Metamorphoses. Ovid
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in a chill of horror. Soon as they, falling down, have touched the top of their backs, the horses range at large: and no one restraining them, they go through the air of an unknown region; and where their fury drives them thither, without check, do they hurry along, and they rush on to the stars fixed in the sky, and drag the chariot through pathless places. One while they are mounting aloft, and now they are borne through steep places, and along headlong paths in a tract nearer to the earth.
The Moon, too, wonders that her brother’s horses run lower than her own, and the scorched clouds send forth smoke. As each region is most elevated, it is caught by the flames, and cleft, it makes vast chasms, and becomes dry, its moisture being carried away. The grass grows pale; the trees, with their foliage, are burnt up; and the dry standing corn affords fuel for its own destruction. But I am complaining of trifling ills. Great cities perish, together with their fortifications, and the flames turn whole nations, with their populations, into ashes; woods, together with mountains, are on fire. Athos10 burns, and the Cilician Taurus,11 and Tmolus,12 and Œta,13 and Ida,14 now dry, but once most famed for its springs; and Helicon,15 the resort of the Virgin Muses, and Hæmus,16 not yet called Œagrian. Ætna17 burns intensely with redoubled flames, and Parnassus, with its two summits, and Eryx,18 and Cynthus,19 and Othrys, and Rhodope,20 at length to be despoiled of its snows, and Mimas,21 and Dindyma,22 and Mycale,23 and Cithæron,24 created for the performance of sacred rites. Nor does its cold avail even Scythia; Caucasus25 is on fire, and Ossa with Pindus, and Olympus, greater than them both, and the lofty Alps,26 and the cloud-bearing Apennines.27
Then, indeed, Phaëton beholds the world set on fire on all sides, and he cannot endure heat so great, and he inhales with his mouth scorching air, as though from a deep furnace, and perceives his own chariot to be on fire. And neither is he able now to bear the ashes and the emitted embers; and, on every side, he is involved in heated smoke. Covered with a pitchy darkness, he knows not whither he is going, nor where he is, and is hurried away at the pleasure of the winged steeds. They believe that it was then that the nations of the Æthiopians contracted their black hue,28 the blood being attracted into the surface of the body. Then was Libya29 made dry by the heat, the moisture being carried off; then, with dishevelled hair, the Nymphs lamented the springs and the lakes. Bœotia bewails Dirce,30 Argos Amymone,31 and Ephyre32 the waters of Pirene. Nor do rivers that have got banks distant in situation, remain secure; Tanais33 smokes in the midst of its waters, and the aged Peneus, and Teuthrantian Caïcus,34 and rapid Ismenus,35 with Phocean Erymanthus,36 and Xanthus37 again to burn, and yellow Lycormas,38 and Mæander,39 which sports with winding streams, and the Mygdonian Melas,40 and the Tænarian Eurotas.41 The Babylonian Euphrates, too, was on fire, Orontes42 was in flames, and the swift Thermodon43 and Ganges,44 and Phasis,45 and Ister.46 Alpheus47 boils; the banks of Spercheus burn; and the gold which Tagus48 carries with its stream, melts in the flames. The river birds too, which made famous the Mæonian49 banks of the river with their song, grew hot in the middle of Caÿster. The Nile, affrighted, fled to the remotest parts of the earth, and concealed his head, which still lies hid; his seven last mouths are empty, become seven mere channels, without any stream. The same fate dries up the Ismarian rivers, Hebrus together with Strymon,50 and the Hesperian51 streams, the Rhine, and the Rhone, and the Po, and the Tiber, to which was promised the sovereignty of the world.
All the ground bursts asunder; and through the chinks, the light penetrates into Tartarus, and startles the Infernal King with his spouse. The Ocean too, is contracted, and that which lately was sea, is a surface of parched sand; and the mountains which the deep sea had covered, start up and increase the number of the scattered Cyclades.52 The fishes sink to the bottom, and the crooked Dolphins do not care to raise themselves on the surface into the air, as usual. The bodies of sea calves float lifeless on their backs, on the top of the water. The story, too, is, that even Nereus himself, and Doris and their daughters, lay hid in the heated caverns. Three times had Neptune ventured, with a stern countenance, to thrust his arms out of the water; three times he was unable to endure the scorching heat of the air. However, the genial Earth, as she was surrounded with sea, amid the waters of the main, and the springs, dried up on every side, which had hidden themselves in the bowels of their cavernous parent, burnt-up, lifted up her all-productive face53 as far as her neck, and placed her hands to her forehead, and shaking all things with a vast trembling, she sank down a little, and retired below the spot where she is wont to be, and thus she spoke, with a parched voice: “O sovereign of the Gods, if thou approvest of this, if I have deserved it, why do thy lightnings linger? Let me, if doomed to perish by the force of fire, perish by thy flames; and alleviate my misfortune, by being the author of it. With difficulty, indeed, do I open my mouth for these very words;” (the vapor had oppressed her utterance.) “Behold my scorched hair, and such a quantity of ashes over my eyes, so much too, over my features. And dost thou give this as my recompense? this, as the reward of my fertility and of my duty, in that I endure wounds from the crooked plough and harrows, and am harassed all the year through? In that I supply green leaves