeds over which he grieved him.
Diodorus Siculus writes the story
And with him even other story writers.

§ 3.450  Diodorus Siculus even writes the epigram of Sardanapalus,
Which is, by nature, written in Assyrian,
Also translated into Greek, it reveals these words:
“Knowing well that you are mortal, bless your soul,
Delighting in festivities, there is not any profit for you when you are dead.
Indeed, for I am ashes, though I was king of great Ninus,
I have these delights, as many as I ate and I revelled in and, amid love,
I felt. But the majority of things, even those happy things, have been left behind.”

§ 3.458  (T96) CONCERNING HISTIAEUS THE MILESIAN
This Histiaeus was Milesian by race.
Together with Darius the Persian—marching against the Scythians
With seven hundred thousand fighting men within the army,
And six hundred ships, and all according to what is appropriate,
When he even crossed the Bosporus, having bridged it
By the hands of Mandrocles, the Samian architect—
(Since everyone was subject to the kingdom of the Persians),
They were marching out (with Darius, mentioned above):
Both this Histiaeus and Coes the son of Orexander,
A man most trustworthy in all things, from Mitylene with respect to race,
And Attic Miltiades, a man clever in deliberations,
And Byzantine Ariston, not a lesser man than Miltiades;

§ 3.470  When, therefore, Darius already arrived, both facing the Danube,
And he crossed this by a bridge, facing the Scythians,
He immediately gave the command to dismantle that bridge.
But Coes, the son of Orexander, was not allowing this, saying:
“Look, king Darius, even good fortunes are ill-omened,
Lest somehow flight, un-hoped for by us, should fall to the Scythians,
Even we should fill the Danube with the Persian camp.”
After Coes said these things, Darius, allowing the bridge to remain,
Promises gifts to that man for his judgement,
Whenever they should withdraw back to Persia;

§ 3.480  But Darius himself, attacking Scythia, is defeated mightily.
The Scythians, leaving him in the middle of Scythia,
Marched to the bridge and arrived at the area by the Danube,
Which the above-mentioned Greek men were guarding,
Whom the Scythians said should run away after they had dismantled the bridge:
For as there was no cause for a battle between Greeks and Scythians,
The Greeks should allow Darius to make amends to the Scythians.
Among the Greeks, Miltiades, persuaded by the Scythians, said
It would be good to dismantle the bridge, and to allow the Persians
To be utterly extirpated by the Scythians in the land of the Scythians.

§ 3.490  But Histiaeus, giving heed to his relationship with the Persian race,
Was standing aloof, at that time, from the judgement of Miltiades.
Although, while the Scythians are standing near, he begins to dismantle the bridge.
As the length of travel by the Persians who where riding back was somewhat short,
Histiaeus gave heed to their crossing over the bridge.
And Darius, having fled in the middle of the night, defeated,
Marched towards the bridge, and speaks to Artachaees,
A man five fore-arms tall, but stentorian in his voice;
And Artachaees, shouting most loudly from the other bank of the Danube
Shrieked at Histiaeus, and everyone crosses.

§ 3.500  Wherefore Darius gives gifts to the men:
Coes, on account of his former advice,
He made, from being a private man, into the tyrant of Mitylene;
To Histiaeus, he gives the privilege of founding Myrcinus.
Indeed, for they asked to receive these things from Darius.
Now the Persian Megabyzus, upon returning from Paionia,
Finds Darius in Sardis and persuades him
To restrain Histiaeus from founding the city of Myrcinus
(Myrcinus, a city that used to be called Hedonus).
Darius, accordingly, summons Histiaeus back,

§ 3.510  And brings him away with him to the land of Susa.
But Histiaeus is longing for his fatherland:
Taking a household slave, from one of those who were trustworthy, and shaving his head,
Both writing tattooed letters on it, and allowing him to grow his hair long again,
Histiaeus sends him to Miletus, to Aristagoras himself,
Who was both a son-in-law and cousin of Histiaeus.
Aristagoras himself, both shaving the household slave,
And reading the letters, started to make the Greek cities,
According to their power, hateful to Darius.
At last, Aristagoras persuaded the people of Attica to destroy Sardis.

§ 3.520  Learning of this, Darius was very angry.
Now some satrap of the Persians speaks in such a manner to Darius:
“Histiaeus stitched this shoe,
And Aristagoras put on the very thing that was stitched;” 5
That is, Histiaeus gave the proposal,
And in the end, Aristagoras accomplished it.
As all of the remaining things were therefore confounded in this way,
Histiaeus himself is sent by Darius
For a joint attack of the cities that were thrown into confusion.
Indeed, for in this way, that man deceived Darius.

§ 3.530  Having caused more confusion to the cities that were never at rest,
And seeming to wander past both Persia and the land of the Susans,
Histiaeus subsequently reconciled himself with his friends in his fatherland.
After a little while, in the plane of Caicus, within the land of the Mysians,
Harpagus takes Histiaeus captive and brings him to Artaphernes,
The brother of Darius and a subordinate governor at Sardis.
And there, these men subsequently crucify Histiaeus;
His head they send to Susa for Darius.
Upon seeing it, Darius cried immeasurably,
Boiled over in rage against the men who crucified Histiaeus.

§ 3.540  At last, having cried excessively, Darius tells the Persians
To wash that head and bury it with honours,
On the grounds that he was very much a benefactor of the Persians.
Herodotus, the son of Oxyles, writes the story.

§ 3.544  (T97) CONCERNING DEMOCEDES THE PHYSICIAN OF CROTON
Democedes was a physician from Croton,
Being a son-in-law of that Milo the nobleman.
Democedes, along with Polycrates, the king of Samos,
Went into Persia, to the Persian Oroetes.
When Oroetes killed Polycrates by crucifying him,
Democedes became a captive dressed in rags.

§ 3.550  Once Darius suffered a rupture while hunting,
And for the Persian physicians he was incurable.
When Democedes cured him with his skill,
Darius sent him to his own wives
And concubines, announcing clearly
That he was the saviour of Darius’ soul.
The women competed in showering him with gifts,
Pouring gold over him from golden goblets,
So that his attendant, a man called Sciton,
By collecting the fallen gold, became wealthy.
Herodotus writes this story also.

