The dire example ran through all the field, Till heaps of brothers were by brothers kill’d; The furrows swam in blood, and only five Of all the vast increase were left alive. Echion one, at Pallas’s command Let fall the guiltless weapon from his hand, And with the rest a peaceful treaty makes, Whom Cadmus as his friends and partners takes. So founds a city on the promised earth, And gives his new Boeotian empire birth.

Here Cadmus reign’d; and now one would have guess’d The royal founder in his exile bless’d: Long did he live within his new abodes, Allied by marriage to the deathless gods; And in a fruitful wife’s embraces old, A long increase of children’s children told: But no frail man, however great or high, Can be concluded bless’d before he die.