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the god allayed his wrath and Capaneus been preserved to merit a direr punishment; yet the wind of the stirred thunderbolt sped and swayed the summit of his crested helm.

And now the unhappy Lemnian, wandering o’er the fields when the place was rid of the serpent, grows pale to behold on a low mound afar the herbage stained with streams of blood. Thither frantic in her grief she hastens, and recognizing the horror falls as though lightning-struck on the offending earth, nor in the first shock of ruin can find speech or tears to shed; she only bends and showers despairing kisses, and breathlessly searches the yet warm limbs for traces of the vanished life. Nor face nor breast remain, the skin is torn away and the frail bones are exposed to view, and the sinews are drenched in fresh streams of blood: the whole body is one wound. Even as when in a shady ilex-tree a lazy serpent has ravaged the home and brood of a mother bird, she, returning, marvels at the quiet of her clamorous abode, and hovers aghast, and in wild dismay drops from her mouth the food she brings, for there is nought but blood on the tree and feathers shed about the plundered nest.

When, poor woman, she had gathered the mangled limbs to her bosom and covered them in her tresses, at length her voice released gave passage to her grief and her moans melted into words: “Archemorus, sweet image of my babes in my lonely plight, solace of my woes and exile, and pride of my thraldom, what guilty gods have slain thee, O my joy, whom, when I lately parted from thee, I left frolicking and crushing the grasses in thy crawl? Alas, where is that star-bright face? Where are thy half-formed