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Tied not her tongue, and with crafty-winsome words did she say:

‘Stranger, wherefore so long have ye tarried without our towers?

Forasmuch as no man dwelleth within this city of ours;

But these have betaken them hence to dwell on the Thracian shore,

And there are they ploughing the wheat-bearing lands. I will tell thee o’er

The evil tale, to the end ye also may understand.

In the days when Thoas my father was king o’er the folk of the land,

My people in ships from Lemnos over the sea-ridges rode,

And harried the homes of the Thracians that overagainst us abode;{800}

And with booty untold they returned, and with many a captive maid.

But the curse of a baneful Goddess upon them now was laid;

For the Cyprian caused on their souls heart-ruining blindness to fall,

That they hated their lawful wives, and forth from bower and hall

At the beck of their folly they drove the Lemnian matrons away,

And beside those spear-won thralls in the bed of love they lay—

Cruel ones! Sooth, long time we endured it, if haply again,