Page:Metamorphoses.djvu/337

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METAMORPHOSES BOOK VI within its sloping banks ran down quickly to the sea, and had the name of Marsyas, the clearest river in all Phrygia. Straightway the company turns from such old tales to the present, and mourns Amphion dead with his children. They all blame the mother; but even then one man, her brother Pelops, is said to have wept for her, and, drawing aside his garment from his breast, to have revealed the ivory patch on the left shoulder. This at the time of his birth had been of the same colour as his right, and of flesh. But later, when his father had cut him in pieces, they say that the gods joined the parts together again; they found all the others, but one part was lacking where the neck and upper arm unite. A piece of ivory was made to take the place of the part which could not be found; and so Pelops was made whole again. Now all the neighbouring princes assembled, and the near-by cities urged their kings to go and offer sympathy: Argos and Sparta and Peloponnesian Mycenae; Calydon, which had not yet incurred Diana's wrath; fertile Orchomenos and Corinth, famed for works of bronze; warlike Messene, Patrae, and low-lying Cleonae; Nelean Pylos and Troezen, not yet ruled by Pittheus; and all the other cities which are shut off' by the Isthmus between its two seas, and those which are outside visible from the Isthmus be- tweenits two seas.1 Butof all cities--whocould believe it ?-you, Athens, alone did nothing. War hindere this friendly service, and barbaric hordes from over sea held the walls of Mopsopia2 in alarm. Now Tereus of Thrace had put these to flight with his relieving troops, and by the victory had a great name. And 1 That is, the Peloponnese and Northern Greece. 9 Athenn, from King Mopsnpius. 317