Here we seem to have a glimpse of some higher and older learning, mixed with the astronomical errors of the day:  Ovid supposes the rapid world to move, revolve, one way, while the sun appears to move another.

But Phaëton insists on undertaking the dread task.  The doors of Aurora are opened, “her halls filled with roses”; the stars disappear; the Hours yoke the horses, “filled with the juice of ambrosia,” the father anoints the face of his son with a hallowed drug that he may the better endure the great heat; the reins are handed him, and the fatal race begins.  Phœbus has advised him not to drive too high, or “thou wilt set on fire the signs of the heavens”—­the constellations;—­nor too low, or he will consume the earth.

“In the mean time the swift Pyroeis, and Eoüs and Æthon, the horses of the sun, and Phlegon, the fourth, fill the air with neighings, sending forth flames, and beat the barriers with their feet. . . .  They take the road . . . they cleave the resisting clouds, and, raised aloft by their wings, they pass by the east winds that had arisen from the same parts.  But the weight” (of Phaëton) “was light, and such as the horses of the sun could not feel; and the yoke was deficient of its wonted weight. . . .  Soon as

{p. 156}

the steeds had perceived this they rush on and leave the beaten track, and run not in the order in which they did before.  He himself becomes alarmed, and knows not which way to turn the reins intrusted to him; nor does he know where the way is, nor, if he did know, could he control them.  Then, for the first time, did the cold Triones grow warm with sunbeams, and attempt, in vain, to be dipped in the sea that was forbidden to them.  And the Serpent, which is situate next to the icy pole, being before torpid with cold, and formidable to no one, grew warm, and regained new rage for the heat.  And they say that thou, Boötes, scoured off in a mighty bustle, although thou wert but slow, and thy cart hindered thee.  But when from the height of the skies the unhappy Phaëton looked down upon the earth lying far, very far beneath, he grew pale, and his knees shook with a sudden terror; and, in a light so great, darkness overspread his eyes.  And now he could wish that he had never touched the horses of his father; and now he is sorry that he knew his descent, and prevailed in his request; now desiring to be called the son of Merops.”

“What can he do? . . .  He is stupefied; he neither lets go the reins, nor is able to control them.  In his fright, too, he sees strange objects scattered everywhere in various parts of the heavens, and the forms of huge wild beasts.  There is a spot where the Scorpion bends his arms into two curves, and, with his tail and claws bending on either side, he extends his limbs through the space of two signs of the zodiac.  As soon as the youth beheld him, wet with the sweat of black venom, and threatening wounds with the barbed point of his tail, bereft of sense he let go the reins in a chill of horror.”