Page:Sophocles (Storr 1919) v2.djvu/191

 This much I’ll add, the judges of the games

Announced no single contest wherein he

Was not the victor, and each time glad shouts

Hailed the award—‘An Argive wins, Orestes,

The son of Agamemnon, King of men,

Who led the hosts of Hellas.’ So he sped.

But when some angry godhead intervenes

The mightiest man is foiled. Another day,

When at sunsetting chariots vied in speed,

He entered; many were the charioteers.

From Sparta one, and one Achaean, two

From Libya, skilled to guide the yoked team;

The fifth in rank, with mares of Thessaly,

Orestes came, and an Aeolian sixth,

With chestnut fillies, a Megarian seventh,

The eighth, with milk-white steeds, an Aenian,

The ninth from Athens, city built by gods;

Last a Boeotian made the field of ten.

Then, as the appointed umpires signed to each

By lot his place, they ranged their chariots,

And at the trumpet’s brazen signal all

Started, all shook the reins and urged their steeds

With shouts; the whole plain echoed with a din

Of rattling cars and the dust rose to heaven.

They drave together, all in narrow space,

And plied their goads, each keen to leave behind

The press of whirling wheels and snorting steeds,

For each man saw his car beflecked with foam

Or felt the coursers’ hot breath at his back.

Orestes, as he rounded either goal, 179