had herded them lay dead. Over Libya the horses took him, and the
desert of Libya remains a barren wilderness to this day, while those
sturdy Ethiopians who survived are black even now as a consequence of
that cruel heat. The Nile changed its course in order to escape, and
nymphs and nereids in terror sought for the sanctuary of some watery
place that had escaped destruction. The face of the burned and
blackened earth, where the bodies of thousands of human beings lay
charred to ashes, cracked and sent dismay to Pluto by the lurid light
that penetrated even to his throne.

All this Phaeton saw, saw in impotent agony of soul. His boyish folly
and pride had been great, but the excruciating anguish that made him
shed tears of blood, was indeed a punishment even too heavy for an
erring god.

From the havoc around her, the Earth at last looked up, and with
blackened face and blinded eyes, and in a voice that was harsh and
very, very weary, she called to Zeus to look down from Olympus and
behold the ruin that had been wrought by the chariot of the Sun. And
Zeus, the cloud-gatherer, looked down and beheld. And at the sight of
that piteous devastation his brow grew dark, and terrible was his
wrath against him who had held the reins of the chariot. Calling upon
Apollo and all the other gods to witness him, he seized a lightning
bolt, and for a moment the deathless Zeus and all the dwellers in
Olympus looked on the fiery chariot in which stood the swaying,
slight, lithe figure of a young lad, blinded with horror, shaken with
agony. Then, from his hand, Zeus cast the bolt, and the chariot was
dashed into fragments, and Phaeton, his golden hair ablaze, fell, like
a bright shooting star, from the heavens above, into the river
Eridanus. The steeds returned to their master, Apollo, and in rage and
grief Apollo lashed them. Angrily, too, and very rebelliously did he
speak of the punishment meted to his son by the ruler of the
Immortals. Yet in truth the punishment was a merciful one. Phaeton was
only half a god, and no human life were fit to live after the day of
dire anguish that had been his.

Bitter was the mourning of Clymene over her beautiful only son, and so
ceaselessly did his three sisters, the Heliades, weep for their
brother, that the gods turned them into poplar trees that grew by the
bank of the river, and, when still they wept, their tears turned into
precious amber as they fell. Yet another mourned for Phaeton--Phaet