previous next
[590] Therein furthermore the famed god of the two strong arms cunningly wrought a dancing-floor like unto that which in wide Cnosus Daedalus fashioned of old for fair-tressed Ariadne. There were youths dancing and maidens of the price of many cattle, holding their hands upon the wrists one of the other. [595] Of these the maidens were clad in fine linen, while the youths wore well-woven tunics faintly glistening with oil; and the maidens had fair chaplets, and the youths had daggers of gold hanging from silver baldrics. Now would they run round with cunning feet [600] exceeding lightly, as when a potter sitteth by his wheel that is fitted between his hands and maketh trial of it whether it will run; and now again would they run in rows toward each other. And a great company stood around the lovely dance, taking joy therein; [605] and two tumblers whirled up and down through the midst of them as leaders in the dance. Therein he set also the great might of the river Oceanus, around the uttermost rim of the strongly-wrought shield. But when he had wrought the shield, great and sturdy, [610] then wrought he for him a corselet brighter than the blaze of fire, and he wrought for him a heavy helmet, fitted to his temples, a fair helm, richly-dight, and set thereon a crest of gold; and he wrought him greaves of pliant tin. But when the glorious god of the two strong arms had fashioned all the armour, [615] he took and laid it before the mother of Achilles. And like a falcon she sprang down from snowy Olympus, bearing the flashing armour from Hephaestus.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Notes (Allen Rogers Benner, 1903)
load focus English (Samuel Butler, 1898)
load focus Greek (1920)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide References (13 total)
  • Commentary references to this page (2):
    • Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Ajax, 699
    • W. Walter Merry, James Riddell, D. B. Monro, Commentary on the Odyssey (1886), 8.267
  • Cross-references to this page (5):
    • Andrew Stewart, One Hundred Greek Sculptors, Their Careers and Extant Works, The Archaic Period
    • A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), CHORUS
    • A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890), DAE´DALA
    • Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography (1854), CRETA or CRETE
    • Smith's Bio, Dae'dalus
  • Cross-references in notes to this page (1):
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (3):
  • Cross-references in text-specific dictionaries to this page (2):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: