Racine: Phaedra

THE KNIGHTS 167
Gallantly that steer.
When the squadron sallies.
With wages in arrear.
List, O list
Listen and assist,
Thy Chorus here
Mighty Saturn's son
The support of Phormion,"
In his victories of late ;
To the fair Athenian State
More propitious far,
Than all the gods that are.
In the present war.
Epirrhema.
Let us praise our famous fathers, let their glory be recorded
On Minerva's mighty mantle '" consecrated and embroidered.
That with many a naval action and with infantry by land,
Still contending, never ending, strove for empire and
command.
When they met the foe, disdaining to compute a poor
account
Of the number of their armies, of their muster and
amount
But whene'er at wrestling matches^^ they were worsted
in the fray;
Wiped their shoulders from the dust, denied the fall,
and fought away.
Then the generals^^ never claimed precedence, or a sep-
arate seat.
Like the present mighty captains; or the public wine
or meat.
*» A most able and successful naval * Thirty-two years before this time,
commander. the Athenians, after being foiled in a
*> This mantle was an enormous piece great battle at Tanagra, risked another
of tapestry adorned with the actions and general action at Omophuta, in which
fiRurcs of the naval heroes and protect- they were victorious, only sixty-two
ing deities. It was renewed every year; days after the first!
and WIS carried to the temple, at the •* Tolmides and Myronides, who com-
Panathenaic procession, suspended and manded in the battles here alluded to.
displayed from a tall mast fixed on a
movable carriage.