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From Specimens of the Poets and Poetry of Greece and Rome by Various Translators, edited by William Peter, A. M. of Christ-church, Oxford; Philadelphia: Carey and Hart; 1847; p. 233-234.

LYCOPHRON

[About 259 B. C.]

LYCOPHRON was born at Chalcis in Eubœa; and was one of the seven poets, under Ptolemy Philadelphus, king of Egypt, who formed the poetical constellation of the Pleiads. Lycophron died by the wound of an arrow. Twenty tragedies of his composition are lost. All that remains of him is his prophetical rhapsody of Cassandra.

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FROM THE CASSANDRA.

PROPHECY OF THE DEATH OF HECTOR.

Translated by Sir C. A. Elton

NOW Myrina’s turrets o’er
And along the ocean shore
Sounds are heard of wailing cries,
Neighings shrill of war-steeds rise
When the tawny wolf his feet,
With Thessalian swiftness fleet,
Springing with impetuous leap,
Presses on their sandy steep;
Hidden fountains gushing round,
As he stamps the yielding ground.
234 Mars, in war-dance famed, hath stood
Blowing shrill the trump of blood.
All the earth, before mine eyes,
Drear and desolated lies:
Lances bristle, and in air
Iron harvests, waving, glare.
From the topmost tower I bend;
Shrieks the height of air ascend:
Groans are utter’d; garments torn;
Women o’er the slaughters mourn.
Woe my heart! to me, to me
That the heaviest blow will be;
That will gnaw my soul to see.
See the warlike eagle come,
Green of eye, and black of plume:
Screaming fierce he swooping springs,
Marks the dust with trailing wings;
Plougher of the furrow’d sand,
Sweeping circles track the land.
With a mix’d and horrid cry,
See, he snatches him on high!
Brother! to my soul endear’d —
Nursling, by Apollo rear’d!
Beak and talon keen deface
All his body’s blooming grace
Slaughter-dyed, his native wood
Reddens with the stain of blood.

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