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BK. II.] younger, Protesilaus being at once the elder and the more valiant. So the people were not without a leader, though they mourned him whom they had lost. With him there came forty ships.

And those that held Pheræ by the Bœbean lake, with Bœbe, Glaphyræ, and the populous city of Iolcus, these with their eleven ships were led by Eumelus, son of Admetus, whom Alcestis bore to him, loveliest of the daughters of Pelias.

And those that held Methone and Thaumacia, with Melibœa and rugged Olizon, these were led by the skilful archer Philoctetes, and they had seven ships, each with fifty oarsmen all of them good archers; but Philoctetes was lying in great pain in the Island of Lemnos, where the sons of the Achæans left him, for he had been bitten by a poisonous water snake. There he lay sick and sorry, and full soon did the Argives come to miss him. But his people, though they felt his loss, were not leaderless, for Medon, the bastard son of Oïleus by Rhene, set them in array.

Those, again, of Tricca and the stony region of Ithome, and they that held Œchalia, the city of Œchalian Eurytus, these were commanded by the two sons of Æsculapius, skilled in the art of healing, Podalirius and Machaon. And with them there came thirty ships.

The men, moreover, of Ormenius, and by the fountain of Hypereia, with those that held Asterius, and the white crests of Titanus, these were led by Eurypylus, the son of Euæmon, and with them there came forty ships.

Those that held Argissa and Gyrtone, Orthe, Elone, and the white city of Oloösson, of these brave Polypœtes was leader. He was son of Pirithoüs, who was son of Jove himself, for Hippodameia bore him to Pirithoüs on the day when he took his revenge on the shaggy mountain savages, and drove them from Mt. Pelion to the Aithices. But Polypœtes was not sole in command, for with him was Leonteus, of the race of Mars, who was son of Coronus,