th his
very fingers quaking, wandering with ravings, and shouts with voice like
that of hunter, "Pylades, dost thou behold this? Dost not behold this snake
of Hades, how she would fain slay me, armed against me with horrid
vipers?[45] And she breathing from beneath her garments[46] fire and
slaughter, rows with her wings, bearing my mother in her arms, that she may
cast upon me this rocky mass. Alas! she will slay me. Whither shall I fly?"
And one beheld not the same form of countenance, but he uttered in turn the
bellowings of calves and howls of dogs, which imitations [of wild beasts]
they say the Furies utter. But we flinching, as though about to die, sat
mute; and he drawing a sword with his hand, rushing among the calves,
lion-like, strikes them on the flank with the steel, driving it into their
sides, fancying that he was thus avenging himself on the Fury Goddesses,
till that a gory foam was dashed up from the sea. Meanwhile, each one of
us, as he beheld the herds being slain and ravaged, armed himself, and
inflating the conch[47] shells and assembling the inhabitants--for we
thought that herdsmen were weak to fight against well-trained and youthful
strangers. And a large number of us was assembled in a short time. But the
stranger, released from the attack of madness, drops down, with his beard
befouled with foam. But when we saw him fallen opportunely [for us,] each
man did his part, with stones, with blows. But the other of the strangers
wiped away the foam, and tended his mouth, and spread over him the
well-woven texture of his garments, guarding well the coming wounds, and
aiding his friend with tender offices. But when the stranger returning to
his senses leaped up, he perceived that a hostile tempest and present
calamity was close upon them, and he groaned aloud. But we ceased not
hurling rocks, each standing in a different place. But then indeed we heard
a dread exhortation, "Pylades, we shall die, but that we die most
gloriously! Follow me, drawing thy sword in hand." But when we saw the
twain swords of the enemy[48] brandished, in flight we filled the woods
about the crag. But if one fled, others pressing on pelted them; and if
they drove these away, again the party who had just yielded aimed at them
with rocks. But it was incredible, for out of innumerable hands no one
succeeded in hitting these victims to the Goddess. And we with difficulty,
I will not say overcome them by force, but taking them in a circ