United States or Peru ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


It may safely be said that no series of stories introduced in the form of translations from other languages could ever thus have filtered down into the lowest strata of society, and thence have sprung up again, like Antaios, with greater energy and heightened beauty."

Me anywise to slake my thirst for song the ancient glory of thy forefathers summoneth to pay its due and rouse it yet again to tell how that for love of a Libyan woman there went up suitors to the city of Irasa to woo Antaios' lovely-haired daughter of great renown; whom many chiefs of men, her kinsmen, sought to wed, and many strangers also; for the beauty of her was marvellous, and they were fain to cull the fruit whereto her gold-crowned youth had bloomed.

And verily once to the house of Antaios came a man to wrestle against him, of short stature but of unbending soul, from Kadmean Thebes even unto corn-bearing Libya, that he might cause him to cease from roofing Poseidon's temple with the skulls of strangers even the son of Alkmene, he who ascended up to Olympus, after that he had searched out the surface of the whole earth and of the crag-walled hoary sea, and had made safe way for the sailing of ships.

The celebrity of the clan in the games seems to have been eclipsed for some time, but Melissos revived it by a chariot-victory at Nemea and this pankration-victory at the Isthmus, won in spite of his small stature which might have seemed to place him at a disadvantage. The ode compares his match against his antagonists with that of Herakles against the African giant Antaios.