Greek Texts & Translations

22.27 The Together-coming Rocks were safely passed and the baleful mouth of the snowy Pontic entered, and Argo with the dear children of the Gods aboard her had made the country of the Bebrycians. Down the ladders on either side went crowding the men of Jason’s ship, and soon as they were out upon the soft deep sand of that lee shore, set to making them greenbeds and rubbing fire-sticks for fire. Then when Castor of the nimble coursers and Polydeuces ruddy as the wine together wandering afield from the rest, for to see the wild woodland of all manner of trees among the hills. Now beneath a certain slabby rock they did find a freshet brimming ever with water pure and clear. The pebbles at the bottom of it were like to silver and crystal, and long and tall there grew beside it, as well firs and poplars and planes and spiry cypresses, as all fragrant flowers which abound in the meadows of outgoing spring to be loved and laboured of the shag bee. In that place there sat taking the air a man both huge and terrible. His ears were crushed shapeless by the hard fist, and his giant breast and great broad back were orbed with iron flesh like a sledge-wrought effigy; moreover the sinews upon his brawny arms upstood beside the shoulder like the boulder-stones some torrent hath rolled and rounded in his swirling eddies; and, to end all, over his neck and about his back there was hung by the claws a swinging lion-skin.

22.53 First spoke the champion Polydeuces. ‘Whoever you may be, Sir,’ says he, ‘I bid you good morrow. Pray tell me what people possesseth this country.’

AMYCUS
22.55 Is it good-morrow, quotha, when I see strangers before me?

POLYDEUCES
22.56 Be of good cheer. Trust me, we be no evil men nor come we of evil stock.

AMYCUS
22.57 Of right good cheer am I, and knew it or ever I learnt it of you.

POLYDEUCES
22.58 Pray are you a man o’ the wilds, a churl come what may, a mere piece of disdain?

AMYCUS
22.59 I am what you see; and that’s no goer upon other’s ground, when all’s said.

POLYDEUCES
22.60 Come you upon my ground and welcome; you shall not go away empty.

AMYCUS
22.61 I’ll none of your welcomes and you shall none of mine.

POLYDEUCES
22.62 Lord, man! would you have me denied even a drink of this water?

AMYCUS
22.63 That shall you know when there comes you the parching languor o’ thirst on the lips.

POLYDEUCES
22.64 Would you silver or aught else for price? Say what you’ll take.

AMYCUS
22.65 Up hands fight me man against man.

POLYDEUCES
22.66 Fisticuffs is ‘t? or feet and all? mind you, I have a good eye. ^note

AMYCUS
22.67 Fists be it, and you may do all your best and cunningest.

POLDEUCES
22.68 But who is he for whom I am to bind thong to arm?

AMYCUS
22.69 You see him nigh; the man that shall fight you may be called a woman, but ‘faith, shall not deserve the name.

POLYDEUCES
22.70 And pray is there a prize we may contend for in this our match?

AMYCUS
22.71 Whethersoever shall win shall have the other to his possession.

POLYDEUCES
22.72 But such be the mellays of the red-crested game-cock.

AMYCUS
22.73 Whether we be like cock or lion there shall be no fight betwixt us on any other stake.

22.75 With these words Amycus took and blared upon his hollow shell, and quickly in answer to his call came the thick-haired Bebrycians and gathered themselves together beneath the shady platens. And in like manner all the heroes of the ship of Magnesia were fetched by Castor the peerless man-o’-war. And so the twain braced their hands with the leathern coils and twined the long straps about their arms, and forth and entered the ring breathing slaughter each against the other.

22.83 Now was there much ado which should have the sunshine at his back; but he cunning of my Polydeuces outwent the mighty man, and those beams did fall full in Amycus his face. So goes master Amycus in high dudgeon forward with many outs and levellings o’s fists. But the child of Tyndareüs was ready, and catched him a blow on the point o’ the chin; the which did the more prick him on and make him to betumble his fighting, so that he went in head-down and full-tilt. At that the Bebrycians holla’d him on, and they of the other part cried cheerily unto the stalwart Polydeuces for fear this Tityus of a man should haply overpeise him and so bear him down in that narrow room. But the son of Zeus stood up to him first on this side and then on that, and touched him left and right and left again; and for all his puissance the child of Poseidon was stayed in ‘s onset, insomuch that he stood all drunken with his drubbing and spit out the crimson blood. Whereat all the mighty men gave joyful tongue together by reason of the grievous bruises he had both by cheek and jowl; for his eyes were all-to-straitened with the puffing of their sockets. Next did my lord maze his man awhile with sundry feints and divers passes all about, and then, as soon as he had him all abroad, let drive at him to the bone, and laid him flatlong amid the springing flowers.