[12]
Bias wooed Pero, daughter of Neleus.1 But as there were many
suitors for his daughter's hand, Neleus said that he would give her to him who
should bring him the kine of Phylacus. These were in Phylace, and they were guarded by a dog which neither man nor beast could
come near. Unable to steal these kine, Bias invited his brother to help him. Melampus
promised to do so, and foretold that he should be detected in the act of stealing them,
and that he should get the kine after being kept in bondage for a year. After making this
promise he repaired to Phylace and, just as
he had foretold, he was detected in the theft and kept a prisoner in a cell. When the year
was nearly up, he heard the worms in the hidden part of the roof, one of them asking how
much of the beam had been already gnawed through, and others answering that very little of
it was left. At once he bade them transfer him to another cell, and not long after that
had been done the cell fell in. Phylacus marvelled, and perceiving that he was an
excellent soothsayer, he released him and invited him to say how his son Iphiclus might
get children. Melampus promised to tell him, provided he got the kine. And having
sacrificed two bulls and cut them in pieces he summoned the birds; and when a vulture
came, he learned from it that once, when Phylacus was gelding rams, he laid down the
knife, still bloody, beside Iphiclus, and that when the child was frightened and ran away,
he stuck the knife on the sacred oak,2 and the bark encompassed the knife and hid it. He said, therefore, that if the knife
were found, and he scraped off the rust, and gave it to Iphiclus to drink for ten days, he
would beget a son. Having learned these things from the vulture, Melampus found the knife,
scraped the rust, and gave it to Iphiclus for ten days to drink, and a son Podarces was
born to him.3 But he drove the kine to Pylus, and having
received the daughter of Neleus he gave her to his brother. For a time he continued to
dwell in Messene, but when Dionysus drove the
women of Argos mad, he healed them on condition
of receiving part of the kingdom, and settled down there with Bias.4
1 The following romantic tale of the wooing of Pero is told also by the Scholiast on Hom. Od. xi.287. It is repeated also in substantially the same form by Eustathius on Hom. Od. 11.292, p. 1685. Compare Scholiast on Theocritus iii.43; Scholiast on Ap. Rhod., Argon. i.118; Prop. ii.3.51ff. A summary of the story, shorn of its miraculous elements, is given by Homer （Hom. Od. 11.287-297, Hom. Od. 15.225-238） and Paus. 4.36.3）. See Frazer's Appendix to Apollodorus, “Melampus and the kine of Phylacus.”
2 According to the Scholiast on Hom. Od. xi.287, 290 and Eustathius on Hom. Od. xi.292, p. 1685, the tree was not an oak but a wild pear-tree （ἄχερδος）.
3 Compare Apollod. E.3.20, with the note.
4 See below, Apollod. 2.2.2; Diod. 2.68.4; Paus. 2.18.4.
Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation by Sir James George Frazer, F.B.A., F.R.S. in 2 Volumes. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1921. Includes Frazer's notes.
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