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half-slain flung o’er the faces of their moaning parents and gasping out their trembling souls on the threshold of life. Ne fiercer are the banquet-revellings of the Lapithae on frozen Ossa, when the cloud-born ones^[1] grow hot with wine deep-drained; scarce has wrath’s first pallor seized them, when overthrowing their tables they start up to the affray.

“Then first Thyoneus^[2] beneath night’s cover revealed himself to us in our distress, succouring his son Thoas in his hour of need, and shone in a sudden blaze of light. I knew him: yet he had bound no chaplets round his swelling temples, nor yellow grapes about his hair: but a cloud was upon him, and his eyes streamed angry rain as he addressed us: ‘While the fates granted thee, my son, to keep Lemnos mighty and feared still by foreign peoples, never failed I to aid thy righteous labours; the stern Parcae have cut short the relentless threads, nor have my prayers and tears, poured forth in vain supplication before Jove, availed to turn away this woe; to his daughter hath he granted honour unspeakable.^[3] Hasten ye then your flight, and thou, O maiden, worthy offspring of my race, guide thy sire this way where the wall’s twin arms approach the sea; at yonder gate, where thou thinkest all is quiet, stands Venus in fell mood and aids the furious ones;—whence hath the goddess this violence, this heart of Mars? Trust thou thy father to the broad deep: I will take thy cares upon me.’ So speaking he faded into air again, and since the shadows barred our vision lit up our road with a long stream of fire,