The Argonautica

Boldly he waited; the Colchians raised a roar like the sea

when waves boom hard against the sharp and jagged crags.

Aeetes stood speechless at the mighty boulder's flight.

Then, like swift hounds, the earthborn men sprang on each other,

and roaring slew each other; each fell back upon the Earth,

their mother, by their own spears, like pines struck down

or oaks that fierce windbursts buffet, toss, and shake.

As when from heaven a fiery star leaps out in splendor,

trailing a line of light, a portent to the men who see it

flashing and hurtling swiftly through the darkened air; so Jason,

Aeson's son, rushed headlong on the earthborn men, then drew

his naked sword from the sheath, and struck throughout the melee,

mowing down many who rose only to belly and flank,

half their bodies in the air; some reached only so far as

their shoulders; others newly stood upright from the earth,

and others already ran on eager feet to battle.

As sudden war erupts around disputed boundary-marks,

a landholder fears that enemies will cut his fields first;

he grips a curved and newly sharpened sickle in his hands

and mows down the standing crop while raw, and does not wait

for ripeness, when the sun's due heat has dried it fully;

so Jason mowed the earthborn crop. The furrows now with blood

were filled like spring-fed irrigation channels running full.

Some fell prone, their teeth biting into the roughened clod,