g eyes has bedewed my cheek with its humid
gushings; for Jupiter commanding this thine unenviable doom by laws of
his own, displays his spear appearing superior o'er the gods of old.[28]
And now the whole land echoes with wailing--they wail thy stately and
time-graced honors, and those of thy brethren; and all they of mortal
race that occupy a dwelling neighboring on hallowed Asia[29] mourn with
thy deeply-deplorable sufferings: the virgins that dwell in the land of
Colchis too, fearless of the fight, and the Scythian horde who possess
the most remote regions of earth around lake Maeotis; and the war-like
flower of Arabia,[30] who occupy a fortress on the craggy heights in
the neighborhood of Caucasus, a warrior-host, clamoring amid
sharply-barbed spears.

One other god only, indeed, have I heretofore beheld in miseries, the
Titan Atlas, subdued by the galling of adamantine[31] bonds, who
evermore in his back is groaning beneath[32] the excessive mighty mass
of the pole of heaven. And the billow of the deep roars as it falls in
cadence, the depth moans, and the murky vault of Hades rumbles beneath
the earth, and the fountains of the pure streaming rivers wail for his
piteous pains.

PR. Do not, I pray you, suppose that I am holding my peace from pride or
self-will; but by reflection am I gnawed to the heart, seeing myself
thus ignominiously entreated.[33] And yet who but myself defined
completely the prerogative for these same new gods? But on these matters
I say nothing, for I should speak to you already acquainted with these
things. But for the misfortunes that existed among mortals, hear how I
made them, that aforetime lived as infants, rational and possessed of
intellect.[34] And I will tell you, having no complaint against
mankind, as detailing the kindness of the boons which I bestowed upon
them: they who at first seeing saw in vain, hearing they heard not. But,
like to the forms of dreams, for a long time they used to huddle
together all things at random, and naught knew they about
brick-built[35] and sun-ward houses, nor carpentry; but they dwelt in
the excavated earth like tiny emmets in the sunless depths of caverns.
And they had no sure sign either of winter, or of flowery spring, or of
fruitful summer; but they used to do every thing without judgment, until
indeed I showed to them the risings of the stars and their settings,[36]
hard to be discerned.

And verily I discover for them Numbers, the surpassing