d, one
at a distance and another near at hand; and many streams are swallowed
up in the sand and are without a name; but, mingled with a few, the
main stream openly bursts with its arching crest of foam into the
inhospitable Pontus. And they would have tarried there and have closed
in battle with the Amazons, and would have 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.

(ll. 1002-1008) 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.

(ll. 1009-1014) 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.

(ll. 1015-1029) Next they reached the sacred mount and the land where
the Mossynoeci dwell amid high mountains in wooden huts, [1207] 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 out of doors in the midst of
the streets, without blame. And among them is no reverence for the
marriage-bed, but, like swine that feed in herds, no whit abashed in
others' presence, on the earth they lie with the women. The