For when, compelled by dread Alcides' club 495
To shift with ready ease from form to form
Of beasts, and, overcome in every form,
At last bold Achelous bowed his head
With its one horn defiled; then Hercules,
Exulting in his triumph, claimed his bride
And bore me off to Argos. Then, it chanced, 500
Evenus' stream that wanders through the plain,
Its whirling waters bearing to the sea,
Was swollen beyond its banks[1] with turbid flood.
Here Nessus, well accustomed to the stream,
Required a price for bearing me across; 505
And on his back, where beast and human join,
He took me, boldly stemming every wave.
Now was fierce Nessus well across the stream,
And still in "middle flood Alcides fared,
Breasting with mighty strides the eager waves;
When he, beholding Hercules afar, 510
Cried, "Thou shalt be my wife, my booty thou,
For Hercules is held within the stream;"
And clasping me was galloping away.
But now the waves could not thwart Hercules.
"O faithless ferryman," he shouted out,
"Though Ganges and the Ister join their floods, 515
I shall o'ercome them both and check thy flight."
His arrow sped before his words were done,
Transfixing Nessus with a mortal wound,
And stayed his flight. Then he, with dying eyes
Seeking the light, within his hand caught up 520
The flowing[2] gore; and in his hollow hoof,
Which he with savage hand had wrenched away,
He poured and handed it to me, and said:
"This blood, magicians say, contains a charm,
Which can a wavering love restore; for so
Thessalian dames by Mycale were taught, 525
Who only, 'midst all wonder-working crones,
Could lure the moon from out the starry skies.
A garment well anointed with this gore
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Hercules Oetaeus
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