Triptolemus, whom Ceres commissions to teach mankind husbandry, arrives at the court of Lyncus, King of Scythia, who determines to assassinate his guest during sleep—The fatal weapon is already raised, when the monarch is suddenly changed into a lynx.
The youth o’er Europe and o’er Asia drives, Till at the court of Lyncus he arrives: The tyrant Scythia’s barb’rous empire sway’d; And when he saw Triptolemus, he said: “How camest thou, stranger, to our court, and why? Thy country, and thy name?” The youth did thus reply: “Triptolemus my name; my country’s known O’er all the world, Minerva’s fav’rite town, Athens, the first of cities in renown: By land I neither walk’d, nor sail’d by sea, But hither through the ether made my way; By me the goddess who the fields befriends, These gifts, the greatest of all blessings, sends; The grain she gives if in your soil you sow, Thence wholesome food in golden crops shall grow.”