I saw Briareus[1] transfixed by the celestial bolt, lying at the other side, heavy upon the earth in mortal chill. I saw Thymbraeus,[2] I saw Pallas and Mars, still armed, around their father, gazing at the scattered limbs of the giants. [1] Examples from classic and biblical mythology alternate. [2] Apollo, so called from his temple at Thymbra, not far from Troy, where Achilles is said to have slain Paris. Virgil (Georgics, iv. 323) uses this epithet. I saw Nimrod at the foot of his great toil, as if bewildered, and gazing at the people who in Shinar had with him been proud. O Niobe! with what grieving eyes did I see thee portrayed upon the road between thy seven and seven children slain! O Saul! how on thine own sword here didst thou appear dead on Gilboa, that after felt not rain or dew![1] [1] I Samuel, xxxi. 4, and 2 Samuel, i. 24. O mad Arachne,[1] so I saw thee already half spider, wretched on the shreds of the work that to thy harm by thee was made! [1] Changed to a spider by Athena, whom she had challenged to a trial of skill at the loom. O Rehoboam! here thine image seems not now to threaten, but full of fear, a chariot bears it away before any one pursues it.[1] [1] 1 Kings, xii. 13-18. The hard pavement showed also how Alcmaeon made the ill-fated ornament seem costly to his mother.[1] [1] Amphiaraus, the soothsayer, foreseeing his own death if he went to the Theban war, hid himself to avoid being forced to go. His wife, Eriphyle, bribed by a golden necklace, betrayed his hiding-place, and was killed by her son Alcmaeon, for thus bringing about his father’s death. It showed how his sons threw themselves upon Sennacherib within the temple, and how they left him there dead.[1] [1] 2 Kings, xix. 37. It showed the ruin and the cruel slaughter that Tomyris wrought, when she said to Cyrus, “For blood thou hast thirsted, and with blood I fill thee.” [1] Herodotus (i. 214) tells how Tomyris, Queen of the Massagetae, having defeated and slain Cyrus, filled a skin full of human blood, and plunged his head in it with words such as Dante reports, and which he derived from Orosius, Histor. ii. 7. It showed how the Assyrians fled in rout after Holofernes was killed, and also the remainder of the punishment.[1] [1] Judith, xv. 1. I saw Troy in ashes, and in caverns. O Ilion! how cast down and abject the image which is there discerned showed thee! What master has there been of pencil or of style that could draw the shadows and the lines which there would make every subtile genius wonder? Dead the dead, and the living seemed alive. He who saw the truth saw not better than I all that I trod on while I went bent down.—Now be ye proud, and go with haughty look, ye sons of Eve, and bend not down your face so that ye may see your evil path!