Then went with them Lykus, and gifts in their galley to bear gave he

Without number, and sent his son, their voyaging comrade to be.

There did the doom fate-spoken descend upon Abas’ son,

Idmon, in soothsaying peerless: but safety for him was there none

In his soothsaying lore, for that now must he die by the doom decreed.

For it chanced that there lay in a reedy river’s water-mead,

Cooling his flanks and his mighty belly wallowed in mire,

A wild boar gleaming-tusked, so baleful a monster and dire {820}

That of him were the meadow-haunting Nymphs themselves adread.

No man knew his lair; alone in the fen wide-stretching he fed.