The Argonautica

and took the ceaseless toil of rowing; swiftly then

they passed the swift-flowing Rhebas River and Colone's cape,

and not long afterward they rowed past Cape Melaina.

Next lie the outflows of the river Phyllis, where once

Dipsacus welcomed Athamas' son into his own halls,

when Phrixus fled the city of Orchomenus with the golden ram.

A meadow-nymph had borne Dipsacus; he took no pleasure

in insolence, but willingly beside his father's waters

he lived with his mother, pasturing flocks along the shore.

Soon they beheld and passed his shrine and the broad banks

of Phyllis River, then the plain and deep-flowing Calpe;

all through the night, as through the day, they drove Argo onward

across the windless calm with tireless, driving oars.

As laboring oxen toil, cleaving the moist plowland,

measureless sweat streams round their laboring bodies,

flowing from flanks and necks, pressed by the heavy yoke

their eyes roll sidelong, and the hot breath from their mouths

comes dry and roars without a pause; all day the oxen

brace hooves into earth and strain against their labor:

just so the heroes hauled the oars up from beneath the sea.

Now when immortal light had not yet come, and darkness

was no longer utter, while a slender gleam overspread night,

the waking race of mortals calls that gleam amphilyke.

Then they drove their ship into the lonely island's harbor