Part 7 (2/2)
Soon as the steeds have perceived this, they rush on, and leave the beaten track, and run not in the order in which {they did} before. He himself becomes alarmed; and knows not which way to turn the reins entrusted {to him}, nor does he know where the way is, nor, if he did know, could he control them. Then, for the first time, did the cold Triones grow warm with sunbeams, and attempt, in vain, to be dipped in the sea that was forbidden {to them}. And the Serpent which is situate next to the icy pole, being before torpid with cold, and formidable to no one, grew warm, and regained new rage from the heat. They say, too,[9] that thou, Bootes, being disturbed, took to flight; although thou wast {but} slow, and thy wain impeded thee. But when, from the height of the skies, the unhappy Phaeton looked down upon the earth, lying far, very far beneath, he grew pale, and his knees shook with a sudden terror; and in a light so great, darkness overspread his eyes.
And now he could wish that he had never touched the horses of his father; and now he is sorry that he knew his descent, and that he prevailed in his request; now desiring to be called the son of Merops.
He is borne along, just as a s.h.i.+p driven by the furious Boreas, to which its pilot has given up the overpowered helm, {and} which he has resigned to the G.o.ds and {the effect of} his supplications. What can he do? much of heaven is left behind his back; still more is before his eyes. Either {s.p.a.ce} he measures in his mind; and at one moment he is looking forward to the West, which it is not allowed him by fate to reach; {and} sometimes he looks back upon the East. Ignorant what to do, he is stupefied; and he neither lets go the reins, nor is he able to retain them; nor does he know the names of the horses. In his fright, too, he sees strange objects scattered everywhere in various parts of the heavens, and the forms of huge wild beasts. There is a spot where the Scorpion bends his arms into two curves, and with his tail and claws bending on either side, he extends his limbs through the s.p.a.ce of two signs {of the Zodiac}. As soon as the youth beheld him wet with the sweat of black venom, and threatening wounds with the barbed point {of his tail}, bereft of sense, he let go the reins, 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 gra.s.s 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. Athos[10] burns, and the Cilician Taurus,[11] and Tmolus,[12] and ta,[13] and Ida,[14] now dry, {but} once most famed for its springs; and Helicon,[15] the resort of the Virgin {Muses}, and Haemus,[16] not yet {called} agrian. aetna[17] burns intensely with redoubled flames, and Parna.s.sus, 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 Cithaeron,[24] created for {the performance of} sacred rites. Nor does its cold avail {even} Scythia; Caucasus[25] 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, Phaeton 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 aethiopians contracted their black hue,[28] the blood being attracted into the surface of the body.
Then was Libya[29] made dry by the heat, the moisture being carried off; then, with dishevelled hair, the Nymphs lamented the springs and the lakes. Botia bewails Dirce,[30] Argos Amymone,[31] and Ephyre[32] the waters of Pirene. Nor do rivers that have got banks distant in situation, remain {secure}; Tanais[33] smokes in the midst of its waters, and the aged Peneus, and Teuthrantian Cacus,[34] and rapid Ismenus,[35] with Phocean Erymanthus,[36] and Xanthus[37] again to burn, and yellow Lycormas,[38] and Maeander,[39] which sports with winding streams, and the Mygdonian Melas,[40] and the Taenarian Eurotas.[41] The Babylonian Euphrates, too, was on fire, Orontes[42] was in flames, and the swift Thermodon[43] and Ganges,[44] and Phasis,[45] and Ister.[46]
Alpheus[47] boils; the banks of Spercheus burn; and the gold which Tagus[48] carries with its stream, melts in the flames. The river birds too, which made famous the Maeonian[49] banks {of the river} with their song, grew hot in the middle of Caster. 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 Hesperian[51]
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 c.h.i.n.ks, 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 face[53] 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 G.o.ds, 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 quant.i.ty 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 hara.s.sed all the year through? In that I supply green leaves for the cattle, and corn, a wholesome food for mankind, and frankincense for yourselves? But still, suppose that I am deserving of destruction, why have the waves {deserved this}? Why has thy brother deserved it? Why do the seas, delivered to him by lot, decrease, and why do they recede still further from the sky? But if regard for neither thy brother nor for myself influences thee, still have consideration for thy own skies; look around, on either side, {how} each pole is smoking; if the fire shall injure them, thy palace will fall in ruins. See! Atlas[54] himself is struggling, and hardly can he bear the glowing heavens on his shoulders. If the sea, if the earth perishes, if the palace of heaven, we are thrown[55] into the confused state of ancient chaos. Save it from the flames, if aught still survives, and provide for the preservation of the universe.”
