Zeus in the highest, whither again on a like errand came Ganymede in the after time.
But when thou hadst vanished, and the men who sought thee long brought thee not to thy mother, some one of the envious neighbours said secretly that over water heated to boiling they had hewn asunder with a knife thy limbs, and at the tables had shared among them and eaten sodden fragments of thy flesh. But to me it is impossible to call one of the blessed gods cannibal; I keep aloof; in telling ill tales is often little gain.
Now if any man ever had honour of the guardians of Olympus, Tantalos was that man; but his high fortune he could not digest, and by excess thereof won him an overwhelming woe, in that the Father hath hung above him a mighty stone that he would fain ward from his head, and therewithal he is fallen from joy.
This hopeless life of endless misery he endureth with other three[1], for that he stole from the immortals and gave to his fellows at a feast the nectar and ambrosia, whereby the gods had made him incorruptible. But if a man thinketh that in doing aught he shall be hidden from God, he erreth.
Therefore also the immortals sent back again his son to be once more counted with the short-lived race of men. And he when toward the bloom of his sweet youth the down began to shade his darkening cheek, took counsel with himself speedily to take to him for his wife the noble Hippodameia from her Pisan father's hand.
And he came and stood upon the margin of the hoary sea, alone in the darkness of the night, and called aloud on the deep-voiced Wielder of the Trident; and he appeared unto him nigh at his foot.
Then he said unto him: 'Lo now, O Poseidon, if the kind gifts of the Cyprian goddess are anywise pleasant in thine eyes, restrain Oinomaos' bronze spear, and send me unto Elis upon a
- ↑ Sisyphos, Ixion, and Tityos.
