The Argonautica

Thracian Athos, though Lemnos lies from it so far

as a trim merchant vessel makes the run by noon,

casts its high summit's shadow clear as far as Myrine.

For them all day, and onward until dark, the fair wind

blew utterly fresh, and Argo's sail was stretched tight.

But with the sunset's rays the wind fell still and left them,

they reached craggy Lemnos, land of Sintians, by rowing.

There, through the transgressions committed by Lemnian women, all men

lay ruthlessly slain in the year that had just passed.

For the men had spurned their own wedded wives with loathing

and held fierce desire instead for their captive women,

whom they themselves had carried here from Thrace's far shore

when they ravaged Thrace; for Cypris' dreadful anger pursued

the Lemnian women, who long withheld her sacred honors.

Ah, wretched women, never sated in ruinous jealousy!

Not only husbands; captive women too they murdered

around the bed, and every male in that same slaughter,

lest anyone later exact requital for the grisly murder.

Hypsipyle alone of all spared her venerable father,

Thoas, king and ruler of the whole Lemnian people;

in a hollow chest she set him adrift across the sea,

hoping he might escape; fishermen drew him safe to Oenoe,

the island's former name; afterward men renamed it

Sicinus, taking its name from Sicinus, Thoas' own son,