The Argonautica

eager to meet the Bebrycians; with him charged together

Aeacus' sons; and warlike Jason rose beside them.

As wolves in the folds drive unnumbered sheep in terror

on a winter day; gray wolves in a sudden onrush,

unseen by dogs with searching noses and the shepherds themselves,

they seek their foremost victim, springing forth to seize,

their eyes flash everywhere together; all the sheep

are pressed from every side, falling around one another; so

the heroes routed haughty Bebrycians in wretched panic.

As shepherds send smoke through a vast swarm of bees,

or keepers of bees send smoke deep into a rock,

the bees awhile swarm tightly massed inside their hive

and churn with buzzing; then smoke laden black with soot

stuns them; they dart far away from the sheltering rock.

So those men no longer stood firm; they broke and scattered

inland through Bebrycia, carrying news of Amycus' death;

fools, never seeing the other ruin already near,

an unseen, deadly doom: even then their vineyards were ravaged,

and village after village by the hostile spear of Lycus

and Mariandynian fighters, with Amycus their king now gone.

For always both tribes fought across the iron-bearing country.

Already Lycus' men were ravaging stalls and farmsteads;

and now the heroes ringed unnumbered sheep and drove them.

Then one among the band of heroes spoke these words: