the invaders single-handed. The principal part of the Táin describes the astounding feats of valour performed by him, and it forms the Irish counterpart to the Greek story of Heracles defending the gods of Olympus by despatching their foes for them with his invincible arrows.
Conchobar, though he showed himself capable on occasions of being, like Zeus, unscrupulous and cruel, is described as an exemplary king of the heroic period. His palace was considered a model of magnificence and comfort—a view, however, to be accepted in a strictly relative sense, as may be inferred from the fact that the sleeping arrangements for the king and his adult sister Dechtere disclose the most awkward feature of modern over-crowding.[1] The king's own life at home shaped itself into a routine which divided the day-time into three parts;[2] and his administration of his kingdom is treated as a pattern of what kingly rule should be. He is even represented as a reformer of the administration of justice, in that he had put an end to the exclusive right of the poet-seers to give judgment. The chief seer of Ulster had died, so goes the story,[3] and the succession to his office was contested by his son and an older man of the same profession: the two argued their claims at great length with much eloquence, and even settled the case to their own satisfaction; but the king and his nobles understood naught of their abstruse and obscure language; so that when it was over, the former determined, with a pardonable weakness for what he
