749Some old man watches them as they fly together over the wide sea, and praises their love kept to the end; 751his neighbour, or the same man, as chance would have it, said: 'This one too, whom you see skimming the sea and keeping his legs tucked up' (pointing to a diver with a long throat), 'is of royal blood: if you seek to come down to him in unbroken line, his ancestors are Ilus and Assaracus and Ganymede, carried off by Jupiter, and old Laomedon, and Priam, to whom fell the last days of Troy. 758That bird was Hector's brother: and had he not met a strange fate in early youth, perhaps he would have had a name no lower than Hector's, though the daughter of Dymas bore Hector, while Aesacus, it is said, was secretly borne beneath shady Ida by Alexirhoe, daughter of two-horned Granicus.
764He hated cities and, far from the glittering palace, he haunted secluded mountains and the unambitious countryside, and only rarely went to Trojan gatherings. 767Yet having a heart not boorish nor proof against love, he catches sight of Hesperie, whom he had often pursued through all the woods, the daughter of Cebren, on her father's bank, drying in the sun the hair thrown over her shoulders. 771Seen, the nymph flees, as a terrified hind flees the tawny wolf, and a river duck, caught far from the pool it has left, flees the hawk; 773the Trojan hero pursues her and, swift with love, presses her who is swift with fear: see, a snake lurking in the grass grazed the foot of the fleeing girl with its hooked fang and left its poison in her body; 777her life was cut short together with her flight: frantic, he embraces her lifeless body and cries: 'I am sorry, sorry that I chased you!
779But I did not fear this, nor was winning worth so much to me. 780We two have destroyed you, poor girl: the wound was given by the snake, the cause by me. 781I am guiltier than it, and I shall send you by my death the consolation of your death.' 783He spoke, and from a cliff which the hoarse wave had undermined, he threw himself down into the sea. 784Tethys, pitying him as he fell, caught him gently and, as he swam through the waters, covered him with feathers, and the chance of the death he longed for was not given. 787The lover is indignant that he is forced to live against his will, and that his soul is hindered when it wishes to leave its wretched seat.
789And as soon as he had taken new wings on his shoulders, he flies up and again hurls his body down on the sea. 791His feathers soften the fall: Aesacus rages and plunges headlong into the deep and endlessly tries again the way to death. 793Love made him lean: the joints of his legs are long, his neck stays long, his head is far from his body; 795he loves the sea, and the name of diver stays with him, because he dives beneath it.'