Metamorphoses

“ Thus he said; and by chance having got a tree, thrown down by the power of the boisterous South wind, he threw it against the powerful foe: and he was an example to the rest ; and in a short time, Othrys, thou wast bare of trees, and Pelion had no shades. Overwhelmed by this huge heap, Cæneus swelters beneath the weight of the trees, and bears on his brawny shoulders the piled-up oaks. But after the load has increased upon his face and his head, and his breath has no air to draw; at one moment he faints, at another he endeavours, in vain, to raise himself into the open air, and to throw off the wood cast upon him : and sometimes he moves it. Just as lo! we see, if lofty Ida is convulsed with earthquakes. The event is doubtful. Some gave out that his body was hurled to roomy Tartarus by the weight of the wood. The son of Ampycus denied this, and saw go forth into the liquid air, from amid the pile, a bird with tawny wings; which then was beheld by me for the first time, then, too , for the last. When Mopsus saw it with gentle flight surveying his camp, and making a noise around it with a vast clamour, following him both with his eyes and his feelings, he said, ‘Hail! thou glory of the Lapithæan race, once the greatest of men, but now the only bird of thy kind , Cæneus.’ This thing was credited from its assertor. Grief added resentment, and we bore it with disgust, that one was overpowered by foes so many. Nor did we cease to exercise our weapons, in shedding their blood, before a part of them was put to death, and flight and the night dispersed the rest.”

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 12

Book 12, Line 24ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-12-24