Thus spoke the Earth; nor, indeed, could she any longer endure the vapor, nor say more; and she withdrew her face within herself, and the caverns neighboring to the shades below.
[Footnote 1: _aegeon._--Ver. 10. Homer makes him to be the same with Briareus. According to another account, which Ovid here follows, he was a sea G.o.d, the son of Ocea.n.u.s and Terra.]
[Footnote 2: _Doris._--Ver. 11. She was the daughter of Ocea.n.u.s, the wife of Nereus, and the mother of the fifty Nereids.]
[Footnote 3: _Tethys._--Ver. 69. She was the daughter of Clus and Terra, and the wife of Ocea.n.u.s. Her name is here used to signify the ocean itself.]
[Footnote 4: _Are carried round._--Ver. 70. Clarke thus renders this line,--”Add, too, that the heaven was whisked round with a continual rolling.”]
[Footnote 5: _Wild beasts._--Ver. 78. The signs of the Zodiac.]
[Footnote 6: _Haemonian._--Ver. 81. Or Thessalian. He here alludes to the Thessalian Chiron, the Centaur, who, according to Ovid and other writers, was placed in the Zodiac as the Constellation Sagittarius: while others say that Crotus, or Croto, the son of Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses, was thus honored.]
[Footnote 7: _Through the five direct circles._--Ver. 129. There is some obscurity in this pa.s.sage, arising from the mode of expression. Phbus here counsels Phaeton what track to follow, and tells him to pursue his way by an oblique path, and not directly in the plane of the equator. This last is what he calls 'directos via quinque per arcus.' These five arcs, or circles, are the five parallel circles by which astronomers distinguish the heavens, namely, the two polar circles, the two tropics, and the equinoctial. The latter runs exactly in the middle, between the other two circles, so that the expression must be understood to mean, 'pursue not your way directly through that circle which is the middlemost of the five, but observe the track that cuts it obliquely.']
[Footnote 8: _The chariot give bounds._--Ver. 165-6. Clarke thus renders these lines.--'Thus does the chariot give jumps into the air without its usual weight, and is kicked up on high, and is like one empty.']
[Footnote 9: _They say, too._--Ver. 176-7. The following is Clarke's translation of these two lines,--'They say, too, that you, Bootes, scowered off in a mighty bustle, although you were but slow, and thy cart hindered thee.']
[Footnote 10: _Athos._--Ver. 217. Athos (now Monte Santo) was a mountain of Macedonia, so lofty that its shadow was said to extend even to the Isle of Lemnos, which was eighty-seven miles distant.]
[Footnote 11: _Taurus._--Ver. 217. This was an immense mountain range which ran through the middle of Cilicia, in Asia Minor.]
[Footnote 12: _Tmolus._--Ver. 217. Tmolus (now Bozdaz) was a mountain of Lydia, famed for its wines and saffron. Pactolus, a stream with sands reputed to be golden, took its rise there.]
[Footnote 13: _ta._--Ver. 217. This was a mountain chain, which divided Thessaly from Doris and Phocis; famed for the death of Hercules on one of its ridges.]
[Footnote 14: _Ida._--Ver. 218. There were two mountains of the name of Ide, or Ida; one in Crete, the other near Troy. The latter is here referred to, as being famed for its springs.]
[Footnote 15: _Helicon._--Ver. 219. This was a mountain of Botia, sacred to the Virgin Muses.]
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