§ 3.561  (T98) CONCERNING CYRUS THE SON OF MANDANE AND CAMBYSES
Persian Cyrus, the son of Cambyses and Mandane
(As Xenophon, the son of Gryllus, writes in the Cyropaedia),
Was in physique: most ripe, in beauty: prominent,
In soul: most philanthropic and one of those who are fond of myths,
Pleasant and ambidextrous and one of those who make great gifts.
In judgements: a judge, a model for a direct trial,
Whole, most moderate, a summit of all good things.
This Cyrus, at one time joining a war against the Assyrians,
With both his grandfather Astyages and maternal uncle Cyaxares,

§ 3.570  (For reasons which I spoke of previously), when the battle broke out,
Though still a young man, what deeds did he demonstrate!
For having mightily defeated the Assyrians
(And before them, also Croesus the Lydian),
As one who was judicious, he would deal with everyone philanthropically
(See how many men he compensated with what sort of honours and gifts),
To some, owing compensations for a small good deed,
But to most, making the beginning of a king’s thanks,
Even thanking those people from whom thanks did not fall to him,
Because they ask for the gifts that they receive from him.

§ 3.580  For to begin with, to Cyaxares, the king and his uncle...
(Because Cyaxares entrusted the entire generalship to Cyrus,
While he himself was getting drunk with his tentmates),
Cyrus said that of the things taken in the battle against the Assyrians
To select all the best and send it to Cyaxares.
Laughing, the Medes said to Cyrus,
“It is necessary to send him women, beautiful women, Cyrus.”
Cyrus therefore said, “Choose women,
And if some other thing seems good to you and Cyaxares.”
So many luxury good and countless sums of money,

§ 3.590  Enough to satisfy the most insatiable soul,
He sent to Cyaxares in return for the generalship.
But when things were chosen even for Cyrus by the army,
Both the most beautiful of the tents and music making women,
And Pantheia of Susa, the wife of Abradatas,
Who surpasses, in her beauty, all of the women throughout Asia,
And in her judicious ways, all women, as many as the morning star sees.
Bestowing thanks on the army on account of the gifts,
“With pleasure,” Cyrus said, “I receive the things given by you,
But the one among you who has need for these things will use them.”

§ 3.600  But some Mede, a lover of music, upon hearing this, had said:
“If you should give one of these music-making women to me, O Cyrus,
It will seem sweeter to me to march than to stay at home.”
And Cyrus said, “I am giving her, thanking you,
That you sought out gifts, as opposed to you thanking me on the grounds that you are receiving gifts.
In this way, I am thirsty to give thanks to those needing to receive.”
And to this man, who is asking, he gives the music-making woman,
While the tent and Pantheia, a wife of Abradatas,
He gave to Araspas, a Median general, to guard her.
But when he said, “Have you even seen, O Cyrus, the woman?”

§ 3.610  “By Zeus,” Cyrus said, “I have in no way seen her.”
Being such a man, Cyrus compensated all men in these ways.
Now Gobryas the Assyrian, as a man coming to Cyrus
And needing that he help, as he was being bitterly wronged,
Cyrus neither sent away as an enemy, nor as one of the Assyrians
(But he reduced all of the Assyrians to utter slavery),
Because Gobryas’ son, after killing a lion and a bear,
Was mortally impaled by the son of the Assyrian king
(Because the Assyrian king wanted to have young Gobryas’ son for his daughter),
For, though striking the beasts first, the Assyrian king’s son did not kill them.

§ 3.620  And Gadatas (another young man in the prime of life,
Much more like a king than the son of Gobryas)
While drinking with the Assyrian king’s son, was castrated by him
Because the concubine of the king’s son praised the young man
And blessed the woman about to marry him.
The king’s son said it was on the grounds that Gadatas tried to seduce the concubine.
In these ways, Cyrus was good not just to those asking,
Nor did he pay back thanks just to those initiating thanks.
But he was thankful to everyone, and more to those dear to him:
But when he gave gifts even to the latter, he was expecting to receive.

§ 3.630  Cyrus spoke to Croesus, always at the same time relating these things:
“I, making my friends wealthy, Croesus,
Believe I have acquired them as treasures and guards.”
And again, adorning his friends with illustrious clothes
And urging them to do the same to their friends;
Cyrus himself was never adorned in such a way.
So someone said to him, “Will you ever adorn yourself?”
He says, “You suppose that though adorning all of you, I am not adorning myself.
If, then, I should be able to do much good to you, my friends,
Whatever sort of garment I have, in this I will look good.”

§ 3.640  And why do I say to you that Cyrus remembered thanks?
Some Persian common custom is against thankless people,
Strongly rectifying and punishing all of those who are able
To return thanks, and are not giving it.
Indeed, for they think that thankless people are most unholy
To their fatherland and to their ancestors and to God.
Xenophon writes the story of Cyrus, but that of the Persian custom
Ctesias and Herodotus write.

§ 3.648  (T99) CONCERNING ABRADATAS THE GENERAL AND KING OF THE SUSANS
Abradatas, a general, the king of the Susans,
The husband of Pantheia, who was mentioned a little before this,
Was being an ally to the Assyrians against Cyrus.
But when, along with his wife, the camp of the Assyrians
Was taken by the army of Cyrus,
Abradatas himself was still serving as an ambassador to the king of the Bactrians,
So that the Bactrian king might send out an army allied with the Assyrians.
For, to the king of the Bactrians, Abradatas was known and a friend.
Now when Araspas, who was guarding Pantheia
In the army of Cyrus, fell into love for her,
He was advancing upon something more forceful and towards intercourse;
But the woman revealed all of these things to Cyrus,

§ 3.660  As Araspas was about to be dead from shame;
Secretly having sent for him, Cyrus speaks to him:
“The time now is at hand, beloved Araspas,
That you become a spy in the army of the enemy
(For without any eyewitness, of course, the suspicion appears to be),
Alleging as a pretext this clear reason,
That the entire armament is striking you with slanderous words.
Without further ado, taking those trustworthy to you, advance to those opposing us,
And, once you perceive everything being done by them, return again.”
In this way, by the deliberations of Cyrus, the general Araspas,

§ 3.670  In the exact word, becomes numbered among the spies,
But in the apparent word, he was fastening upon all the appearance of flight.
From there, Cyrus began to imitate someone grieving,
As though submitting to the loss of such a commander.
In these times, then, Pantheia reveals these things to Cyrus:
“I know, O king Cyrus, what happened to you on account of me.
But be relieved a little from the pain presently holding you:
A much more trustworthy slave than Araspas,
And a more noble friend, I know well, I will join with you.”
In this way, the woman spoke; and at that very time she writes

§ 3.680  To Abradatas, her husband, the whole affair of Cyrus.
And he, practically at once, and not delaying,
Comes with two thousand riders, choice men.
Immediately, he is sent to Pantheia by Cyrus.
And the holiness and judiciousness of Cyrus,
And as many things as were achieved by him, she narrates to Abradatas.
And he says, “What shall we do, woman, that is worthy of Cyrus
And such beneficence towards us from him?”
“That you” (she said) “become the same to this man,
As that man is concerning you;” these were the words of Pantheia.

