ing mutilated; when thus begins the
Calydonian river, having his unadorned hair crowned with reeds:

"A mournful task thou art exacting; for who, when overcome, is desirous
to relate his own battles? yet I will relate them in order; nor was it
so disgraceful to be overcome, as it is glorious to have engaged; and a
conqueror so mighty affords me a great consolation. If, perchance,
Deianira,[2] by her name, has at last reached thy ears, once she was a
most beautiful maiden, and the envied hope of many a wooer; together
with these, when the house of him, whom I desired as my father-in-law,
was entered by me, I said, 'Receive me, O son of Parthaon,[3] for thy
son-in-law.' Alcides, too, said {the same}; the others yielded to {us}
two. He alleged that he was offering {to the damsel} both Jupiter as a
father-in-law, and the glory of his labours; the orders, too, of his
step-mother, successfully executed. On the other hand (I thought it
disgraceful for a God to give way to a mortal, for then he was not a
God), I said, 'Thou beholdest me, a king of the waters, flowing amid thy
realms,[4] with my winding course; nor {am I some} stranger sent thee
for a son-in-law, from foreign lands, but I shall be one of thy people,
and a part of thy state. Only let it not be to my prejudice, that the
royal Juno does not hate me, and that all punishment, by labours
enjoined, is afar from me. For, since thou, {Hercules}, dost boast
thyself born of Alcmena for thy mother; Jupiter is either thy pretended
sire, or thy real one through a criminal deed: by the adultery of thy
mother art thou claiming a father. Choose, {then}, whether thou wouldst
rather have Jupiter {for thy} pretended {father}, or that thou art
sprung {from him} through a disgraceful deed?'

"While I was saying such things as these, for some time he looked at me
with a scowling eye, and did not very successfully check his inflamed
wrath; and he returned me just as many words {as these}: 'My right hand
is better than my tongue. If only I do but prevail in fighting, do thou
get the better in talking;' and {then} he fiercely {attacked} me. I was
ashamed, after having so lately spoken big words, to yield. I threw on
one side my green garment from off my body, and opposed my arms {to
his}, and I held my hands bent inwards,[5] from before my breast, on
their guard, and I prepared my limbs for the combat. He sprinkled me
with dust, taken up in the hollow of his hands, and, in his turn, grew