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who, at the time when he was ruler there, made his city famous and glorious with new festivals, and contests of men’s strength, and hollow chariots. For once Adrastus fled from bold-thinking Amphiaraus and terrible civil strife, from his ancestral home, Argos ; and the sons of Talaus were no longer rulers, overpowered by sedition.
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A stronger man puts an end to the previous justice.
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The sons of Talaus gave man-conquering Eriphyle, as a faithful pledge, in marriage to Amphiaraus son of Oicles, and became the most powerful of the golden-haired Danaans; and once they led a noble army of men to seven-gated Thebes—an expedition not attended by birds of good omen. In their mad desire to leave home, the son of Cronus, by whirling his lightning-bolt, urged them not to go,
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but to abstain from the journey.
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And so that company, in bronze armor, and with their horses in war-harnesses, was hastening to arrive at manifest doom. And planting ἐρεισάμενοι. Wilamowitz: “ reditum in Ismeni ripa sibi fixerunt. ” their sweet return on the banks of the Ismenus, they fattened the white-flowering smoke with their corpses Reading σώμασι πίαναν (Bergk). . For seven funeral pyres feasted on their bodies’ young limbs. But, for the sake of Amphiaraus, Zeus with his all-powerful thunderbolt
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split the deep-breasted earth, and concealed him together with his horses,
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before he could be struck in the back by the spear of Periclymenus, and his warlike spirit disgraced. For amid divinely-sent panic even the children of gods flee. If it is possible, son of Cronus, I would like to put off for as long as I can this fierce trial of empurpled spears, this contest for life and death;
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and I pray to you, grant to the children of the Aetnaeans the long-lived blessing of good laws,