§ 3.690  Now Abradatas goes at once to Cyrus,
And, in thanks, takes hold of his right hand.
But seeing Cyrus making very great haste
About his scythed chariots and equipped horses,
Abradatas, being thankful to that man, began to hasten towards these things.
And from his own cavalry, a hundred chariots
He at once marshalled together, joining them fittingly with Cyrus’ cavalry.
And he himself, as if about to lead those chariots,
Was fittingly equipping himself on his own chariot.
The chariot was four poled from eight horses.

§ 3.700  And from her most beautiful feminine adornment,
Pantheia then made for Abradatas
A breastplate and armlets, both golden,
And a helmet set with precious stones, something flashing much grace.
Now when Cyrus was actually near the enemy,
Araspas came to him with his household slaves
(The man whom Cyrus recently sent out beforehand as an eyewitness of the enemy),
And Araspas relates the entire view of the enemy to this man.
For together with Croesus, Araspas was marshalling together their whole army.
On the next day, after offering sacrifices, Cyrus

§ 3.710  Was marshalling together the army for the onslaught of war,
Having given to Araspas the right horn,
The left to Hystaspas, who had half
Of the riders of the race of Persians, riders applauded in battles,
Cyrus ordered the rest of the commanders-of-ten-thousand to do the other things.
Abradatas was being the leader of machines and chariots,
Daduchus: baggage carriers, covered carriages: Carduchus.
Of infantry, Artaozus and Artagersas were being leaders.
Pharnuchus, and, together with that man, Asiadatas
Were leaders-of-ten-thousand of choice riders.

§ 3.720  The entire plane was flashing with brazen fire then
As the army was equipping itself for an outbreak of war,
The equipment of Cyrus was shining even more than mirrors.
Pantheia herself was equipping Abradatas by hand,
And she was inciting him for war, secretly shedding a tear.
But Abradatas, being well worth seeing even previously,
Adorned with such equipment was shining out even more.
Now the reins-holder, taking the reins from him
(He was good looking), ascended at once to the chariot.
On this chariot, Pantheia orders all of those standing by

§ 3.730  To advance from there, and says to Abradatas:
“I swear, Abradatas, I tell you, by your and my friendship,
That more would I want to be buried in the earth with you,
A man appearing good and clever in battle,
Than to live full of shame with a man being shamed.”
Pantheia said these things; and in wonder, Abradatas,
Touching her head, said while looking to the sky:
“Zeus, grant that I appear as a man worthy of Pantheia,
And a friend worthy of Cyrus, who has honoured us.”
Saying these things under the door of the chariot’s board,

§ 3.740  He at once ascended onto his chariot.
As, after Abradatas ascended, the rein-holder shut in the board,
Pantheia did not know how she could still embrace him.
But kissing the board, she sends forth that man.
The chariot was advancing from there, and that woman began to follow along,
Until, upon turning around and seeing her, Abradatas said:
“Have courage and farewell, Pantheia, and now go back!”
From there, as the horrible war broke out,
Cyrus was advancing on horseback (as thunder broke out),
Having acquired, on his right, the cavalry leader Chrysantas,

§ 3.750  And on his left, Arisbas and the body of infantry.
When they collided simultaneously (both riders and heavily armed men,
Bowmen, both pelta bearers and the scythe bearing chariots),
Abradatas was bloodying his horses with his goad
While driving towards the war, and was inciting his friends.
And breaking out against the face of the Egyptians,
Abradatas himself, together with his people, were crushing and rubbing together those men.
In that indescribable instance of circumstance,
As the wheels were leaping out from under the heaping up of corpses,
Abradatas fell, together with many others.

§ 3.760  And these men died there, chopped up,
Though seeming to have been brave; but victorious Cyrus,
Both driving against Sardis, and destroying it,
Questioned on the next day some of those standing by:
“Regularly coming to us lately,
How now is Abradatas not to be seen?” Some attendant says:
“O master, he is not living, he has died in the battle,
Throwing his chariot on the army of Egyptians.
And now his wife, taking up the corpse,
And setting it upon the covered carriage, in which she herself was going,

§ 3.770  Is said to convey it here to you, Cyrus,
Towards the river Pactolus which flows by this place.
They assert that his eunuchs and attendants
Are digging a tomb for the dead man in a ridge;
But they are saying that the woman, having adorned the man,
Is sitting down on the ground upon the earth, a sight worthy of lamentation,
Holding down the head of that man on her lap.”
When Cyrus heard these things, striking his thigh he at once
Mounted his horse, and with one thousand riders
Rode to the suffering. And having come there first,

§ 3.780  Crying and weeping much, he spoke to the woman:
“Even you will not be destitute, but I will honour you,
Both on account of your judiciousness and the rest of your goodness,
And I will marry you also to a man to whom you wish to be married.
Only reveal to me someone to whom you wish to be married.”
And Pantheia says to him, “Have courage, O Cyrus,
I will not conceal from you whom I wish to go to.”
After speaking, Cyrus departed, pitying the woman,
For what sort of man she was being deprived of; and again, pitying the man,
For what sort of woman, whom, abandoning, he will no longer look at.

