, for a long time in alarm, lost
his color together with his presence of mind, and his hair stood on end
with a chill of terror. Lo! Pallas, the favorer of the hero, descending
through the upper region of the air, comes to him, and bids him sow the
dragon's teeth under the earth turned up, as the seeds of a future
people. He obeyed; and when he had opened a furrow with the pressed
plough, he scattered the teeth on the ground as ordered, the seed of a
race of men. Afterwards ('tis beyond belief) the turf began to move, and
first appeared a point of a spear out of the furrows, next the coverings
of heads nodding with painted cones;[11] then the shoulders and the
breast, and the arms laden with weapons start up, and a crop of men
armed with shields grows apace. So, when the curtains[12] are drawn up
in the joyful theaters, figures are wont to rise, and first to show
their countenances; by degrees the rest; and being drawn out in a
gradual continuation, the whole appear, and place their feet on the
lowest edge {of the stage}. Alarmed with this new enemy, Cadmus is
preparing to take arms, when one of the people that the earth had
produced cries out, "Do not take up {arms}, nor engage thyself in civil
war." And then, engaged hand to hand, he strikes one of his earth-born
brothers with the cruel sword, {while} he himself falls by a dart sent
from a distance. He, also, who had put him to death, lives no longer
than the other, and breathes forth the air which he has so lately
received. In a similar manner, too, the whole troop becomes maddened,
and the brothers {so} newly sprung up, fall in fight with each other, by
mutual wounds. And now the youths that had the space of {so} short an
existence allotted them, beat with throbbing breast their blood-stained
mother, five {only} remaining, of whom Echion[13] was one. He, by the
advice of Tritonia, threw his arms upon the ground, and both asked and
gave the assurance of brotherly concord.

The Sidonian stranger had these as associates in his task, when he built
the city that was ordered by the oracle of Phoebus.

[Footnote 5: _As large a size._--Ver. 44. This description of the
enormous size of the dragon or serpent is inconsistent with what
the Poet says in line 91, where we find Cadmus enabled to pin his
enemy against an oak.]

[Footnote 6: _With his sting._--Ver. 48. He enumerates in this one
instance the various modes by which serpents put their prey to