as to make use of his impending
fortune. There the people of the Danes met him and appointed him king;
and a little after, on hearing of the death of his brother Athisl, whom
he had bidden rule the Swedes, he joined the Swedish empire to that of
Denmark. But Athisl was cut off by an ignominious death. For whilst, in
great jubilation of spirit, he was honouring the funeral rites of
Rolf with a feast, he drank too greedily, and paid for his filthy
intemperance by his sudden end. And so, while he was celebrating the
death of another with immoderate joviality, he forced on his own apace.

While Hother was in Sweden, Balder also came to Zealand with a fleet;
and since he was thought to be rich in arms and of singular majesty,
the Danes accorded him with the readiest of voices whatever he asked
concerning the supreme power. With such wavering judgment was the
opinion of our forefathers divided. Hother returned from Sweden and
attacked him. They both coveted sway, and the keenest contest for the
sovereignty began between them; but it was cut short by the flight of
Hother. He retired to Jutland, and caused to be named after him the
village in which he was wont to stay. Here he passed the winter season,
and then went back to Sweden alone and unattended. There he summoned the
grandees, and told them that he was weary of the light of life because
of the misfortunes wherewith Balder had twice victoriously stricken him.
Then he took farewell of all, and went by a circuitous path to a place
that was hard of access, traversing forests uncivilised. For it oft
happens that those upon whom has come some inconsolable trouble of
spirit seek, as though it were a medicine to drive away their sadness,
far and sequestered retreats, and cannot bear the greatness of their
grief amid the fellowship of men; so dear, for the most part, is
solitude to sickness. For filthiness and grime are chiefly pleasing to
those who have been stricken with ailments of the soul. Now he had been
wont to give out from the top of a hill decrees to the people when they
came to consult him; and hence when they came they upbraided the sloth
of the king for hiding himself, and his absence was railed at by all
with the bitterest complaints.

But Hother, when he had wandered through remotest byways and crossed an
uninhabited forest, chanced to come upon a cave where dwelt some maidens
whom he knew not; but they proved to be the same who had once given him
the invulnerabl