Verse
Metamorphoses
Book 6, Line 10 by Henry T. Riley (English)
There was near the walls a plain, level, and extending far and wide, trampled continually by horses, where multitudes of wheels and hard hoofs had softened the clods placed beneath them. There, part of the seven sons of Amphion are mounting upon their spirited steeds, and press their backs, red with the Tyrian dye, and wield the reins heavy with gold; of these, Ismenus, who had formerly been the first burden of his mother, while he is guiding the steps of the horses in a perfect circle, and is curbing their foaming mouths, cries aloud, “Ah, wretched me!” and, pierced through the middle of his breast, bears a dart therein ; and the reins dropping from his dying hand, by degrees he falls on his side, over the horse’s shoulder. The next to him , Sipylus, on hearing the sound of a quiver in the air, gives rein to his horse ; as when the pilot, sensible of the storm approaching , flies on seeing a cloud, and unfurls the hanging sails on every side, that the light breeze may by no means escape them. He gives rein, I said ; while thus giving it, the unerring dart overtakes him, and an arrow sticks quivering in the top of his neck, and the bare steel protrudes from his throat. He, as he is bending forward, rolls over the neck, now let loose, and over the mane, and stains the ground with his warm blood. The unhappy Phædimus, and Tantalus, the heir to the name of his grandsire, when they had put an end to their wonted exercise of riding , had turned to the youthful exercises of the palæstra, glowing with oil; and now had they brought breast to breast, struggling in a close grapple, when an arrow, sped onward from the stretched bow, pierced them both, just as they were united together. At the same instant they groaned aloud, and together they laid their limbs on the ground, writhing with pain; together as they lay, for the last time, they rolled their eyeballs, and together they breathed forth their life.
MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 6
Book 6, Line 10ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-6-10