when suddenly the noise of thick trampling
feet came to my ear, and my father looks onward through
the darkness. ‘Son, son,’ he cries, ‘fly: they are upon
us. I distinguish the flashing of their shields and the 25
gleam of their steel.’ In this alarm some unfriendly
power perplexed and took away my judgment. For,
while I was tracking places where no track was, and
swerving from the wonted line of road, woe is me! destiny
tore from me my wife Creusa. Whether she stopped, 30
or strayed from the road, or sat down fatigued, I never