§ 3.790  Now she (telling the eunuchs to stand just a little bit away,
So that she could weep for her husband, as it was something that she wished for,
But ordering her nurse both to remain there beside her,
And, when the nurse should see her dead together with Abradatas,
To help in covering them and to conceal them with one garment)
Lays hands on herself, taking up a sword;
And she dies, having set her head on the chest of her husband.
But the nurse, bawling as she concealed them completely,
Even killed herself in her grief for her masters,
And three eunuchs with her, all by their own hands

§ 3.800  Measured out their lives in their longing for their mistress,
In the very place in which they saw that terrible suffering.
And Cyrus, upon learning of this misfortune and arriving there,
Both adoring the little woman and lamenting in excess,
Buried them with shrouds that were fitting,
Sacrifices, statues, and a proper precinct.
A Story, WHICH, NARRATING ALL BARBARIANS GENERALLY, ENCOMPASSES AN ANTHILL OF STORIES. BUT WE, PASSING OVER THE UNTIMELY LENGTH OF THE NARRATIVE, WILL SPEAK BRIEFLY. CONCERNING LYCUS THE MYSIAN, A SON OF DEIPYLUS, AND THE NAME OF THRACIAN HERACLEA, ALSO CALLED PERINTHUS (T100)
With one ship, Heracles (sailing to the Amazons
So that he might bring the girdle of Hippolyta to Admete),
In the coasting voyage destroys all of Bebrycia together,
And gives the land to Mysian Lycus, the son of Deipylus,

§ 3.810  But only after Heracles was victorious over the brothers Mygdon and Amycus.
Lycus calls the city of these people Heraclea
(Thracian Perinthus, long ago called Mygdonia),
Honouring Heracles, the one who cheerfully gave the place.
Apollodorus says this story;
And in the little book about islands, cities, and peoples,
Stephanus of Byzantium does not write about this,
But he does write about the Heraclea in Pontus.

§ 3.818  (T101) CONCERNING HORATIUS COCLES
Horatius Cocles was Roman in race.
This man (when the army of the Romans at one time was put to flight,
As there was danger that enemies would seize Rome)
Alone stood against everyone together on a wooden bridge,
While Marcus Minucius was cutting it behind him.
And when it is cut, Cocles crosses the Tiber
Having saved himself and Rome by the cutting of the bridge.
In his swimming, he was hit by a spear of the enemy;
To Cocles the Senate granted land on account of his bravery,
As much as he could plough driving his cattle during a day;
He was called Cocles in the tongue of the Romans,
Since he lost one eye in a previous battle.

§ 3.830  CONCERNING MARCUS MANLIUS AND ABOUT GEESE, A STORY ALSO COMPLETE BY ITSELF (STORIES T102-T111)
Now Marcus Manlius (when Rome was plundered
By Gauls, at the time when Brennus was ruling them,
As the Gauls were about to take the Capitoline,
Secretly going up to the acropolis at night)
He awoke, since there was a loud shouting of the geese
There, he saw the enemy creeping up.
Even driving away some of the Gauls with a shield, and killing others with his sword,
He thrust all of them away and rescues the Romans;
Wherefore they have named him Capitolinus,
And honoring geese they make them doorkeeper,

§ 3.840  Guards in the Palatine on account of the guarding then,
Just as previously the Greeks in Athens called
A wall Pelargikon (stork) and a mountain range Geraneian) (crane) on account of such animals.
This Marcus Manlius, also called Capitolinus
(Once falling under accusation of tyranny,
And about to be destroyed by the vote of all of the judges),
Was saved because the judges were looking straight at the Capitoline,
Where he had performed his famous act of bravery,
Until his accuser, perceiving the causes,
Transferred the assembly to another courthouse,
From which the Capitoline was not visible,
To be a reminder of his trophies.
Then they killed him. But even so, in turn,
The people of Rome wore black for a year,
Paying back manly virtue
And goodness in inimitable ways.

§ 3.856  I am leaving out the story of the brave Marcus Coriolanus,
And with this Marcus also Marcus Corvinus,
One of whom, Coriolanus, sacked a city alone,
The name of which was Coriolanum, and burning this city
(Although the whole entire army of the Romans was put to flight),
Took the name Coriolanus. But it would be a long story.

§ 3.862  Marcus Corvinus was surnamed Corvinus,
Since at one time, fighting in single combat with some barbarian,
He had a wild raven assisting him in the battle,
Flying at the eyes of that barbarian,
Until Marcus killed him.

§ 3.862  I am leaving out Curtius and the Lacus Curtius,
He who fell, on behalf of the Romans, together with his horse into the Lacus.

§ 3.869  I am leaving out Kalandos, and Nonnus, and Eidus with him,
Whose benefaction was written onto the days.
For in the times of Antoninus, when the Romans were defeated
And shut up in old Rome itself,
And everyone was in danger of being destroyed by famine,
These men were feeding the people of Rome at their own expense,
Kalandos for eighteen days per month,
Nonnus for eight days, and Eidus for four.
Hesychius the Illustrious, Plutarch, Dio,
And Dionysius together write all of these things.

§ 3.879  [T110] I am passing over the kindness of Battus towards the Cyrenians,
And their bringing the silphium plant to him,
And the recompense of this man, in turn, towards the Cyrenians
When, in a mark of a coin, he carved them
Presenting the silphium plant for the sake of his honour.
Pindar the lyric poet somewhere writes this story.

§ 3.885   [T111] I am leaving out a description of Meroitic Candace,
About whom Callisthenes writes that she detained Alexander,
And, after giving him extraordinary gifts, sent him away,
Because he made her sons friends to one another,
Throwing off their mutual animosity.

§ 3.890  I omit to add a myriad Greeks and barbarians
Who were mindful of benefactions, as I am fleeing the length of the narratives.

§ 3.892  (T112) CONCERNING OSYMANDYAS, THE SON OF OSYMANDANEUS, KING OF THE ASSYRIANS
The whole story of Osymandyas
Is contained in the little letter, written in this way:
“Osymandyas, the great king of the Syrians,
Used to have a wild lion, a comrade in wars,
Because Osymandyas raised him, he was mindful of the favour.”

§ 3.897  (T113) CONCERNING A SNAKE OF PTOLEMY
Not only was this Ptolemy fond of learning,
But he was even a seeker of everything good, and fond of spectacles,
Always seeking to look at rather strange kinds of animals,
Even bathing with gifts the people bringing him those animals.
Wherefore even those hunting used to hunt for rather strange animals.
Now finding even a snake, very long in length,
Thirty-five cubits long, they hunt in such a way:
Observing the lair of the beast and even the feeding
(And when it is setting out from the lair for both feeding and drinking),
When it has withdrawn from the lair for both feeding and drinking,
The hunters, after making a net of thick ropes that closes itself,
Ropes that are even tightened from afar by very large cords,
Set it at the foot of the lair of the above-mentioned beast.

