Pythonic art. These surpassed the former in briskness of mental parts as
much as they fell behind them in bodily condition. Constant wars for
the supremacy were waged between these and the giants; till at last the
sorcerers prevailed, subdued the tribe of giants by arms, and acquired
not merely the privilege of ruling, but also the repute of being divine.
Both of these kinds had extreme skill in deluding the eyesight,
knowing how to obscure their own faces and those of others with divers
semblances, and to darken the true aspects of things with beguiling
shapes. But the third kind of men, springing from the natural union of
the first two, did not answer to the nature of their parents either in
bodily size or in practice of magic arts; yet these gained credit for
divinity with minds that were befooled by their jugglings.

Nor must we marvel if, tempted by the prodigious miracles of these folk,
the barbaric world fell to worshipping a false religion, when others
like unto these, who were mere mortals, but were reverenced with divine
honours, beguiled even the shrewdness of the Latins. I have touched on
these things lest, when I relate of sleights and marvels, I be checked
by the disbelief of the reader. Now I will leave these matters and
return to my theme.

Swipdag, now that he had slain Gram, was enriched with the realms of
Denmark and Sweden; and because of the frequent importunities of his
wife he brought back from banishment her brother Guthorm, upon his
promising tribute, and made him ruler of the Danes. But Hadding
preferred to avenge his father rather than take a boon from his foe.

This man's nature so waxed and throve that in the early season of
his youth he was granted the prime of manhood. Leaving the pursuit of
pleasure, he was constantly zealous in warlike exercises; remembering