Behold in me a herald come from lovely Salamis,1
With a song in ordered verse instead of a harangue.
[2]
and a report was given out to the city by his family that he showed signs of madness. He then secretly composed some elegiac verses, and after rehearsing them so that he could say them by rote, he sallied out into the market-place of a sudden, with a cap upon his head. After a large crowd had collected there, he got upon the herald's stone and recited the poem which begins:—
1 Only six more verses are preserved (Fragments 1-3, Bergk). They contain reproaches of the Athenians for abandoning Salamis, and an exhortation to go and fight for it.
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