Page:The Greek bucolic poets (1912).djvu/332



''Epic poem comprises three distinct parts, one of which still bears its separate title. It is not really a fragment, but pretends by a literary convention to be three “books” taken from an Odyssey, or rather Heracleia, in little. The first part, which bears the traditional stage–direction Heracles to the Husbandman, is concerned first with a description of the great farm of Augeias or Augeas, hing of the Epeians of Elis—the same whose stables Heracles at another time cleaned out—put into nthe mouth of a garrulous old ploughman of whom Heracles has asked where he can find the king; then the old man undertakes to show the mysterious stranger the way, and as they draw near the homestead they have Homeric meeting with the barking dogs. The second part bears the title'' The Visitation. In it we are told how the enormous herd of cattle given by the Sun to his child Augeas returned in the evening from pasture, how the king and his son Phyleus took Heracles to see the busy scene in the farmyard, and how Heracles encountered Rh