| Theocritus, Idylls (English) (XML Header) [genre: poetry] [word count] [lemma count] [Theoc. Id.]. | ||
| <<Theoc. Id. 25.174 | Theoc. Id. 25.280 (Greek) | >>Theoc. Id. 26.1 |
25.240 At this I waxed exceedingly distempered and made to draw for the third time. But, ere that, the ravening beast rolled around his eyes and beheld me, and lashing all his tail about his hinder parts bethought him quickly of battle. Now was his neck brimming with ire, his tawny tresses an-end for wrath, his chine arched like a bow, as he gathered him up all together unto flank and loin. Then even as, when a wainwright, cunning man, takes the seasoned wild-fig boughs he hath warmed at the fire and bends them into wheels for an axled chariot, the thin-rinded figwood escapes at the bending from his grasp and leaps at one bound afar, even so did that direful lion from a great way off spring upon me, panting to be at my flesh. Then it was that with the one hand I thrust before me the cloak from my shoulders folded about my bunched arrows, and with the other lift my good sound staff above my head and down with it on his crown, and lo! my hard wild-olive was broke clean in twain on the mere shaggy pate of that unvanquishable beast. Yes as for him, or ever he could reach me he was fallen from the midst of his spring, and so stood with trembling feet and wagging head, his two eyes being covered in darkness because the brains were all-to-shaken in the skull of him.
25.262 Perceiving now that he was all abroad with the pain and grief of it, ere he might recover his wits I cast my bow and my broidered quiver upon the ground and let drive at the nape of that massy neck. Then from the rear, lest he should tear me with his talons, I gat my arm about his throat, and treading his hind-paws hard into the ground for to keep the legs of them from my sides, held on with might and main till at length I could rear him backward by the foreleg, and vasty Hades received his spirit.
25.272 That done, I fell a-pondering how I might flay me off the dead beast’s shag-neckèd skin. ‘What a task!’ thought I; for there was no cutting that, neither with wood nor with stone nor yet with iron. At that moment one of the Immortals did mind me I should cut up the lion’s skin with the lion’s talons. So I to it, and had him flayed in a trice, and cast the skin about me for a defence against he havoc of gashing war.
25.280 Such, good friend, was the slaying of the Lion of Nemea, that had brought so much and sore trouble both upon man and beast.”
| Theocritus, Idylls (English) (XML Header) [genre: poetry] [word count] [lemma count] [Theoc. Id.]. | ||
| <<Theoc. Id. 25.174 | Theoc. Id. 25.280 (Greek) | >>Theoc. Id. 26.1 |
