or the cattle, and corn, a wholesome food for
mankind, and frankincense for yourselves? But still, suppose that I am
deserving of destruction, why have the waves {deserved this}? Why has
thy brother deserved it? Why do the seas, delivered to him by lot,
decrease, and why do they recede still further from the sky? But if
regard for neither thy brother nor for myself influences thee, still
have consideration for thy own skies; look around, on either side, {how}
each pole is smoking; if the fire shall injure them, thy palace will
fall in ruins. See! Atlas[54] himself is struggling, and hardly can he
bear the glowing heavens on his shoulders. If the sea, if the earth
perishes, if the palace of heaven, we are thrown[55] into the confused
state of ancient chaos. Save it from the flames, if aught still
survives, and provide for the preservation of the universe."

Thus spoke the Earth; nor, indeed, could she any longer endure the
vapor, nor say more; and she withdrew her face within herself, and the
caverns neighboring to the shades below.

[Footnote 1: _AEgeon._--Ver. 10. Homer makes him to be the same
with Briareus. According to another account, which Ovid here
follows, he was a sea God, the son of Oceanus and Terra.]

[Footnote 2: _Doris._--Ver. 11. She was the daughter of Oceanus,
the wife of Nereus, and the mother of the fifty Nereids.]

[Footnote 3: _Tethys._--Ver. 69. She was the daughter of Coelus and
Terra, and the wife of Oceanus. Her name is here used to signify
the ocean itself.]

[Footnote 4: _Are carried round._--Ver. 70. Clarke thus renders
this line,--"Add, too, that the heaven was whisked round with a
continual rolling."]

[Footnote 5: _Wild beasts._--Ver. 78. The signs of the Zodiac.]

[Footnote 6: _Haemonian._--Ver. 81. Or Thessalian. He here alludes
to the Thessalian Chiron, the Centaur, who, according to Ovid and
other writers, was placed in the Zodiac as the Constellation
Sagittarius: while others say that Crotus, or Croto, the son of
Eupheme, the nurse of the Muses, was thus honored.]

[Footnote 7: _Through the five direct circles._--Ver. 129. There
is some obscurity in this passage, arising from the mode of
expression. Phoebus here counsels Phaeton what track to follow, and
tells him to pursue his way by an oblique path, and not directly
in the plane of the equator. This last is what he calls 'directos
vi