ght years of age, dressed in a
purple tunic, which a golden fringe bordered; a gilded necklace graced
his neck, and a curved hair-pin his hair wet with myrrh. He, indeed, had
been taught to hit things, although at a distance, with his hurled
javelin, but {he was} more skilled at bending the bow. {Perseus} struck
him even then, as he was bending with his hands the flexible horns {of a
bow}, with a billet, which, placed in the middle of the altar, was
smoking, and he crushed his face into his broken skull.

When the Assyrian Lycabas, who was a most attached friend of his, and no
concealer of his real affection, saw him rolling his features, the
objects of such praises, in his blood; after he had bewailed Athis,
breathing forth his life from this cruel wound, he seized the bow which
he had bent, and said, "And {now} let the contest against thee be with
me; not long shalt thou exult in the fate of the youth, by which thou
acquirest more hatred than praise." All this he had not yet said, {when}
the piercing weapon darted from the string, and {though} avoided, still
it hung in the folds of his garment. The grandson of Acrisius turned
against him his falchion,[6] {already} proved in the slaughter of
Medusa, and thrust it into his breast. But he, now dying, with his eyes
swimming in black night, looked around for Athis, and sank upon him, and
carried to the shades the consolation of a united death. Lo! Phorbas of
Syene,[7] the son of Methion, and Amphimedon, the Libyan, eager to
engage in the fight, fell down, slipping in the blood with which the
earth was warm, soaked on every side; as they arose the sword met them,
being thrust in the ribs of the one, {and} in the throat of Phorbas. But
Perseus does not attack Erithus, the son of Actor, whose weapon is a
broad battle-axe, by using his sword, but he takes up, with both hands,
a huge bowl,[8] standing out with figures deeply embossed, and of vast
mass in its weight, and hurls it against the man. The other vomits forth
red blood, and, falling on his back, beats the ground with his dying
head. Then he slays Polydaemon, sprung from the blood of Semiramis, and
the Caucasian Abaris, and Lycetus, the son of Sperchius,[9] and Elyces,
with unshorn locks, and Phlegias, and Clytus; and he tramples upon the
heaps of the dying, which he has piled up.

But Phineus, not daring to engage hand to hand with his enemy, hurls his
javelin, which accident carries against Idas, who, in vain, has dec