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Lichas

Lichas
No. Most of that time he was held in Lydia
as he himself declares, not free, but sold
250to servitude. (This word must not offend you,
lady: Zeus was the author of the deed.)
He says he spent a year of thraldom there
slaving for the barbarian Omphale.
     So deeply was he injured by this shame,
he placed himself on oath, and swore to vanquish
the perpetrator of his suffering
and force him, with his wife and child, to slavery.
His word was kept. When he had purged himself
he raised a foreign army and advanced
260on Eurytus's city, for he said
that man alone had brought this grief upon him.
He claimed that when he first came to his house
as an old comrade, Eurytus assailed him
with many words born of an evil mind,
and told him that despite those mighty arrows
his own sons could surpass him with the bow;
yes, taunted him that he had sunk to being
a free man's slave; and then, when drunk with wine,
he cast him out. This maddened Heracles,

load focus Notes (Sir Richard C. Jebb, 1902)
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