Seercraft

((lacuna -- Slight remains of 7 lines)) "(ll. 8-35) (The Sons of Boreas pursued the Harpies) to the lands of the Massagetae and of the proud Half-Dog men, of the Underground-folk and of the feeble Pygmies; and to the tribes of the boundless Black-skins and the Libyans. Huge Earth bare these to Epaphus -- soothsaying people, knowing seercraft by the will of Zeus the lord of oracles, but deceivers, to the end that men whose thought passes their utterance might be subject to the gods and suffer harm -- Aethiopians and Libyans and mare-milking Scythians. For verily Epaphus was the child of the almighty Son of Cronos, and from him sprang the dark Libyans, and high-souled Aethiopians, and the Underground-folk and feeble Pygmies. All these are the offspring of the lord, the Loud-thunderer. Round about all these (the Sons of Boreas) sped in darting flight . . . of the well-horsed Hyperboreans -- whom Earth the all-nourishing bare far off by the tumbling streams of deep-flowing Eridanus . . . of amber, feeding her wide-scattered offspring -- and about the steep Fawn mountain and rugged Etna to the isle Ortygia and the people sprung from Laestrygon who was the son of wide-reigning Poseidon. Twice ranged the Sons of Boreas along this coast and wheeled round and about yearning to catch the Harpies, while they strove to escape and avoid them. And they sped to the tribe of the haughty Cephallenians, the people of patient-souled Odysseus whom in aftertime Calypso the queenly nymph detained for Poseidon. Then they came to the land of the lord the son of Ares . . . they heard. Yet still (the Sons of Boreas) ever pursued them with instant feet. So they (the Harpies) sped over the sea and through the fruitless air . . . "


- Fragment of Hesiod's Catalogues of Women, taken from Oxyrhynchus Papyri 1358, translated by H. G. Evelyn-White