“There too he put a princely demesne, wherein hired labourers were reaping with sharp sickles in their hands, some swathes were falling thick and fast to earth along the furrow, and the binders were tying others in bands. There stood the three binders close at hand, and behind ran the gleaner-boys carrying the corn in armfuls and busy in attendance. A king with his sceptre stood in silence among them on the furrow rejoicing in his heart. Some way off heralds were laying a feast under an oak-tree. They had sacrificed a great ox and were busy with it, while the women were scattering white barley meal in plenty for the harvesters’ supper.
[Illustration: Marriage Procession. From a Pyxis in the British Museum]
“On it also he wrought a vineyard heavy-laden with grapes, beautifully wrought in gold. Up above were the black bunches, and the vineyard was set with silver poles throughout; round it he drove a trench of _kuanos_ and a wall of tin; a single causeway led to it whereby the pickers walked when they gathered in the vintage. Maids and merry bachelors were carrying the honey-sweet fruit in woven baskets, and in the midst a boy played a lovely tune on a high-pitched lyre, singing thereto with his dainty voice a sweet dirge of Linus, while the rest kept time with stamping of feet and leaping and song and shrieking.
“On it he made a herd of straight-horned oxen. The cows were fashioned of gold and tin; lowing they passed from the midden to the pasture by a plashing river by a shivering reed-bed. Four cowherds of gold marched along with the kine, and nine white-footed dogs followed them. But among the foremost kine two dreadful lions were holding a deep-voiced bull. He was being dragged away bellowing loudly, but the dogs and the hinds were after him. The two lions had torn the hide of the great bull, and were greedily devouring the entrails and the dark blood, while the cowherds vainly spurred on the swift hounds. But they, forsooth, instead of biting the lions, kept turning back; they would run up close to bark at them and then flee away.
“On it the far-famed Cripple made a sheepfold in a fair valley, a big fold of white sheep, and steadings and huts and roofed-in pens.