Ragnarok : the age of fire and gravel

162 THE LEGENDS.

“Thus spoke the Earth; nor, indeed, could she any longer endure the vapor, nor say more, and she withdrew her face within herself, and the caverns neighboring to the shades below.

“But the omnipotent father, having called the gods above to witness, and him, too, who had given the chariot to Phaéton, that unless he gives assistance all things will perish in direful ruin, mounts aloft to the highest eminence, from which he is wont to spread the clouds over the spacious earth ; and from which he moves his thunders, and hurls the brandished lightnings. But then he had neither clouds that he could draw over the earth, nor showers that he could pour down from the sky.”

That is to say, so long as the great meteor shone in the air, and for some time after, the heat was too intense to permit the formation of either clouds or rain; these could only come with coolness and condensation.

“He thundered aloud, and darted the poised lightning from his right ear, against the charioteer, and at the same moment deprived him both of life and his seat, and by his ruthless fires restrained the flames. The horses are affrighted, and, making a bound in the opposite direction, they shake the yoke from their necks, and disengage themselves from the torn harness. In one place lie the reins, in another the axle-tree wrenched from the pole, in another part are the spokes of the broken wheels, and the Jragments of the chariot torn in pieces are scattered far and wide, But Phaéton, the flames consuming his yellow hair, 7s hurled headlong, and is borne in @ long track through the air, as sometimes a star is seen to fall from the serene sky, although it really has not fallen. Him the great Eridanus receives ina part of the world far distant from his country, and bathes his foaming face. The Hesperian Naiads commit his body, smoking from the threeforked flames, to the tomb, and inscribe these verses on the stone: ‘Here is Phaéton buried, the driver of his father’s chariot, which, if he did not manage, still he miscarried in a great attempt.’

“ But his wretched father” (the Sun) “had hidden his