193Trembling, he sees too marvels scattered everywhere across the varied sky, and the shapes of vast beasts. 195There is a place where the Scorpion bends his arms into twin arcs, and, with his tail and his claws curving on either side, stretches his limbs over the space of two signs. 198When the boy saw this creature, wet with the sweat of black venom, threatening wounds with its curved sting, out of his wits with chilling fear he let the reins go. 201When the reins, lying slack, touched the tops of their backs, the horses run off course, and with no one checking them they go through the air of an unknown region, and wherever their impulse has driven, there they rush without rule, and beneath the high ether they charge against the fixed stars and whirl the chariot along pathless ways.
206And now they make for the heights, now they are carried down slopes and steep paths into a space nearer the earth. 208And the Moon marvels that her brother's horses run lower than her own, and the scorched clouds smoke; 210the earth is caught by flames, each highest part first, and splits into cracks and dries up as its moisture is taken away. 212The pastures turn grey, the tree burns with its foliage, and the dry crop provides fuel for its own destruction. 214I lament small things: great cities perish with their walls, and the fires turn whole nations with their peoples to ash. 216The woods burn with the mountains; Athos burns, and Cilician Taurus and Tmolus and Oete, and Ida, dry now, once teeming with springs, and virgin Helicon, and Haemus, not yet Oeagrian; 220Etna burns immensely with redoubled fires, and twin-peaked Parnassus and Eryx and Cynthus and Othrys, and Rhodope, destined at last to lose its snows, and Mimas and Dindyma and Mycale, and Cithaeron, born for sacred rites.
224Nor is its own cold any help to Scythia: Caucasus burns, and Ossa with Pindus, and Olympus greater than both, and the airy Alps and the cloud-bearing Apennines. 227Then indeed Phaethon sees the world set on fire on every side, and cannot bear such great heat, and he draws scorching air into his mouth as if from a deep furnace, and feels his chariot grow white-hot; 231and now he can no longer bear the ashes and the flying embers, and he is wrapped all round in hot smoke, and, covered in pitchy darkness, he does not know where he is going or where he is, and is snatched along at the will of the winged horses.
235It was then, they believe, that the peoples of Ethiopia took on their dark colour, as their blood was drawn to the surface of their bodies. 237Then Libya became dry, its moisture seized by the heat; then the nymphs with dishevelled hair wept for their springs and lakes: Boeotia seeks Dirce, Argos Amymone, Ephyre the waters of Pirene. 241Nor do rivers that have been allotted banks far apart remain safe: Tanais smoked in mid-stream, and old Peneus and Teuthrantean Caicus and swift Ismenus with Phegiacan Erymanthus, and Xanthus, destined to burn a second time, and yellow Lycormas, and Maeander, who plays in his winding waters. 247And Mygdonian Melas, and Taenarian Eurotas.
248Babylonian Euphrates burned too, Orontes burned, and swift Thermodon, and Ganges and Phasis and Hister. 250Alpheus seethes, the banks of Spercheus burn, the gold that the Tagus carries in its stream flows with fire, and the river birds that used to throng the Maeonian banks with song grew hot in the midst of Cayster. 254The Nile fled in terror to the ends of the earth and hid his head, which is hidden still: his seven mouths lie empty and full of dust, seven valleys without a stream. 257The same fate dries up Ismarian Hebrus with Strymon, and the western rivers, Rhine and Rhone and Po, and Tiber, to whom power over the world had been promised.
260All the ground splits open, and through the cracks light penetrates to Tartarus and terrifies the king of the underworld and his wife. 262The sea too shrinks, and what was lately ocean is a plain of dry sand; and mountains that the deep sea had covered rise up and add to the scattered Cyclades. 265The fish seek the depths, and the curved dolphins do not dare to lift themselves above the waters into the air as they used to; 267the bodies of seals float lifeless, on their backs, on the surface of the deep. 268The story goes that Nereus himself too, and Doris and her daughters, hid in caves grown warm.
270Three times Neptune with grim face had dared to thrust his arms out of the waters, three times he could not bear the fires of the air. 272Yet kindly Earth, surrounded as she was by the sea, between the waters of the ocean and the springs shrunk from every side, which had hidden themselves in the bowels of their dark mother, lifted her stifled face, parched, as far as the neck, and put her hand to her brow, and, shaking everything with a great tremor, sank down a little and was lower than she usually is, and spoke thus in a dry voice: 'If this pleases you, and I have deserved it, why are your thunderbolts idle, O highest of the gods?
280If I am to perish by the force of fire, let me perish by your fire and lighten the disaster by knowing its author. 282I can scarcely open my throat to say these very words' (the hot vapour had stifled her mouth): 'look, see my scorched hair, and all the ashes in my eyes, all the ashes over my face. 285Is this the reward, is this the honour you pay me for my fertility and my service, that I bear the wounds of the hooked plough and the harrow and am worked all year round, that I provide leaves for the flocks, and gentle nourishment, the crops, for the human race, and incense for you gods too?
290But suppose I have deserved destruction: what have the waters, what has your brother deserved? 291Why do the seas, handed over to him by lot, shrink and stand further from the sky? 293But if regard neither for your brother nor for me moves you, at least take pity on your own heaven. 294Look around at both: each pole is smoking. 295If the fire damages them, your halls will collapse. 296Look, Atlas himself is struggling and can scarcely hold up the white-hot axis of the sky on his shoulders. 298If the seas, if the lands, if the palace of heaven perish, we are thrown together into the ancient chaos. 299Snatch from the flames whatever is still left, and take thought for the universe.'