ees under foot, assuredly to your sorrow will stern necessity come
upon you."

(ll. 19-21) Thus he spake in his pride, but fierce anger seized them
when they heard it, and the challenge smote Polydeuces most of all. And
quickly he stood forth his comrades' champion, and cried:

(ll. 22-24) "Hold now, and display not to us thy brutal violence,
whoever thou art; for we will obey thy rules, as thou sayest. Willingly
now do I myself undertake to meet thee."

(ll. 25-54) Thus he spake outright; but the other with rolling eyes
glared on him, like to a lion struck by a javelin when hunters in the
mountains are hemming him round, and, though pressed by the throng, he
reeks no more of them, but keeps his eyes fixed, singling out that
man only who struck him first and slew him not. Hereupon the son of
Tyndareus laid aside his mantle, closely-woven, delicately-wrought,
which one of the Lemnian maidens had given him as a pledge of
hospitality; and the king threw down his dark cloak of double fold with
its clasps and the knotted crook of mountain olive which he carried.
Then straightway they looked and chose close by a spot that pleased them
and bade their comrades sit upon the sand in two lines; nor were they
alike to behold in form or in stature. The one seemed to be a monstrous
son of baleful Typhoeus or of Earth herself, such as she brought
forth aforetime, in her wrath against Zeus; but the other, the son of
Tyndareus, was like a star of heaven, whose beams are fairest as it
shines through the nightly sky at eventide. Such was the son of Zeus,
the bloom of the first down still on his cheeks, still with the look of
gladness in his eyes. But his might and fury waxed like a wild beast's;
and he poised his hands to see if they were pliant as before and were
not altogether numbed by toil and rowing. But Amycus on his side made no
trial; but standing apart in silence he kept his eyes upon his foe, and
his spirit surged within him all eager to dash the life-blood from his
breast. And between them Lyeoreus, the henchman of Amycus, placed at
their feet on each side two pairs of gauntlets made of raw hide, dry,
exceeding tough. And the king addressed the hero with arrogant words:

(ll. 55-59) "Whichever of these thou wilt, without casting lots, I grant
thee freely, that thou mayst not blame me hereafter. Bind them about thy
hands; thou shalt learn and tell another how skilled I am to carve the
dry oxhides and to spatter men's cheeks w