fought not without bloodshed--for the Amazons were not gentle foes and
regarded not justice, those dwellers on the Doeantian plain; but
grievous insolence and the works of Ares were all their care; for by
race they were the daughters of Ares and the nymph Harmonia, who bare to
Ares war-loving maids, wedded to him in the glens of the Acmonian
wood--had not the breezes of Argestes come again from Zeus; and with the
wind they left the rounded beach, where the Themiscyreian Amazons were
arming for war. For they dwelt not gathered together in one city, but
scattered over the land, parted into three tribes. In one part dwelt the
Themiscyreians, over whom at that time Hippolyte reigned, in another the
Lycastians, and in another the dart-throwing Chadesians. And the next
day they sped on and at nightfall they reached the land of the Chalybes.

That folk have no care for ploughing with oxen or for any planting of
honey-sweet fruit; nor yet do they pasture flocks in the dewy meadow.
But they cleave the hard iron-bearing land and exchange their wages for
daily sustenance; never does the morn rise for them without toil, but
amid bleak sooty flames and smoke they endure heavy labour.

And straightway thereafter they rounded the headland of Genetaean Zeus
and sped safely past the land of the Tibareni. Here when wives bring
forth children to their husbands, the men lie in bed and groan with
their heads close bound; but the women tend them with food, and prepare
child-birth baths for them.

Next they reached the sacred mount and the land where the Mossynoeci
dwell amid high mountains in wooden huts,[1] from which that people take
their name. And strange are their customs and laws. Whatever it is right
to do openly before the people or in the market place, all this they do
in their homes, but whatever acts we perform at home, these they perform