wrath by building him at Pagasæ an altar of the horns of captured beasts; but the god loved his shrine too well to compound matters so easily, and instead of doing so, appears to have commissioned Hercules to exact reparation from the robber. The poem opens with the approach of the hero, with his charioteer and kinsman, Iolaus, to the robber's haunt:—
He found him, and, insatiable of war,
Ares, his sire, beside. Both bright in arms,
Bright in the sheen of burning flame they stood
On their high chariot, and the horses fleet
Trampled the ground with rending hoofs; around
In parted circle smoked the cloudy dust,
Up-dashed beneath the trampling hoofs, and cars
Of complicated frame. The well-framed cars
Rattled aloud; loud clashed the wheels, while wrapt
In their full speed the horses flew. Rejoiced
The noble Cycnus; for the hope was his
Jove's warlike offspring and his charioteer
To slay, and strip them of their gorgeous mail.
But to his vaunts the prophet god of day
Turned a deaf ear: for he himself set on
The assault of Heracles."
—E. 81-97.
None but Hercules, we are told, could have faced the unearthly light with which the sheen of the war-god's armour and the glare of his fire-flashing eyes lit up the sacred enclosure and its environs. He, however, is equal to the occasion. Probably, if we had the poem as it was written, the hero would not be represented as in the text, employing this critical moment in irrelevant speeches to his charioteer to the effect