§ 3.910  And previously, pursuing the beast heedlessly,
Two or so of the hunters were eaten by it.
But as the munificence of Ptolemy was prevailing,
Standing prepared, they hunt for it again.
For as it was hurrying for drinking, the hunters (anointing the lair with fencing,
And setting the rope net, which we mentioned)
Both on horseback and on foot together, with a clash of the shields,
Were turning the snake away from its irrigation and towards the location of its lair.
The hunters were not standing aloof from afar, so that it would not (fleeing in safety
And beholding the fenced in lair) hurry away.

§ 3.920  But they were not following near its side, lest even they be eaten up;
But with a small distance of separation, bewildering the beast,
They were earnestly driving it, in flight, to the lair.
It was raising its neck higher than those on horseback,
And was crushing together with its movement the woodland found at its side;
It was rubbing fire out of its eyes, with hissings it was thundering.
But by the hunters’ earnest pursuits, it falls in the net,
And tightened together, the net was raised high with large beams.
But the snake was cutting up that line with its teeth,
Sending out a very furious fire by the rubbing of its teeth.

§ 3.930  Therefore, hardly bringing this beast at that time to Ptolemy,
From a lack of grain that was extraordinary and an abstention from food
They tamed the snake so much, it being so much in length,
That later, wherever foods were set,
Upon being called, it went forth to feed on them.
And even obeying in every way the tame-animal keeper,
It was easily led by the words and the voice of that man,
So that once, when ambassadors were coming to Ptolemy,
The snake, upon being called, went forth to the amazement of those looking.
Diodorus wrote this story.

§ 3.940  Aelian says that Onesicritus relates,
That Aposisares the Indian reared two snakes,
One being one hundred forty cubits in length,
And the other, eighty cubits, not beyond these.
These snakes Alexander the Great set his heart upon seeing.
Now ordering the army to pass through slowly
(As the Indian instructed him and said in advance,
Lest in some way they make the snakes wild with their advance),
Alexander saw that the snakes’ eyes were equal in size
To a Macedonian circular shield, from one of those shields that were well rounded.

§ 3.950  CONCERNING THE DOG OF NICOMEDES, IT HAS TEN STORIES INSTEAD OF ONE (T115 7)
The son of Zipoetes, that Nicomedes,
The founder of Nicomedia, the father of Prusias...
(Prusias who had all of his teeth in the form of one bone,
Just as Aeschylus, in his writings, says about the daughters of Phorcys,
And Herodotus, about Leon, a king of Sardis,
Julius, in turn, that Pyrrhus the Epirote
Had this bone, imprinted with outlines of teeth;
The Chian, Ion, says that even Heracles
Had a set of teeth in three rows that was completely unbroken;
As Scylla did as well, according to Homer in the Odyssey.

§ 3.960  Many include even the crocodile, and some even sea-monsters;
Aristotle wrote that Timarchus, the father
Of Cyprian Nicocles, had, for teeth, a set in two rows).
This father of that one-toothed Prusias
(Prusias, the founder of the city of Prusa beside Olympus),
Nicomedes, mentioned above, used to have the largest dog,
Being from the race of Molossians, very loyal to that man.
This dog, once, when the queen, wife of Nicomedes,
And mother of Prusias, Zielas and Lysandra,
Ditizela by name, from the race of Phrygians,

§ 3.970  Was frolicking with the king, he thought she was an enemy,
And tore with his bite her right shoulder,
Crushing her flesh and bones with his teeth.
She, dying in the arms of the king,
Was buried most magnificently, in Nicomedia,
In a tomb of stone, but gilded.
This tomb was extant even up to the time of Theophilus.
But in the times of Michael, a son of Theophilus,
Some grave robbers, breaking it open,
Found the corpse of this woman preserved,

§ 3.980  Wrapped completely in a garment made of gold.
Taking this garment, and putting it in fire and crucible,
They extracted 113 litras of gold.
These are the details about both the death and the tomb of the woman.
Now the dog, banished from the king’s sight
Both from affection for him and grief for the woman,
Is said by many to have expired.
Arrian writes the story in his Bithynica.

§ 3.988  (T116) CONCERNING THE HORSE OF ARTYBIUS THE PERSIAN
The details about Artybius are found
In the little letter, written in the narrative, word by word, in this way:
“Artybius the Persian, having brought up the horse,
Had it both joining him in war and helping him.
But when Artybius sailed away to Cyprus
And waged a fight with Cyprian Onesilus,
As Artybius fell before Onesilus,
The horse, seeing his master fallen,
Standing straight up began to fight with Onesilus,
Striking the man’s shield with his front feet,
He would have killed the king of Cyprus,
Had not the shield-bearers cut off his feet with scythes.”

§ 3.1000  4.1 CHILIADES BOOK 4, TRANSLATED BY GARY BERKOWITZ
CONCERNING THE LOVE OF A DOLPHIN (T117)
[1000] Oppian tells of a dolphin that, for some Lesbian youth,
[ 1] Falls into inexpressible love, as the youth is synchronizing his singing to him,
How the dolphin carries the youth, as a reins-holder, on its back,
And in every way obeys that youth when he is ordering him,
And carries others on its back, if the youth should order it,
And has inexpressible affection towards the young man himself,
He both folds himself around him and fawns upon him with its tail.
But when the youth was travelling on the destined path,
Even the dolphin was made utterly unseen from the places there.
And about a young Libyan herdsman, Oppian writes this very thing,

§ 4.10  And Aelian relates things somewhat like these things,
Except he wrote that the young man was a Iassian,
And immensely worn out after gymnastic school
(He says), that young man, riding on the dolphin,
But being heavy, falls from the back of the beast,
And its spine pierced his belly,
And killed the boy. Now the dolphin, recognizing the suffering
From the motionless weight and streams of blood,
Caught up by the curving waves,
Flung himself to land with the dear youth.

§ 4.20  There both of them expiring, ended their life.
In the times of the second Ptolemy
He says such a love also occurred in Alexandria
And in Dicaearchia, a city of Italy.

§ 4.24  ABOUT ARION THE METHYMNAEAN
About Arion you have the story behind you,
Being number seventeen, and turning, take a look.

