Here the whole of the men of the people together had been ruthlessly
slain through the transgressions of the women in the year gone by. For
the men had rejected their lawful wives, loathing them, and had
conceived a fierce passion for captive maids whom they themselves
brought across the sea from their forays in Thrace; for the terrible
wrath of Cypris came upon them, because for a long time they had grudged
her the honours due. O hapless women, and insatiate in jealousy to their
own ruin! Not their husbands alone with the captives did they slay on
account of the marriage-bed, but all the males at the same time, that
they might thereafter pay no retribution for the grim murder. And of all
the women, Hypsipyle alone spared her aged father Thoas, who was king
over the people; and she sent him in a hollow chest to drift over the
sea, if haply he should escape. And fishermen dragged him to shore at
the island of Oenoe, formerly Oenoe, but afterwards called Sicinus from
Sicinus, whom the water-nymph Oenoe bore to Thoas. Now for all the women
to tend kine, to don armour of bronze, and to cleave with the
plough-share the wheat-bearing fields, was easier than the works of
Athena, with which they were busied aforetime. Yet for all that did they
often gaze over the broad sea, in grievous fear against the Thracians'
coming. So when they saw Argo being rowed near the island, straightway
crowding in multitude from the gates of Myrine and clad in their harness
of war, they poured forth to the beach like ravening Thyiades; for they
deemed that the Thracians were come; and with them Hypsipyle, daughter
of Thoas, donned her father's harness. And they streamed down speechless
with dismay; such fear was wafted about them.

Meantime from the ship the chiefs had sent Aethalides the swift herald,
to whose care they entrusted their messages and the wand of Hermes, his
sire, who had granted him a memory of all things, that never grew dim;
and not even now, though he has entered the unspeakable whirlpools of