Page:Hesiod, and Theognis.djvu/111

This page has been validated.
THE SHIELD OF HERCULES.
97

wrath by building him at Pagasæ an altar of the horns of captured beasts; but the god loved his shrine too well to compound matters so easily, and instead of doing so, appears to have commissioned Hercules to exact reparation from the robber. The poem opens with the approach of the hero, with his charioteer and kinsman, Iolaus, to the robber's haunt:—

"There in the grove of the far-darting godHe found him, and, insatiable of war,Ares, his sire, beside. Both bright in arms,Bright in the sheen of burning flame they stoodOn their high chariot, and the horses fleetTrampled the ground with rending hoofs; aroundIn parted circle smoked the cloudy dust,Up-dashed beneath the trampling hoofs, and carsOf complicated frame. The well-framed carsRattled aloud; loud clashed the wheels, while wraptIn their full speed the horses flew. RejoicedThe noble Cycnus; for the hope was his Jove's warlike offspring and his charioteerTo slay, and strip them of their gorgeous mail.But to his vaunts the prophet god of dayTurned a deaf ear: for he himself set onThe assault of Heracles."—E. 81-97.

None but Hercules, we are told, could have faced the unearthly light with which the sheen of the war-god's armour and the glare of his fire-flashing eyes lit up the sacred enclosure and its environs. He, however, is equal to the occasion. Probably, if we had the poem as it was written, the hero would not be represented as in the text, employing this critical moment in irrelevant speeches to his charioteer to the effect

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.