This chapter's epigraph is from a poem called "Adelinquent." It's a poem about a king who's about to die. The king's name is "Odyssey," and the poem's title refers to the fact that he's the son of a beast king. In other words, the king is the king of the beast. This is the first time that the king has spoken of his son, and it's clear that he doesn't want his son to die, so he'd rather die than give him the throne. But the king hasn't done anything for his son yet, so the poem ends with a soliloquy about how the king should have chosen his son. The eldest son, Diomedes, was not chosen by the king to be the heir to the throne, so his father is the only one who can inherit the throne