METAMORPHOSES BOOK V brought forth beneath her crystal waters. He was of surpassing beauty, which his rich robes enhanced, a sturdy boy of sixteen years, clad in a purple mantle fringed with gold; a golden chain adorned his neck, and a golden circlet held his locks in place, perfmed with mvrrh. He was well skilled to hurl the javelin at the most distant mark, but with more skill could bend the bow, When now he was in the verv act of bending his stout bow, Perseus snatched up a brand which lay smouldering on the altar and smote the youth, crushing his face to splintered bones. When Assyrian Lycabas beheld him, his lovely features defiled with blood -Lycabas, his closest. comrade and his declared true lover-he wept alou for Athis, who lay gasping out his life beneath that bitter wound; then he caught up the bow which Athis had bent, and cried: "Now you have me to fight, and not long shall you plume yourself on a boy's death, which brings you more contempt than glory." Before he had finished speaking the keen arro fleshed from the bowstring; but it missed its mark and stuck harmless in a fold of Perseus' robe. Acrisius' grandson quickly turned on him that hook which had been fleshed in Medusa's death, and drove it into his breast. But he, evcn in death, with his eyes swimming in the black darkness, looked round for Athis, fell down by his side, and bore to the shadows this comfort, that in death they were not divided. Then Phorbas of Syene, Metion's son, and Libyan Amphimedon, eager to join in the fray, slipped and fell in the blood with which all the floor was wet. As they strove to rise the sword met them, driven through the ribs of one and through the other's throat. 243
