life as well, and thus quenched fire with blasting fire. The maddened horses leap apart, wrench their necks from the yoke, and break away from the parted reins. Here lie the reins, there the axle torn from the pole; in another place the spokes of the broken wheels, and fragments of the wrecked chariot are scattered far and wide.
But Phaëthon, fire ravaging his ruddy hair, is hurled headlong and falls with a long trail through the air; as sometimes a star from the clear heavens, although it does not fall, still seems to fall. Him far from his native land, in another quarter of the globe, Eridanus receives and bathes his steaming face. The Naiads in that western land consign his body, still smoking with the flames of that forked bolt, to the tomb and carve this epitaph upon his stone:
HERE PHAËTHON LIES: IN PHOEBUS' CAR HE FARED,
AND THOUGH HE GREATLY FAILED, MORE GREATLY DARED.
The wretched father, sick with grief, hid his face; and, if we are to believe report, one whole day went without the sun. But the burning world gave light, and so even in that disaster was there some service. But Clymene, after she had spoken whatever could be spoken in such woe, melancholy and distraught and tearing her breast, wandered over the whole earth, seeking first his lifeless limbs, then his bones; his bones at last she found, but buried on a river-bank in a foreign land. Here she prostrates herself upon the tomb, drenches the dear name carved in the marble with her tears, and fondles it against her breast. The Heliades, her daughters, join in her lamentation, and pour out their tears in useless tribute to the dead. With bruising hands beating
