The Argonautica

Immediately beyond they rounded Genetaean Zeus' headland,

and made their way safely past Tibarenian country.

There, whenever the women bear children to their husbands,

the men themselves fall groaning onto childbed couches,

their heads wrapped up, while the wives tend them well with food

and wives busy themselves preparing each childbed bath.

Next they passed the Sacred Mountain and then the country

where Mossynoeci people dwell on high mountain ridges,

in wooden mossyn towers, from which the people take their name.

Their customs and ordinances assume strange, different forms.

Whatever it is lawful to do openly, among the people

or in the public square, they contrive all this at home;

whatever we practice privately inside sheltered halls,

they do outdoors, without reproach, in central streets.

Nor is there any public shame about the marriage bed; like pigs

grazing at pasture, not fearing those who are present,

they mate down on the ground, sharing intercourse with women.

Meanwhile the king, enthroned in the highest wooden tower,

dispenses lawful, upright judgments to the many people,

wretched king: should he somehow err declaring the law,

they shut the king inside and hold him starving for that day.

Passing beyond them, the heroes were already nearly opposite

Ares' island, rowing hard to cut their passage

all day, for the mild breeze had failed them toward dusk.