ad not yet
yielded, but armed themselves and set an ambush. Their dear wives and
children, and the old men, stood on the walls to defend it, while the
strong men went forth to fight. And they were led by Mars and Athene,
whose forms were fashioned in gold, with golden raiment; and, as gods, he
made them larger and more beautiful than the mortals around them.

The men in ambush set upon the herdsmen who were driving oxen to the
watering-place of the army, and making music with their pipes. They
carried off the cattle; but the besiegers, as they sat before the rostra,
heard the lowing of the oxen and drove up, with their high-stepping
horses, to repel the raid. Then a fierce conflict arose; and in it were
seen Strife, and Uproar, and Dire Fate; like living warriors, they rushed
on one another, and haled away the dead whom they slew.

In another part of the shield, he represented a rich, deep-soiled, fallow
field, thrice ploughed; and when the ploughers came to the end of the
furrow, a man would give to each of them a goblet of sweet wine. And the
ploughed ground grew black behind them, like real soil, although it was of
gold. Then there, too, was a rich field of corn, where reapers were
cutting the harvest with their sickles and it fell in rows; and others
were binding it with bands of straw; while the lord looked on, and was
glad at heart. And under a spreading oak a feast was being made ready for
the reapers.

And he fashioned therein a vineyard, rich with clusters of black grapes,
which the youths and maidens, in their glee, carried in baskets; while a
boy, in their midst, made sweet music on a clear-sounding harp; and he
sang the "Song of Linos," and the rest kept time with their feet.

And there was a herd of straight-horned oxen, all of gold and tin,
hurrying to the pasture beside the gently murmuring stream and the waving
rushes. Four herdsmen, of gold, followed them, and nine fleet dogs. And
two terrible lions seized a bellowing bull. The herdsmen followed, but
they could not set on their dogs to bite the lions, for the dogs shrank
back, barking and whining, and turned away.

And therein the glorious divine artist placed a wide pasture full of white
sheep, with folds and tents and huts. And he made a dancing-ground, like
that which Daedalus wrought at Gnosos for lovely fair-haired Ariadne.
There, lusty youths in shining tunics glistening with oil, danced with
fair maidens of costly wooing. The maidens had wrea