253And now he was about to scatter his thunderbolts over all the lands: but he feared that the sacred aether might by chance catch fire from so many flames and the long axis blaze up: he remembers too that it is in the fates that a time will come when sea, when land, and the palace of heaven, seized by fire, will burn, and the mass of the world, besieged, will be in distress. 259The weapons forged by the hands of the Cyclopes are laid aside: a different punishment pleases him, to destroy the mortal race beneath the waves and send down rainstorms from all the sky. 262At once he shuts up the North Wind in the caves of Aeolus, and whatever blasts put to flight the gathered clouds, and lets loose the South Wind.
264The South Wind flies out on dripping wings, his terrible face covered in pitch-black gloom: his beard is heavy with rain clouds, water flows from his white hair; 267mists sit on his brow, his feathers and the folds of his robe drip. 268And when he pressed the widely hanging clouds with his hand, there is a crash: then dense rain pours down from the sky. 270Juno's messenger Iris, clothed in varied colours, draws up waters and brings nourishment to the clouds. 272The crops are laid flat, and the farmers' prayers lie lamented, and the labour of the long year perishes, wasted. 274Nor is Jupiter's anger content with his own sky, but his sea-blue brother helps him with auxiliary waves.
276He summons the rivers. 276When they had entered their ruler's house, he says, 'Now is no time to use long exhortation. 278Pour out your strength: so the work demands! 279Open your homes and, removing the barriers, give full rein to your streams!' 281So he commanded; 281they return, loosen the mouths of their springs, and roll to the sea in unbridled course. 283He himself struck the earth with his trident: and it trembled, and by the shock opened paths for the waters. 285The rivers, spreading out, rush over the open plains, and sweep away orchards together with crops, flocks and men and houses, and shrines together with their sacred things. 288If any house remained and could withstand so great an evil without being thrown down, still a higher wave covers its roof, and towers, overwhelmed, lie hidden beneath the flood.
291And now sea and land had no distinction: all was sea; 292the sea lacked shores too. 293One man takes a hill, another sits in a curved boat and pulls the oars where lately he had ploughed; one sails over crops or the roof of a sunken farmhouse, another catches a fish at the top of an elm. 297The anchor, as chance would have it, is fixed in a green meadow, or curved keels graze the vineyards beneath; 299and where slender goats lately cropped the grass, now ungainly seals lay down their bodies. 301The Nereids marvel at groves and cities and houses under water, and dolphins occupy the woods and run against high branches and strike the shaken oaks.
304The wolf swims among the sheep, the wave carries tawny lions, the wave carries tigers; neither does his thunderbolt strength help the boar, nor swift legs the stag, swept away. 307And having searched long for land where it might settle, the wandering bird falls into the sea on weary wings. 309The boundless licence of the sea had buried the hills, and strange waves beat upon the mountain peaks. 311The greatest part is swept away by the wave; 311those whom the wave spared, long fasting for lack of food subdues. 313Phocis separates the Aonian from the Oetaean fields, a fruitful land while it was land, but at that time a part of the sea and a broad plain of sudden waters.
316There a steep mountain seeks the stars with twin peaks, Parnassus by name, and its summits rise above the clouds. 318When Deucalion (for the sea had covered the rest), carried in a small boat with the partner of his bed, ran aground here, they worship the Corycian nymphs and the deities of the mountain and prophetic Themis, who then held the oracle. 322No man was better than he or more devoted to justice, nor any woman more reverent towards the gods than she. 324When Jupiter sees the world standing in liquid marshes, and sees that one man survives out of so many thousands just now, and one woman survives out of so many thousands just now, both innocent, both worshippers of the godhead, he scattered the clouds and, with the rain clouds driven off by the North Wind, showed the lands to the sky and the aether to the lands.
330Nor does the anger of the sea remain, and, laying aside his three-pronged weapon, the ruler of the deep soothes the waters, and calls sea-blue Triton, rising above the depths, his shoulders covered with native shell, and bids him blow into his echoing conch and now recall the waves and rivers with the signal given. 335He takes up his hollow trumpet, coiled, which grows wide from its lowest spiral, the trumpet which, when it has taken in air in mid-ocean, fills with its voice the shores lying under either Phoebus. 339Then too, as it touched the god's lips, wet with his dripping beard, and, blown, sounded the retreat ordered, it was heard by all the waters of land and sea, and all the waters by which it was heard it held in check.
343Now the sea has a shore, the channels hold the full rivers, the floods subside and the hills seem to emerge; the ground rises, places grow as the waters shrink, and after a long time the woods show their bared tops and keep the mud left on their foliage.