And now he had just left the hills of Ida for the deep, and, after with many a sacrifice upon the shore he had besought the favour of Aphrodite that attended him to aid his marriage, he was sailing the Hellespont over the broad back of the sea, when to him there appeared a token of his laborious toils.

The dark sea leapt aloft and girdled the heaven with a chain of dusky coils and straightway poured forth rain from the murky air, and the sea was turmoiled as the oarsmen rowed.

Then when he had passed Dardania and the land of Troy and, coasting along, left behind the mouth of the Ismarian lake, speedily, after the mountains of Thracian Pangaeon, he saw rising into view the tomb of Phyllis that loved her husband and the nine-circled course of her wandering path, where thou didst range and cry, Phyllis, waiting the safe return of thy husband Demophoon, when he should come back from the land of Athena.

Then across the rich land of the Haemonians there suddenly arose upon his eyes the flowery Achaean land, Phthia, feeder of men, and Mycene of wide streets. Then past the marshes where Erymanthus rises he marked Sparta of fair women, the dear city of the son of Atreus, lying on the banks of the Eurotas.

And hard by, established under a hill’s shady wood, he gazed upon her neighbour, lovely Therapne. Thence they had not far to sail, nor was the noise of the oars rowing in the calm sea heard for long, when they cast the hawsers of the ship upon the shores of a fair gulf and made them fast, even they whose business was the works of the sea.