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‘Farewell, Olympus, now farewell, and all the mountain-summits,

Farewell, my strongholds desolate, and plane-trees rich in shadow,

Ye fountains with your waters cool, and level plains low-lying.

Farewell I bid the swift-winged hawks[195], farewell the royal eagles,

Farewell for me the sun I love and the bright-glancing moonlight,

That lighted up my path wherein to walk a warrior worthy[196].’

Such laments are not lost upon Charos, the servant of God, but he must needs turn a deaf ear to prayers for a respite. Clear and final comes his answer, almost in the same words in every ballad[197],

δὲν ἠμπορῶ, λεβέντη μου, γιατ’ εἶμαι προσταμμένος,

ἐμένα μ’ ἔστειλ’ ὁ Θεὸς νὰ πάρω τὴ ψυχή σου.

‘No respite can I give, brave sir, for I am straitly chargèd;

’Tis God that sent me here to thee, sent me to take thy spirit.’

Sometimes then the doomed man will seek to tempt Charos with meat and drink, that he may grant a few hours’ delay, but against offers of hospitality he is obdurate. Or again his victim refuses to yield to death ‘without weakness or sickness’ and challenges him to a trial of athletic skill, in wrestling or leaping, whereon each shall stake his own soul. And to this Charos sometimes gives consent, for he knows that he will win. So they make their way to the ‘marble-paved threshing-floor,’ the arena of all manly pursuits; and there the man perchance leaps forty cubits, yet Charos surpasses him by five; or they wrestle together from morn till eve, but at the last bout Charos is victor. One hero indeed is known to fame, whose exploits make him the Heracles of modern Greece, Digenes the Cyprian, who wrestled with Charos for three nights and days and was not vanquished. But then ‘there came a voice from God and from the Archangels, “Charos, I sent thee not to engage in wrestlings, but that thou should’st carry off souls for me[198].”’ And at that rebuke Charos transformed himself into an eagle and alighted on the hero’s head and plucked out his soul.