infatuate to leave nothing undared or unhandled in craft or
crime, drives four bulls of choice shape away from their pasturage, and
as many heifers of excellent beauty. And these, that there should be no
straightforward footprints, he dragged by the tail into his cavern, the
track of their compelled path reversed, and hid them behind the screen
of rock. No marks were there to lead a seeker to the cavern. Meanwhile
the son of Amphitryon, his herds filled with food, was now breaking up
his pasturage and making ready to go. The oxen low as they depart; all
the woodland is filled with their complaint as they clamorously quit the
hills. One heifer returned the cry, and, lowing from the depth of the
dreary cave, baffled the hope of Cacus from her imprisonment. At this
the grief and choler of Alcides blazed forth dark and infuriate. Seizing
in his hand his club of heavy knotted oak, he seeks with swift pace the
aery mountain steep. Then, as never before, did we see Cacus afraid and
his countenance troubled; he goes flying swifter than the wind and seeks
his cavern; fear wings his feet. As he shut himself in, and, bursting
the [226-260]chains, dropped the vast rock slung in iron by his
father's craft, and blocked the doorway with its pressure, lo! the
Tirynthian came in furious wrath, and, scanning all the entry, turned
his face this way and that and ground his teeth. Thrice, hot with rage,
he circles all Mount Aventine; thrice he assails the rocky portals in
vain; thrice he sinks down outwearied in the valley. There stood a sharp
rock of flint with sides cut sheer away, rising over the cavern's ridge
a vast height to see, fit haunt for foul birds to build on. This--for,
sloping from the ridge, it leaned on the left towards the river--he
loosened, urging it from the right till he tore it loose from its deep
foundations; then suddenly shook it free; with the shock the vast sky
thunders, the banks leap apart, and the amazed river recoils. But the
den, Cacus' huge palace, lay open and revealed, and the depths of gloomy
cavern were made manifest; even as though some force tearing earth apart
should unlock the infernal house, and disclose the pallid realms
abhorred of heaven, and deep down the monstrous gulf be descried where
the ghosts flutter in the streaming daylight. On him then, surprised in
unexpected light, shut in the rock's recesses and howling in strange
fashion, Alcides from above hurls missiles and calls all his arms to
ai