the same distance from the earth.  First they went down, down, until they almost touched the mountain tops.  Trees, grass, wheat, flowers, all were scorched and blackened; and one great tract in Africa was so parched that nothing has since been able to grow upon it.  Rivers were dried up, the snow on the mountain tops was melted, and, strangest of all, the people in the country over which the sun-chariot was passing were burned black. [Footnote:  In this way the ancients explained the great desert of Sahara, and the dark color of the people of Africa.] Then, rising, the horses dragged the chariot so far from the earth that intense, bitter cold killed off much of the vegetation which the fierce heat had spared.

Poor Phaethon could do nothing but clutch the seat and shut his eyes.  He dared not look down, lest he lose his balance and fall; he dared not look about him, for there were, in all parts of the heavens, the most terrifying animals—­a great scorpion, a lion, two bears, a huge crab. [Footnote:  These terrifying animals which Phaethon saw in the sky were the groups of stars, the constellations to which the ancients gave the names of animals etc.  We know the Big Dipper, or Great Bear, for we may see it in the north any clear night.] Vainly he repented of his rashness; sadly he wondered in what way his death would come.

It came suddenly—­so suddenly that poor Phaethon did not feel the pain of it.  For Jupiter, when he saw the sun rocking about the heavens, did not stop to inquire who the unknown charioteer was; he knew it was not Apollo, and he knew the earth was being ruined—­that was enough.  Seizing one of his biggest thunderbolts, he hurled it with all his might, and Phaethon fell, flaming, from his lofty seat into the Eridanus River; while the horses, whom no thunderbolt could harm, trotted quietly back to their stalls.  Clymene bewailed her son’s death bitterly, and his companions, grieved that their taunts should have driven their comrade to his destruction, helped her to erect over his grave a stone on which were these words: 

“Lies buried here young Phaethon, who sought
 To guide his father’s chariot of flame. 
 What though he failed?  No death ignoble his
 Who fared to meet it with such lofty aim.”

Most of the Greek myths had meanings; they were not simply fairy stories.  And while we have no means now of finding the meanings of some of them, many of them are so clear that we can understand exactly what the Greeks meant to teach by them.  By far the most numerous are the so-called “nature myths”—­myths which they invented to explain the happenings which they saw constantly about them in the natural world.  Of these nature myths the story of Phaethon is one.