And of Homer’s words take this to ponder in thy heart:  Of a good messenger, he saith, cometh great honour to every deed. Even to the Muse is right messengership a gain.  Now good cause have Kyrene and the glorious house of Battos to know the righteous mind of Demophilos.  For he was a boy with boys, yet in counsels an old man of a hundred years:  and the evil tongue he robbeth of its loud voice, and hath learnt to abhor the insolent, neither will he make strife against the good, nor tarry when he hath a deed in hand.  For a brief span hath opportunity for men, but of him it is known surely when it cometh, and he waiteth thereon a servant but no slave.

Now this they say is of all griefs the sorest, that one knowing good should of necessity abide without lot therein.  Yea thus doth Atlas struggle now against the burden of the firmament, far from his native land and his possessions.  Yet the Titans were set free by immortal Zeus.  As time runneth on the breeze abateth and there are shiftings of the sails.  And he hath hope that when he shall have endured to the end his grievous plague he shall see once more his home, and at Apollo’s fountain[19] joining in the feast give his soul to rejoice in her youth, and amid citizens who love his art, playing on his carven lute, shall enter upon peace, hurting and hurt of none.  Then shall he tell how fair a fountain of immortal verse he made to flow for Arkesilas, when of late he was the guest of Thebes.

[Footnote 1:  Libya.  Epaphos was son of Zeus by Io.]

[Footnote 2:  This incident happened during the wanderings of the Argonauts on their return with the Golden Fleece from Kolchis to Iolkos.]

[Footnote 3:  Thera.]

[Footnote 4:  Euphemos.]

[Footnote 5:  At Tainaros there was a cave supposed to be a mouth of Hades.]

[Footnote 6:  Of Libya.]

[Footnote 7:  The purport of this is:  If Euphemos had taken the clod safely home to Tainaros in Lakonia, then his great-grandsons with emigrants from other Peloponnesian powers would have planted a colony in Libya.  But since the clod had fallen into the sea and would be washed up on the shore of the island of Thera, it was necessary that Euphemos’ descendants should first colonize Thera, and then, but not till the seventeenth generation, proceed, under Battos, to found the colony of Kyrene in Libya.]

[Footnote 8:  Battos.]

[Footnote 9:  The priestess.]

[Footnote 10:  The epithet [Greek:  polias] is impossible to explain satisfactorily.  It has been suggested to me by Professor S.H.  Butcher, that [Greek:  chamaigenaes] may have been equivalent to [Greek:  gaegenaes] and that Pelias may thus mean, half ironically, to imply that Jason’s stature, garb and mien, as well as his mysteriously sudden appearance, argue him a son of one of the ancient giants who had been seen of old among men.]

[Footnote 11:  The Kentaur Cheiron.]