Metamorphoses

A wood, thick with trees, which no age has cut down, rises from a plain, and looks down upon the fields below. After the heroes are come there, some extend the nets; some take the couples off the dogs, some follow close the traces of his feet, and are anxious to discover their own danger. There is a hollow channel, along which rivulets of rain water are wont to discharge themselves. The bending willows cover the lower parts of the cavity, and smooth sedges, and marshy rushes, and oziers, and thin reeds with their long stalks. Aroused from this spot, the boar rushes violently into the midst of the enemy, like lightning darted from the bursting clouds. In his onset the grove is laid level, and the wood, borne down, makes a crashing noise. The young men raise a shout, and with strong right hands hold their weapons extended before them, brandished with their broad points . Onward he rushes, and disperses the dogs, as any one of them opposes his career; and scatters them, as they bark at him , with sidelong wounds. The spear that was first hurled by the arm of Echion, was unavailing, and made a slight incision in the trunk of a maple tree. The next, if it had not employed too much of the strength of him who threw it, seemed as if it would stick in the back it was aimed at: it went beyond. The owner of the weapon was the Pagasæan Jason. “Phœbus,” said the son of Ampycus, “if I have worshipped thee, and if I do worship thee, grant me the favour to reach what is now aimed at, with unerring weapon.” The God consented to his prayer, so far as he could. The boar was struck by him, but without a wound; Diana took the steel head from off the flying weapon; the shaft reached him without the point. The rage of the monster was aroused, and not less violently was he inflamed than the lightnings; light darted from his eyes, and flame was breathed from his breast. As the stone flies, launched by the tightened rope, when it is aimed at either walls, or towers filled with soldiers, with the like unerring onset is the destroying boar borne on among the youths, and lays upon the ground Eupalamus and Pelagon, who guard the right wing. Thus prostrate, their companions bear them off. But Enæsimus, the son of Hippocoön, does not escape a deadly wound. The sinews of his knee, cut by the boar , fail him as he trembles, and prepares to turn his back.

MetamorphosesOvidHenry T. RileyEnglishVerse permalinkRead in Book 8

Book 8, Line 17ProseID metamorphoses-riley-en-prose-8-17