§ 4.26  (T118) CONCERNING THE WEEPING OF THE HORSES OF ACHILLES
Patroclus was a charioteer, the friend of Achilles,
And from one of those who were kinsmen by blood, being older in age.
Wearing all of the equipment of Achilles,
Mounting both the chariot and horses of that man,
As Achilles, Patroclus was crushing in pieces the army of the Trojans.
But happening to be recognized by them as not Achilles, but Patroclus,
Struck by Apollo himself, and secondly, by Euphorbus,
Thirdly, by Hector, he abandoned his life.
“Now the horses of Aeacides, being away from combat,
Were weeping (when first they learned of the reins-holder
Fallen in the dust by man-slaying Hector
On the ground), letting their heads fall, and for them, tears
That were hot flowed to the ground, down from the eyes of the snivelling horses,
With longing for the reins-holder, and their thick flowing hair was being stained,

§ 4.40  As it was streaming downwards from the junction beside the yoke for both of them.”

§ 4.41  CONCERNING THE SHARED SYMPATHY OF ANIMALS
To tell of the shared sympathy of animals
To other animals, and to one another, what telling will suffice?
Speaking, therefore, very little and of things that are few in number,
We will abstain from the magnitude and from long-telling.

§ 4.45  (T119) CONCERNING THE MUTUAL LOVE OF JACKDAWS AND STARLINGS
Jackdaws love each other, and the whole genus of starlings ,
So, if you pour olive oil into some little dish,
By means of their own reflection, you will catch jackdaws,
Revealing other reflection-loving Laconian Narcissuses.

§ 4.49  (T120) CONCERNING CRANES AND GEESE
Cranes also love one another, travelling in flocks,
And, when winter comes, setting out towards Egypt,
Cranes make an acute triangular flight within these times,
So that in this way, they can cut through the air rather easily.
And they have both protectors and rear-leaders during their advances.
At any rate, whenever they are about to hasten away towards Egypt,
As they are coming towards the Hebrus, the Thracian river,
First, they flock together in rows and in troops,
And the crane older than all of those there
Hastening around in a rather circular manner and observing the army,
Falling straight down lies dead. Having buried him, the other cranes

§ 4.60  Undertake the flight and passage towards Egypt,
Helping one another from eagles and the rest of the obstacles.
Even the genera of geese do entirely the same thing as them.
Now the cranes, beginning to make their passage,
Have the older crane serving as a pilot for them.
But when this crane grows quite weary at what hastens forward after him,
Even they, successively, in stages, make the forward flight.
But on land, flying down at the time of the evening,
The greater number goes to sleep, but a few protect them.
The manner of protecting for them is as such:

§ 4.70  The protectors within those times stand on one foot,
Each holding a stone with the suspended foot,
So that, if they drop asleep over it, and the stone has fallen,
They might come to wakefulness, having perception of it.
In this way, the protecting is for them, only in a reciprocal manner.

§ 4.75  (T121) CONCERNING DEER AND WOLVES
Even deer watch over a mutually loving sharing.
At any rate, when passing across water, setting their heads
One near to another, they swim. But when the guide is weary,
A different deer serves as a pilot after it, while the first acts as a rear-leader,
And then the rest, successively, marshalled together in rhythm.
But wolves, passing across the streams of rivers,
Hold the tails of one another by the mouth,
So that they might not be diverted by the eddies of water.

§ 4.83  (T122) CONCERNING ELEPHANTS
For other reasons, even elephants belong to the mutually loving,
Not wholly abandoning one another in the midst of misfortunes.
For when fleeing hunters, first they do not scatter,
But the strong and young ones move along in a circular manner,
Bringing within the circle elders and mothers,
And everyone unweaned, and the childish genus.
They give up food, in the first place, to the older elephants,

§ 4.90  When their own fathers are old, they feed them;
Passing across waters, the males thrust
The young to the upper area with their trunks;
The mothers carry those not yet weaned
Either with their trunks or their double teeth.
If ever they go through deep and hard to get out of ditches,
The one stronger and bigger in bigness than all of them,
Standing in the middle, just as a bridge, transports them all.
And they, then, bringing many branches to the ditch,
Rescue the elephant that was providing passage across.

§ 4.100  But when newborn elephants fall completely in the deep ditches…
Those falling perish together, killing the babies...
Even far from their fatherland, being carried by those lamenting.

§ 4.103  (T123) CONCERNING LIONS, EAGLES, DOLPHINS, WILD HERDS, STORKS, AND PELICANS
When they are old, lions, eagles, dolphins,
Wild herds, the kind of storks,
And pelicans, are fed by their own offspring,
Which also help them both in walking and in flying,
And in swimming, with regard to the fish-like, as, for instance, the dolphin and seal.

§ 4.108  (T124) CONCERNING MARES
Mares, having mercy for the orphans among the foals,
Suckle and feed them with their own.

§ 4.110  (T125) CONCERNING BEES
Bees are ruled by kings and are managed in an orderly manner.
Whenever their king will initiate flying,
Everyone follows in clusters, having obeyed him.
And while this bee is living, the hive is managed well,
But when he is dead, it hastens away, and is thoroughly confounded.
If, therefore, an old king exists for the hive of these bees,
Mounted on other bees, he is carried away.
But if the king is young and vigorous, he sends himself forth from the hive,
Ordering everyone to undertake their own jobs:
Some of them to carry water, and those ones to collect flowers,

§ 4.120  Another group to house build, and others to do other things.
First, they house build the kings’ houses,
Which are rising up over all with regard to both height and width.
Near the king, they make houses for the old bees,
And successively even the remaining homes, fitting together.
And when it is necessary for the king to leave these homes,
As an army they proceed, with both a booming and a clamour.
But when the time for sleep should call the king to fall asleep,
Some flautist re-echoes, and the hive keeps quiet.
For some, it is even the job to carry the dead out of the hive,
And to do other things held to belong to the noblest sympathy.

§ 4.131  (T126) CONCERNING LAND MICE, PARROTFISH, ANTHIAE, THE GLAUCUS, THE SEA DOG, THE DOGFISH, DOLPHINS, THE SEAL, THE LAND DOG, AND THE PIG
Even land mice have sympathy for one another.
For when one of them has fallen in the water, giving its tail,
Another of them pulls it up, and saves it from danger.
Even parrotfish do this when falling into traps.
And Anthiae, following anthiae that were seized
By hooks, make every attempt to cut the hook.
But if not strong enough to cut in because of the lack of strength of their teeth,
Lying on it, they weigh down the seized anthias,
So that, by both the surface pressure and their weight...

