For 'twas told of yore how forced by pestilence cruel,
Eke as a blood rite due for th' Androgéonian murthur,
Many a chosen youth and the bloom of damsels unmarried
Food for the Minotaur, Cecropia was wont to befurnish.
80
Seeing his narrow walls in such wise vexed with evils,
Theseus of freest will for dear-loved Athens his body
Offered a victim so that no more to Crete be deported
Lives by Cecropia doomed to burials burying nowise;
Then with a swifty ship and soft breathed breezes a-stirring,