_Battus and Corydon_, _two rustic fellows_, _meeting in a glade_, _gossip about their neighbour_, _Aegon_, _who has gone to try his fortune at the Olympic games_. _After some random banter_, _the talk turns on the death of Amaryllis_, _and the grief of Battus is disturbed by the roaming of his cattle_. _Corydon removes a thorn that has run into his friend’s foot_, _and the conversation comes back to matters of rural scandal_. _The scene is in Southern Italy_. * * * * * _Battus_. Tell me, Corydon, whose kine are these,—the cattle of Philondas? _Corydon_. Nay, they are Aegon’s, he gave me them to pasture. _Battus_. Dost thou ever find a way to milk them all, on the sly, just before evening? _Corydon_. No chance of that, for the old man puts the calves beneath their dams, and keeps watch on me. _Battus_. But the neatherd himself,—to what land has he passed out of sight? _Corydon_. Hast thou not heard? Milon went and carried him off to the Alpheus. _Battus_. And when, pray, did _he_ ever set eyes on the wrestlers’ oil? _Corydon_. They say he is a match for Heracles, in strength and hardihood. _Battus_. And I, so mother says, am a better man than Polydeuces. _Corydon_. Well, off he has gone, with a shovel, and with twenty sheep from his flock here. {24} _Battus_. Milo, thou’lt see, will soon be coaxing the wolves to rave! _Corydon_. But Aegon’s heifers here are lowing pitifully, and miss their master. _Battus_. Yes, wretched beasts that they are, how false a neatherd was theirs! _Corydon_. Wretched enough in truth, and they have no more care to pasture. _Battus_. Nothing is left, now, of that heifer, look you, bones, that’s all. She does not live on dewdrops, does she, like the grasshopper? _Corydon_. No, by Earth, for sometimes I take her to graze by the banks of Aesarus, fair handfuls of fresh grass I give her too, and otherwhiles she wantons in the deep shade round Latymnus. _Battus_. How lean is the red bull too! May the sons of Lampriades, the burghers to wit, get such another for their sacrifice to Hera, for the township is an ill neighbour. _Corydon_. And yet that bull is driven to the mere’s mouth, and to the meadows of Physcus, and to the Neaethus, where all fair herbs bloom, red goat-wort, and endive, and fragrant bees-wort. _Battus_. Ah, wretched Aegon, thy very kine will go to Hades, while thou too art in love with a luckless victory, and thy pipe is flecked with mildew, the pipe that once thou madest for thyself!