Ah, the pity of fate’s omen when it makes a just man associate with the irreverent! In all things, nothing is more evilthan evil partnership. Its fruit should not be gathered in: the field of recklessness yields a harvest of death. For it may be that a pious man, embarked shipboard with sailors hot for some crime, perishes along with the sort of men hated by the gods;or, a man, though upright himself, when among fellow-citizens who hate all strangers and neglect the gods, may fall undeserving into the same trap as they, and be subdued, struck by the scourge of God that strikes all alike. Just so the seer, Oecles’ son,although a moderate, just, noble, reverent man and a great prophet, mixes with impious, rash-talking men against his own judgment, men stretching out in a procession that is long to retrace,The march of the army from distant Argos is compared to a lengthened-out procession. and, if it is Zeus’s will, he will be be dragged down in ruin along with them.