Page:The Song of the Sirens.djvu/142

 Leucas, they entered the Ambracian gulf and by dusk were moored off Ambracia itself.

At Ambracia they remained three days to rest the horses and mules and to refresh themselves from the sea and in order that the majority of the suitors might have time to chaffer with the dealers and to purchase for themselves riding horses, pack mules, carriage mules, carriages, saddles, and other fittings for their journey. When all were provided they set out upon the morning of the fourth day, departing from Ambracia by the Thesprotian gate and following the road along the left bank of the river Arachthus. Polyteles, always easy-going and fond of ease, traveled slowly and camped early each day, so that they were five days along the road. Therefore it was the fifth day after the summer solstice they streamed into Dodona, a cavalcade of more than two thousand people, of whom some three hundred were hired Acarnanians, and the rest, more than eighteen hundred in all, reckoning with Polyteles and with the suitors, their serving men and servants and slaves, had come over sea from Apollonia in Cyreniaca. The inhabitants of Dodona declared that no such company had ever come to their shrine upon a private mission, and that even of the ambassadors of kings and the delegates of