Page:Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica.djvu/543

 They relate that the creature was sent by the gods to punish the descendants of Cadmus, and that the Thebans therefore excluded those of the house of Cadmus from the kingship. But (they say) a certain Cephalus, the son of Deïon, an Athenian, who owned a hound which no beast ever escaped, had accidentally killed his wife Procris, and being purified of the homicide by the Cadmeans, hunted the fox with his hound, and when they had overtaken it both hound and fox were turned into stones near Teumessus. These writers have taken the story from the Epic Cycle.

The authors of the Thebaïs say that Manto the daughter of Teiresias was sent to Delphi by the Epigoni as a first fruit of their spoil, and that in accordance with an oracle of Apollo she went out and met Rhacius, the son of Lebes, a Mycenaean by race. This man she married—for the oracle also contained the command that she should marry whomsoever she might meet—and coming to Colophon, was there much cast down and wept over the destruction of her country.

 

is continued by the epic called Cypria which is current in eleven books. Its contents are as follows.

Zeus plans with Themis to bring about the Trojan war. Strife arrives while the gods are feasting at the marriage of Peleus and starts a dispute between 489