§ 4.140  It might become far from the beast, with the hook cut.
The glaucus, the dog, and the dogfish, being sea fish,
When dread comes upon their offspring:
The glaucus and the dogfish hide together their offspring in the mouth,
But the dog hides its offspring in the belly again,
And again, births them when the fear passes by.
Now the dolphin and the seal, when their newborn are taken,
Are taken together with them and end their lives at the same time.
Even when mothers are taken, their newborns are seized.
And this happens even for wild herds.

§ 4.150  Now the land dog honours its first offspring.
And the first-born of a pig drinks from the first udder,
And successively even the rest, according to their own standing.

§ 4.153  (T127) CONCERNING ANIMALS BURYING ANIMALS OF THE SAME KIND
The dolphin, the elephant, the swallow, bees, and the ant, together,
Bury corpses when it pertains to the dead of the same genus as them.
Bears and mice with them, and with these even flies,
And the hawk throws dust even on an unburied person.

§ 4.157  (T128) CONCERNING THE DOG OF ERIGONE
They say that Erigone, a child of Icarius,
Had a very loyal dog, which was raised up with her.
But when Dionysus found wine for people,
As Icarius provided it to Athenian farmers,
These men, drinking it for the very first time and completely absorbed with drunkenness,
Killed Icarius since they thought he drugged them.
When, then, the child did not found her father upon seeking for him,
The dog pointed him out, as he was investigating for this girl;
When she died later, the dog died with her.
The earlier stories about animals are written
By Aelian and Oppian, together with Leonidas,
And with them, Timotheus, the grammarian of Gaza,
Who, in previous times, was coincident with king Anastasius.

§ 4.170  But this story of Icarius with Erigone
Was also written by Aelian, along with several others.
Even Orpheus mentions this story, writing in his Georgica:
“The starry girl is the best with regard to all things,
Even with regard to seeds, and favourable to plants, and in throwing
All shoots in ditches, and with regard to the fruits that they gather for themselves.
But avoid vines, since the daughter of Icarius
Before all hates vats and bitter vines,
Soliciting as many baneful things, by the will of Dionysus,
As the coastal people contrived, overpowered by dreadful drunkenness,

§ 4.180  Who slew her and Icarius with rough staffs,
Faltering by gifts of mad dancing Bacchus.”

§ 4.182  (T129) CONCERNING THE DOG OF XANTHIPPUS
Attic Xanthippus, the father of Pericles,
Used to have a good and very useful dog, which was raised by him.
So when Xerxes was about to march against Athens,
The Attic men were ferrying little women, children,
And everything whatsoever that was very good, to Salamis.
Now at that time, there used to be sympathy that belonged to even tame animals,
Which both hastened on the sea with their masters,
And mooed mournfully with a very lamentable voice.

§ 4.190  At that time, even this above-mentioned dog of Xanthippus,
Seeing its mistress departed on the vessel,
And throwing himself on the water, was swimming nearby,
Until, after fainting from the length of the voyage, he dies.
Whom Xanthippus deemed worthy even of a burial there.
Now the painter from life, Polygnotus or Micon, painted this
In the Stoa Poikile due to kind-heartedness.
Aelian and Plutarch, along with others, write this.
Even Asclepiades speaks in this way, word by word, telling
“What they call a tomb of even a dog that was ill fated.”

§ 4.200  (T130) CONCERNING THE DOG OF SILANION THE ROMAN
The little letter has the entire story,
It does not have the name of Silanion written.
The paragraph is written as follows:
“Both the dog of Xanthippus and that of some Roman
A man who was a great general, someone who fell in batle
Was lying as a corpse, for dogs, beasts, and birds.
Only his dog, being more loyal than all,
Endured for many days, protecting the man,
And hiding the disgrace of that hero,
Until the generals of the Romans, coming later,
Lifting up the man and covered him in his ancestral tomb.”

§ 4.211  (T131) CONCERNING THE DOG OF PYRRHUS THE EPIROTAN AND OF ANOTHER SIMILAR
The king Pyrrhus the Epirotan once found
A corpse lying unburied and a dog standing beside it.
And at once, he ordered the person to be buried,
But taking the dog, he kept it in the palace,
As it was kind and gentle to all people.
But when the dog at some time saw counted in the rosters
The person who killed its master,
He did not stop barking and scratching at this man,
Until Pyrrhus, in his investigations, learned all that he could,

§ 4.220  And punished this man with crucifixion.
Some chronicler writes that something very similar,
Happened a few years before us.
Some rogue, he says, who buried a corpse;
The affair was brought to the city prefect.
After a revelation by a dog,
The perpetrator was crucified and died.

§ 4.227  [T132?] Since we mentioned dogs affectionate to people,
Now of Calvus, Anacreon, Eupolis, Darius,
And Lysimachus with them, and the hunter Nicias,
And the Athenian bitch, and the cowherd Daphnis,
And the rest: let us say all things to you most clearly.

§ 4.232  Of Calvus, a general of the Romans, slain in civil war
No one was able to cut off his head
Until they killed his dog, which was standing beside him.

§ 4.235  For Teian Anacreon, going to Teos
With a household-slave and a dog to buy necessities,
When the household-slave left the road to relieve himself,
The little dog accompanied him there,
But when, indeed, gripped by forgetfulness, he left the purse,

§ 4.240  The little dog sat down and started to protect it.
And when the people returned to the same place from Teos, unsuccessfully,
The little dog got off the purse,
And having revealed the entrusted item, he at once expired,
Since he had stayed there many days without food.
Augeias, a Molossian hound, belonged to Eupolis.
He killed with his bite Ephialtes, a slave of Eupolis,
Whom he saw stealing its master’s plays.
This dog, later, in Aegina, when Eupolis was dead,
Died from longing for that man, waiting there without food.

§ 4.250  For Darius the Later, killed by Bessus,
A dog like that of Silanion stayed beside the tomb.
And a dog died with Lysimachus the king.
Now when Nicias fell into an charcoal kiln,
His dogs first stood and howled;
But when no one understood the matter from the howling,
Gently biting those present by their clothes,
The dogs dragged them to the kiln, thereby revealing the calamity.

§ 4.258  A bitch in Athens once revealed temple-robbers,
Going, with its barking, as far as the looters’ house,
Which dog they voted be fed at public expense.

