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length the gates are opened and he enters. Straightway he spies the royal portals; there he flings down his limbs stiffened with rain and wind, and leaning against the unknown palace doors woos gentle slumber to his hard couch.

There king Adrastus, verging now toward old age from life’s mid-course, ruled his folk in tranquil governance, rich in the wealth of ancestry, and on either side tracing his line to Jove. Issue lacked he of the stronger sex, but was prosperous in female offspring: two daughters gave him pledge of love and service. To him had Phoebus at fate’s bidding told that sons-in-law drew nigh—a deadly horror to tell! yet soon was the truth made manifest—in the shapes of bristly swine and tawny lion. Naught comprehends the sire therein for all his ponderings, nor thou, wise Amphiaraus, for thy master Apollo forbids., Only the father’s heart sickens ever in deep-felt anxiety.

But lo! Olenian^[1] Tydeus leaving ancient Calydon by fate’s decree—the guilty terror of a brother’s blood drives him forth—treads beneath night’s slumbrous veil the same wild ways, bewailing likewise wind and rain, and with ice-sheeted back, and face and hair streaming with the storm, comes to the self-same shelter, whereof the former stranger, stretched on the cold earth, had part. Thereat so chanced it that both were seized with bloody rage, and suffered not a shared roof to ward off the night; for a while they tarry with exchange of threatening words, then when flung taunts had swelled their anger to the pitch, each uprose, set free his shoulders, and challenged to naked combat. Taller the Theban, with long stride and towering limbs and in life’s