Page:Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica.djvu/295

 with dance and song, and others were going forward in time with a flute player and laughing. The whole town was filled with mirth and dance and festivity.

$285$ Others again were mounted on horseback and galloping before the town. And there were ploughmen breaking up the good soil, clothed in tunics girt up. Also there was a wide cornland and some men were reaping with sharp hooks the stalks which bended with the weight of the ears — as if they were reaping Demeter's grain: others were binding the sheaves with bands and were spreading the threshing floor. And some held reaping hooks and were gathering the vintage, while others were taking from the reapers into baskets white and black clusters from the long rows of vines which were heavy with leaves and tendrils of silver. Others again were gathering them into baskets. Beside them was a row of vines in gold, the splendid work of cunning Hephaestus: it had shivering leaves and stakes of silver and was laden with grapes which turned black. And there were men treading out the grapes and others drawing off the liquor. Also there were men boxing and wrestling, and huntsmen chasing swift hares with a leash of sharp toothed dogs before them, they eager to catch the hares, and the hares eager to escape.

Next to them were horsemen hard set, and they contended and laboured for a prize. The charioteers standing on their well-woven cars, urged on their swift horses with loose rein; the jointed cars flew

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