“But the omnipotent father, having called the gods above to witness, and him, too, who had given the chariot to Phaëton, 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 burls 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 fragments of the chariot torn in pieces are scattered far and wide.  But Phaëton, the flames consuming his yellow hair, is hurled headlong, and is borne in a 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 in a part of the world far distant from his country, and bathes his foaming face.  The Hesperian Naiads commit his body, smoking from the three-forked flames, to the tomb, and inscribe these verses on the stone:  ’Here is Phaëton 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

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face overcast with bitter sorrow, and, if only we can believe it, they say that one day passed without the sun.  The flames” (of the fires on the earth) “afforded light, and there was some advantage in that disaster.”

As there was no daily return of the sun to mark the time, that one day of darkness was probably of long duration; it may have endured for years.

Then follows Ovid’s description of the mourning of Clymene and the daughters of the Sun and the Naiads for the dead Phaëton.  Cycnus, king of Liguria, grieves for Phaëton until he is transformed into a swan; reminding one of the Central American legend, (which I shall give hereafter,) which states that in that day all men were turned into goslings or geese, a reminiscence, perhaps, of those who saved themselves from the fire by taking refuge in the waters of the seas: 

“Cycnus becomes a new bird; but he trusts himself not to the heavens or the air, as being mindful of the fire unjustly sent from thence.  He frequents the pools and the wide lakes, and, abhorring fire, he chooses the streams, the very contrary of flames.