tagonisms of foreign war and internal disorder. The myth is told with admirable force and vividness, but is too long to quote entire. The following passage from it must suffice. The snakes have just entered the chamber—
"But as they came, the babe unterrified
Lifted his little head, and his first battle tried.
With either hand one horrid throat he grasped
Beneath those jaws of terror gaping wide.
Fast in that knot the monsters gasped,
Loosed their long spires, and drooped their head, and died.
Pierced by a pang of sudden fear,
Hurried the matrons near,
Who their kind vigil kept
Attentive where the mother slept.
And forth the mother rushed, her feet all bare,
E'en as she lay, in hope those monstrous beasts to scare.
At the wild cry the Thebans thronged amain
In brazen armour fain:
Amphitryon came in speed
Brandishing high his naked blade."—(S.)
Could anything be more graphic, or more true, than that picture of the mother rushing in "with feet all bare"? The trusty retainers stay to arm themselves; even Amphitryon—the putative father of the babe—lingers at least to seize a sword. But the mother can wait for nothing. "E'en as she lay," she rushes in, and outstrips all other succour.
The so-called Ninth Nemean really commemorates a victory won at Sicyon, and its mythical contents are drawn from the ancient local legends of that city, and of the Argive leader Adrastus, who had married a
