The Suppliants (860-890)

Dost see yon corpse by Zeus’s bolt transfixed? That is Capaneus; though he had ample wealth, yet was he the last to boast of his prosperity; nor would he ever vaunt himself above a poorer neighbour, but shunned the man whose sumptuous board had puffed him up too high

and made him scorn mere competence, for he held that virtue lies not in greedy gluttony, but that moderate means suffice. True friend was he, alike to present or to absent friends the same; of such the number is not great. His was a guileless character,

a courteous address, that left no promise unperformed either towards his own household or his fellow-citizens. The next I name is Eteocles; a master he of other kinds of excellence; young, nor richly dowered with store, yet high in honour in the Argive land.

And though his friends oft offered gifts of gold, he would not have it in his house, to make his character its slave by taking wealth’s yoke upon him. Not his city, but those that sinned against her did he hate, for a city is no wise to be blamed

if it get an evil name by reason of an evil governor.

Such another was Hippomedon, third of all this band; from his very boyhood he refrained from turning towards the allurements of the Muses, to lead a life of ease; his home was in the fields, and gladly would he school his nature to hardships

with a view to manliness, aye hasting to the chase, rejoicing in his steeds or straining of his bow, because he would make himself of use unto his state. Next behold the huntress Atalanta’s son, Parthenopaeus, a youth of peerless beauty;

from Arcady he came even to the streams of Inachus, and in Argos spent his boyhood. There, when he grew to man’s estate, first, as is the duty of strangers settled in another land, he showed no pique or jealousy against the state, became no quibbler, chiefest source of annoyance