harangue. Put forth all your strength, for there is need. Open wide your doors, away with all restraining dykes, and give full rein to all your river steeds." So he commands, and the rivers return, uncurb their fountains' mouths, and in unbridled course go racing to the sea.
Neptune himself smites the earth with his trident. She trembles, and at the stroke flings open wide a way for the waters. The rivers overleap all bounds and flood the open plains. And not alone orchards, crops and herds, men and dwellings, but shrines as well and their sacred contents do they sweep away. If any house has stood firm, and has been able to resist that huge misfortune undestroyed, still do the overtopping waves cover its roof, and its towers lie hid beneath the flood. And now the sea and land have no distinction. All is sea, but a sea without a shore.
Here one man seeks a hill-top in his flight; another sits in his curved skiff, plying the oars where lately he has plowed; one sails over his fields of grain or the roof of his buried farmhouse, and one takes fish caught in the elm-tree's top. And sometimes it chanced that an anchor was embedded in a grassy meadow, or the curving keels brushed over the vineyard tops. And where but now the slender goats had browsed, the ugly sea-calves rested. The Nereids are amazed to see beneath the waters groves and cities and the haunts of men. The dolphins invade the woods, brushing against the high branches, and shake the oak-trees as they knock against them in their course. The wolf swims among the sheep, while tawny lions and tigers are borne along by the waves. Neither does the power of his lightning stroke avail the boar, nor his swift limbs the stag, since both are alike swept away by the flood; and
