The Argonautica

in autumn's leaf-shedding season--who could ever count them?

so those countless men streamed past the banks of the river,

clamoring eagerly; there in his finely wrought chariot

Aeetes shone among his team of matchless horses, granted

by Helios: coursers resembling swift breaths of wind.

In his left hand he raised a circular hammered shield,

and in the other a towering pine torch; beside him his spear

lay huge and stretched close by. The reins of the horses

Apsyrtus grasped in both hands. Far ahead, through the sea

the ship by now cut on, driven hard by her powerful rowers

and by the great river's current, sweeping strongly downward.

But the king raised both his hands in grievous anguish,

called on the Sun and Zeus to witness their deeds of evil,

and shouted terrible threats aloud to all his people:

unless they seized his daughter with their own hands, either

on land, or finding the ship on the swell of the navigable sea,

and brought her back, he would glut his heart, fiercely yearning

to exact revenge for all this: with your own heads you will learn

all my wrath, receiving the full measure of your ruin.

So Aeetes spoke. On that same day the Colchians

hauled down their ships and cast all the tackle aboard them;

that very day they put to sea. You never would have called

so vast a seaborne host a fleet, but rather

a countless nation of birds in swarms, thundering over the waters.