the crime and
the cause of his sorrow; he hates, too, the string, the bow, and his
hand; and together with his hand, {those} rash weapons, the arrows. He
cherishes her fallen to the ground, and by late resources endeavors to
conquer her destiny; and in vain he practices his physical arts.

When he found that these attempts were made in vain, and that the
funeral pile was being prepared, and that her limbs were about to be
burnt in the closing flames, then, in truth, he gave utterance to sighs
fetched from the bottom of his heart (for it is not allowed the
celestial features to be bathed with tears). No otherwise than, as when
an axe, poised from the right ear {of the butcher}, dashes to pieces,
with a clean stroke, the hollow temples of the sucking calf, while the
dam looks on. Yet after Phoebus had poured the unavailing perfumes on her
breast, when he had given the {last} embrace and had performed the due
obsequies prematurely hastened, he did not suffer his own offspring to
sink into the same ashes; but he snatched the child from the flames and
from the womb of his mother, and carried him into the cave of the
two-formed Chiron. And he forbade the raven, expecting for himself the
reward of his tongue that told no untruth, to perch any longer among the
white birds.

[Footnote 72: _Lesbos._--Ver. 591. This was an island in the AEgean
sea, lying to the south of Troy.]

[Footnote 73: _Plectrum._--Ver. 601. This was a little rod, or
staff, with which the player used to strike the strings of the
lyre, or cithara, on which he was playing.]

EXPLANATION.

History does not afford us the least insight into the foundation of
the story of Coronis transformed into a crow, for making too faithful
a report, nor that of the raven changed from white to black, for
talking too much. If they are based upon some events which really
happened, we must be content to acknowledge that these Fables refer to
the history of two persons entirely unknown to us, and who, perhaps,
lived as far back as the time of the daughters of Cecrops, to whom the
story seems to bear some relation. Coronis being the name of a crow as
well as of a Nymph, Lucian and other writers have fabled that her son,
AEsculapius, was produced from the egg of that bird, and was born in
the shape of a serpent, under which form he was very generally
worshipped.

FABLE X. [II.633-675]

Ocyrrhoe, the daughter of the Centaur