The Argonautica

far from his palace, in the very place where before they assembled.

There he contrived unbearable treachery and troubles for the Minyans.

He boasted that just as soon as the bulls had torn into pieces

that man who undertook to labor through this grievous contest,

he would hew down the oaken wood at the top of the thick-grown

hill, and burn the ship with the whole of her crew, till they sputtered

out their bitter outrage, they who plotted their overbearing deeds.

For even Phrixus, Aeolus' scion, though deeply needy,

Aeetes would never have welcomed that stranger at his palace hearth,

though above every stranger he excelled in kindness and god-fear,

had not Zeus himself sent down from the heavens his messenger,

Hermes, so Phrixus might meet a host kindly disposed toward him.

Much less would marauding pirates who ventured into his country

long remain unharmed, those men who make it their business

to raise their hands and seize for themselves the possessions of strangers,

weaving their treacherous schemes in secret, or breaking open

herdsmen's folds with the hideous noise of their plundering forays.

Apart from the rest, he said, fitting payment was owed him

by Phrixus' sons, who returned here attending on evildoers,

all in one body, plotting recklessly to drive him

out of his honor and scepters. For once he had heard the grim warning

uttered by Helios, his father, a prophecy full of disaster:

that he must flee close-woven deceit and the counsels arising

from his own offspring, and ruin that turns through a multitude of ways.