earth, but by the craft of Zeus an ebb suddenly drew off the flood. From these first men came anciently your ancestors of the brazen shields, sons of the women of the stock of Iapetos and of the mighty Kronidai, Kings that dwelt in the land continually; until the Olympian Lord caught up the daughter[1] of Opöeis from the land of the Epeians, and lay with her in a silent place among the ridges of Mainalos; and afterward brought her unto Lokros, that age might not bring him[2] low beneath the burden of childlessness. But the wife bare within her the seed of the Mightiest, and the hero saw the bastard born and rejoiced, and called him by the name of his mother's father, and he became a man pre-eminent in beauty and great deeds: and his father gave unto him a city and a people to rule over.
Then there came unto him strangers, from Argos and from Thebes, and from Arcadia others, and from Pisa. But the son of Aktor and Aigina, Menoitios, he honoured above all settlers, him whose son[3] went with the Atreidai to the plain of Teuthras and stood alone beside Achilles, when Telephos had turned the valiant Danaoi to flight, and drave them into the sterns of their sea-ships; so proved he to them that had understanding that Patroklos' soul was strong. And thenceforward the son of Thetis persuaded him that he should never in murderous battle take his post far from his friend's conquering spear.
Fit speech may I find for my journey in the Muses' car; and let me therewith have daring and powers of ample scope. To back the prowess of a friend I came, when Lampromachos won his Isthmian crown, when on the same day both he and his brother overcame. And afterward at the gates[4] of Corinth two triumphs again befell Epharmostos, and more in the valleys of Nemea. At Argos he triumphed over men, as over boys at Athens. And I might tell how at Marathon he stole from among the beardless and confronted the full-grown for the prize of