§ 4.261  With Daphnis, a cowherd of Syracuse,
Five dogs died together, after crying first.

§ 4.263  Now for Polus, a tragic actor, very ancient,
And Mentor, their dog was cremated together with them .
And his dog was buried together with Theodorus, the pre-eminent harpist.
Gelon the Syracusan, was shouting during his sleep
(For he thought, in his dreams, that he was struck by lightning),
His dog perceived how extremely upset he was,
And did not stop barking until it awakened him.

§ 4.270  Once a wolf saved this man from death.
For, when he was sitting against a school while still a boy,
A wolf, coming to him, took away his writing-tablet.
But as he ran towards the wolf himself and the writing-tablet,
The school, shaken by earthquake, collapsed to its foundations,
And killed all of the children with the teacher.
The prose writers proclaim the number of the children
(Timaeus, Dionysius, the Diodoruses, and Dio),
As more than one hundred. But I do not know the precise figure.

§ 4.279  (T133) CONCERNING THE DOGS WHO SAVED ORPHEUS
Orpheus, the son of Menippe and Oeagrus, his father,
Still a youth and desiring to hunt birds,
Went to a mountain ridge, were there was a large serpent.
Then, as Orpheus was focused on hunting birds,
The serpent attacked him, wrapping him its many coils.
Now his dogs, being tame, came running at his shout,
Attacked the beast, and killed it,
They rescued Orpheus because of their affection towards him,
As Orpheus himself, in the Lithica, somewhere writes this.

§ 4.288  (T134) CONCERNING EAGLES THAT DIED TOGETHER WITH THEIR MASTERS
Phylarchus tells how a young man, catching an eagle,
Raised it, and the eagle was accustomed to stay beside him,
So that even once, when the young man was sick, the eagle treated him,
And skilfully tended to the sick man, with very intense eagerness;
But when the young man died and was carried to a pyre,
The eagle was following along with the bringing out of his body.
And when the young man was cremated by fire, even the eagle was cremated with him.
Now an eagle, raised with even a woman, dies with her,
Abstaining from food because of longing for her and ending its life in that way.
Even for Pyrrhus, the king of Epirus, there was
An eagle similar to the eagles mentioned above, though this one rejoiced in hearing
If ever some Pyrrhus the Epirote should address it.

§ 4.300  Even this eagle, when Pyrrhus is dead, dies with him
From an abstention from food and from hunger, and because of longing for that man.
Some eagle rescued even a reaper from death,
Because the reaper himself kept it safe from a serpent,
Cutting up the coil of the beast with his scythe.
Indeed, for of the reapers there, being sixteen in number,
This reaper, sent to draw water, when he brought the water,
Mixing it from an earthen jar for all, was distributing the wine.
But when, after mixing it, even he himself was about to drink this,
That eagle, flying down with a whistling sound, broke his cup into pieces,

§ 4.310  After it saw a snake vomit, as it seems, in the vessel.
But the reaper, turning as if vexed at the eagle’s compensation,
After he saw the other people dying, understood the cause.

§ 4.313  (T135) CONCERNING SERPENTS LOVING AND PAYING COMPENSATION
The little letter has the story of a serpent,
Written in these words:
“Some boy in Patrae, having bought a small serpent
Raised it; which, when it became very large, ran away.
But when, at some time, the young man was seized by robbers,
And shouted out, the serpent leapt forth against the plunderers,
Whom it even turns to flight, and saves the young man.”

§ 4.320  Now this same thing happened to an Arcadian lad.
And in the land of the Judeans, during the times of Herod,
A serpent, very, very large, was sleeping with a girl.
And when she was abroad, the serpent went away, looking for her continually
Until it found her, in this way being affectionate beyond measure.
Even some young hunting Thessalian, Aleuas,
Who had hair in the bloom of youth, and was himself in the bloom of youth even in form,
A very large serpent was in love with; it used to kiss both Aleuas,
And his very beautiful gold coloured hair.
And a serpent was an avenger for Pindus, who was slaughtered by his brothers.

§ 4.330  Now learn who Pindus was and from what family origin he sprung:
Lycaon was a king of Emathia,
Whose son, with respect to the calling, was Macedon (from whom Macedonia got its name).
Pindus, a son of Macedon, was in the bloom of youth and high-minded,
And a consummate hunter, always hunting in thickets.
Where, indeed, some serpent was in love with his manliness and beauty.
When, then, three brothers of this man killed him with a sword,
The serpent, in recompense, killed them in return.
The mountain, from the calling of Macedon’s son, was named Pindus.

§ 4.339  Horned snakes even distinguish children of the Libyans,
Whether they are of spurious parentage or of pure descent,
Just as the Rhine does for the children of the Celts, and the touchstone does for gold,
And the sparkling of the sun does for the chicks of eagles.
Even newborns among crocodiles are distinguished by hunting (right at once,
Either a fly or even a locust) at once, upon being born.
For of the Libyans, a particular Libyan, who are called Psylli,
If ever they are under suspicion about the work resulting in children,
They close in a little box horned snakes and the baby.
If, then, it is of pure descent, it is watched over untouched;
But if it is of an adulterous bed and a licentious couch,
It knows the torturous destruction of their teeth.

§ 4.351  (T136) CONCERNING THE TREES OF GERYON
Geryon was a king of Erytheia,
As we wrote previously with the labours of Heracles,
Who raised great herds of splendid cows.
When, shooting him with his bow, Heracles killed that man,
Two blooming trees, sprouting well, planted
With his blood, are dropping down around his tomb.

§ 4.357  (T137) CONCERNING THE POPLARS OF PHAETHON
For Helios, diverse are both the wives and children:
From Perse the daughter of Oceanus: Aeetes and Circe;
From Clymene daughter of Oceanus: Phaethon. But not this Phaethon.
And from Rhodos the daughter of Poseidon: Cercaphus and Triopes;
And Augeas from Iphiboe; from Crete, Pasiphae;
From Neaera, Phaethusa together with Lampetia;
And from Prote, the daughter of Neleus: Phaethon and the Heliades,
Five beautiful daughters, whose names you will learn:
Aegle, Lampetie, Phaethusa in addition,
Hemithea with them, together with Dioxippe.
The mythographers, then, say that this Phaethon,
Taking his father’s vehicle, wanted to drive the chariot.
But being ineffective with horses and inexperienced in chariot-driving,