Such is our counsel now, but if any of you can devise a better plan let her rise, for it was on this account that I summoned you hither." Thus she spake and sat upon her father's seat of stone, and then rose up her dear nurse Polyxo, for very age halting upon her withered feet, bowed over a staff, and she was eager to address them.

Near her were seated four virgins, unwedded, crowned with white hair.

And she stood in the midst of the assembly and from her bent back she feebly raised her neck and spake thus: "Gifts, as Hypsipyle herself wishes, let us send to the strangers, for it is better to give them.

But for you what device have ye to get profit of your life if the Thracian host fall upon us, or some other foe, as often happens among men, even as now this company is come unforeseen?
But if one of the blessed gods should turn this aside yet countless other woes worse than battle, remain behind, when the aged women die off and ye younger ones, without children, reach hateful old age.

How then will ye live, hapless ones?
Will your oxen of their own accord yoke themselves for the deep ploughlands and draw the earth-cleaving share through the fallow, and forthwith, as the year comes round, reap the harvest?
Assuredly, though the fates till now have shunned me in horror, I deem that in the coming year I shall put on the garment of earth, when I have received my meed of burial even so as is right, before the evil days draw near.