429He too stands before my eyes, Phaeocomes, who had bound six lion skins together with linked knots, protecting man and horse at once. 432He, hurling a log which two yoke of oxen could scarcely move, shattered Tectaphos, son of Olenus, from the crown of his head. 439But I, while he was preparing to strip the fallen man of his armour (your father knows this), plunged my sword into the depths of the despoiler's groin. 441Chthonius and Teleboas too lie dead by my sword: the former had carried a forked branch, the latter a javelin; 443with the javelin he wounded me: you see the marks! 444the old scar from it still shows.
445Then I ought to have been sent to capture Pergamum; then I could have, if not overcome, at least held back the arms of great Hector with mine! 447But at that time Hector was nobody, or a boy; now my age fails me. 449Why should I tell you of Periphas, victor over the double-bodied Pyraethus, why of Ampyx, who drove a pointless cornel shaft into the face of four-footed Echeclus as he came on? 452Macareus felled Erigdupus of Pelethronium with a crowbar driven into his chest; and I remember a hunting-spear, hurled by the hands of Nessus, buried in the groin of Cymelus. 455Nor must you believe that Mopsus, son of Ampyx, only sang of things to come: by the javelin of Mopsus the two-formed Hodites was laid low and tried in vain to speak, his tongue pinned to his chin and his chin to his throat.
459Caeneus had given five to death, Styphelus and Bromus and Antimachus and Elymus and Pyraechmes, wielder of the axe: I do not remember their wounds; I noted the number and the names. 462Forth flies Latreus, armed with the spoils of Emathian Halesus, whom he had put to death, enormous in limbs and body: his age was between youth and old age, his strength was a young man's, grey hairs streaked his temples. 466Conspicuous with shield and sword and Macedonian pike, he turned his face to each army in turn, clashed his arms, galloped in a fixed circle, and boldly poured out these many words into the empty air: 'And shall I put up with you too, Caenis?
470For to me you will always be a woman, to me always Caenis. 471Has your birth not reminded you, and does it not come to mind for what deed you won your reward, and at what price you gained the false appearance of a man? 474Look at what you were born, or what you suffered, and go, take up your distaff with your wool-baskets, and twist the threads with your thumb: leave wars to men.' 476As he boasted thus, Caeneus, with a hurled spear, tore open his side, stretched out in the gallop, where the man was joined to the horse. 478He rages with pain and strikes the bare face of the young Phyllean with his pike.
480It bounces back no differently than hail from the ridge of a roof, or as if someone were to strike a hollow drum with a small stone. 482He attacks at close quarters and struggles to bury his sword in his hard side: the places offer no way to the sword. 484'Yet you will not escape! 484you will be slain by the middle of the sword, since the point is blunt,' he says, and slants the sword against his side and with a long sweep of his right hand embraces his flanks. 487The blow makes a groan, as on a body of struck marble, and the blade broke and leapt apart, striking the hard skin.
489When he had offered his unharmed limbs long enough to the wondering man, 'Now come,' says Caeneus, 'let us test your body with our iron!' 491and he sank his deadly sword up to the hilt into his shoulder, and moved it blindly in his entrails, and twisted it with his hand, and made a wound within a wound. 494Look, the double-bodied ones rush on in frenzy with a huge shout, and all hurl and thrust their weapons at him alone. 496The weapons fall blunted: Caeneus, son of Elatus, remains unpierced and unbloodied by every blow. 498The strange event had stunned them. 498'Alas, huge disgrace!' 499cries Monychus; 'we, a whole people, are beaten by one, and that one barely a man: and yet he is a man, while we, by our feeble deeds, are what he once was!
501What use are our monstrous limbs? 502What use our double strength, and that our twofold nature has joined in us the strongest of living creatures? 504I do not think we are sons of a goddess mother, nor of Ixion, who was so great that he conceived hopes of lofty Juno: we are beaten by a half-male foe! 507Roll rocks and beams and whole mountains on top of him, and crush out his long-lived spirit by hurling forests! 509let a forest press on his throat, and weight will serve for a wound.' 510He spoke, and, chancing on a tree-trunk thrown down by the mad strength of the south wind, he hurled it at his powerful foe, and was an example to the rest, and in a short time Othrys was stripped of trees, and Pelion had no shade.
514Buried under the huge mound, Caeneus heaves beneath the weight of trees, and bears the piled oaks on his hard shoulders. 516But when the load grew over his face and head, and his breath has no air to draw, he sometimes falters, sometimes tries in vain to raise himself into the air and roll off the woods hurled upon him, and now and then he moves them, just as if lofty Ida, look, which we see there, were shaken by earthquakes. 522His end is in doubt: some said that his body was thrust down by the mass of the forest to empty Tartarus; 524the son of Ampyx denied it, and saw a bird with tawny wings go forth from the middle of the heap into the clear air, which I saw then for the first time, and then for the last.
527When Mopsus saw it circling his camp in gentle flight and sounding around it with a great clamour, and followed it alike with mind and eyes, he said: 'Hail, glory of the Lapith race, once the greatest of men, but now a bird unique, Caeneus!' 532The thing was believed on the word of its teller: grief added anger, and we took it hard that one man was crushed by so many foes; 534nor did we cease to vent our grief with the sword before some were given to death, and flight and night took the rest away.'