219Then indeed the indignation of Alcides blazed up in fury with black bile: he snatches his weapons in his hand, and his club heavy with knots, and makes at a run for the heights of the lofty mountain. 222Then for the first time our people saw Cacus afraid and with troubled eyes: at once he flees, swifter than the East Wind, and makes for his cave; fear added wings to his feet. 225When he had shut himself in and, breaking the chains, let fall the huge rock which hung there by iron and his father's art, and had barricaded the propped doorposts with the barrier, look, the Tirynthian was there, raging in spirit, and scanning every approach he turned his face this way and that, gnashing his teeth.
230Three times, burning with anger, he surveys the whole Aventine hill, three times he tries the rocky doorway in vain, three times he sank down exhausted in the valley. 233There stood a pointed flint crag, cut away on all sides, rising from the back of the cave, very high to the sight, a fit home for the nests of ill-omened birds. 236This, as it leaned forward from the ridge towards the river on the left, he shook, straining against it from the right, and tore it loose from its lowest roots and wrenched it free; 238then suddenly he thrust it down, and with that thrust the vast sky thunders, the banks leap apart and the terrified river flows back.
241But the cave and the huge palace of Cacus appeared, laid bare, and the shadowy caverns lay open to their depths: just as if the earth, gaping deep by some force, should unlock the infernal seats and lay open the pale realms hated by the gods, and from above the monstrous abyss should be seen, and the ghosts tremble as the light streams in. 247So, as Cacus was caught suddenly in unexpected light, shut in the hollow rock and roaring as never before, Alcides presses on him from above with missiles, calls every weapon to his aid, and assails him with branches and huge millstones. 251But he, since there was no escape from danger left any longer, belches from his throat huge smoke (wonderful to tell) and wraps his home in blinding gloom, snatching sight from the eyes, and rolls up smoky night within the cave, with darkness mixed with fire.
256Alcides did not endure this in his anger, and himself flung himself with a headlong leap through the fire, where the smoke drives its billows thickest and the huge cave seethes with black fog. 259Here, as Cacus spews out useless flames in the darkness, he seizes him, gripping him in a knot, and, clinging, throttles him till his eyes start out and his throat is drained of blood.