Themiscyreians, over whom at that time Hippolyte reigned, in another the
Lycastians, and in another the dart-throwing Chadesians. And the next
day they sped on and at nightfall they reached the land of the Chalybes.

That folk have no care for ploughing with oxen or for any planting of
honey-sweet fruit; nor yet do they pasture flocks in the dewy meadow.
But they cleave the hard iron-bearing land and exchange their wages for
daily sustenance; never does the morn rise for them without toil, but
amid bleak sooty flames and smoke they endure heavy labour.

And straightway thereafter they rounded the headland of Genetaean Zeus
and sped safely past the land of the Tibareni. Here when wives bring
forth children to their husbands, the men lie in bed and groan with
their heads close bound; but the women tend them with food, and prepare
child-birth baths for them.

Next they reached the sacred mount and the land where the Mossynoeci
dwell amid high mountains in wooden huts,[1] from which that people take
their name. And strange are their customs and laws. Whatever it is right
to do openly before the people or in the market place, all this they do
in their homes, but whatever acts we perform at home, these they perform
out of doors in the midst of the streets, without blame. And among them
is no reverence for the marriage-bed, but, like swine that feed in
herds, no whit abashed in others' presence, on the earth they lie with
the women. Their king sits in the loftiest hut and dispenses upright
judgments to the multitude, poor wretch! For if haply he err at all in
his decrees, for that day they keep him shut up in starvation.

[Footnote 1: called "Mossynes."]

They passed them by and cleft their way with oars over against the
island of Ares all day long; for at dusk the light breeze left them. At
last they spied above them, hurtling through the air, one of the birds
of Ares which haunt that isle. It shook its wings down over the ship as
she sped on and sent against her a keen feather, and it fell on the left
shoulder of goodly Oileus, and he dropped his oar from his hands at the
sudden blow, and his comrades marvelled at the sight of the winged bolt.
And Eribotes from his seat hard by drew out the feather, and bound up
the wound when he had loosed the strap hanging from his own
sword-sheath; and besides the first, another bird appeared swooping
down; but the hero Clytius, son of Eurytus--for he bent his curved bow,
and sped a