Book 9
which not my strength, nor valor, nor the use
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of weapons can resist. Devouring flames
have preyed upon my limbs, and blasting heat
now shrivels the burnt tissue of my frame.
But still Eurystheus is alive and well!
And there are those who yet believe in Gods!”
Just as a wild bull, in whose body spears
are rankling, while the frightened hunter flies
away for safety, so the hero ranged
over sky-piercing Oeta; his huge groans,
his awful shrieks resounding in those cliffs.
At times he struggles with the poisoned robe.
Goaded to fury, he has razed great trees,
and scattered the vast mountain rocks around!
And stretched his arms towards his ancestral skies!
So, in his frenzy, as he wandered there,
he chanced upon the trembling Lichas, crouched
in the close covert of a hollow rock.
Then in a savage fury he cried out,
“Was it you, Lichas, brought this fatal gift?
Shall you be called the author of my death?”
Lichas, in terror, groveled at his feet,
and begged for mercy—“Only let me live!”
But seizing on him, the crazed Hero whirled
him thrice and once again about his head,
and hurled him, shot as by a catapult,
into the waves of the Euboic Sea.
While he was hanging in the air, his form
was hardened; as, we know, rain drops may first
be frozen by the cold air, and then change
to snow, and as it falls through whirling winds
may press, so twisted, into round hailstones:
even so has ancient lore declared that when
strong arms hurled Lichas through the mountain air
through fear, his blood was curdled in his veins.
No moisture left in him, he was transformed
into a flint-rock. Even to this day,
a low crag rising from the waves is seen
out of the deep Euboean Sea, and holds
the certain outline of a human form,
