the wicked design, and to restrain the cruel axe. The Thessalian eyes
him, and says, 'Take the reward of thy pious intentions,' and turns the
axe from the tree upon the man, and hews off his head; and {then} hacks
at the oak again; when such words as these are uttered from the middle
of the oak: 'I, a Nymph,[95] most pleasing to Ceres, am beneath this
wood; I, {now} dying, foretell to thee that the punishment of thy deeds,
the solace of my death, is at hand.'

"He pursued his wicked design; and, at last, weakened by numberless
blows, and pulled downward with ropes, the tree fell down, and with its
weight levelled a great part of the wood. All her sisters, the Dryads,
being shocked at the loss of the grove and their own, in their grief
repaired to Ceres, in black array,[96] and requested the punishment of
Erisicthon. She assented to their {request}, and the most beauteous
Goddess, with the nodding of her head, shook the fields loaded with the
heavy crops; and contrived {for him} a kind of punishment, lamentable,
if he had not, for his crimes, been deserving of the sympathy of none,
{namely}, to torment him with deadly Famine. And since that Goddess
could not be approached by herself (for the Destinies do not allow Ceres
and Famine to come together), in such words as these she addressed
rustic Oreas, one of the mountain Deities: 'There is an icy region in
the extreme part of Scythia, a dreary soil, a land, desolate, without
corn {and} without trees; there dwell drowsy Cold, and Paleness, and
Trembling, and famishing Hunger; order her to bury herself in the breast
of this sacrilegious {wretch}. Let no abundance of provisions overcome
her; and let her surpass my powers in the contest. And that the length
of the road may not alarm thee, take my chariot, take the dragons, which
thou mayst guide aloft with the reins;' and {then} she gave them to her.

"She, borne through the air on the chariot {thus} granted, arrived in
Scythia; and, on the top of a steep mountain (they call it Caucasus),
she unyoked the neck of the dragons, and beheld Famine, whom she was
seeking, in a stony field, tearing up herbs, growing here and there,
with her nails and with her teeth. Rough was her hair, her eyes hollow,
paleness on her face, her lips white with scurf,[97] her jaws rough with
rustiness; her skin hard, through which her bowels might be seen; her
dry bones were projecting beneath her crooked loins; instead of a belly,
there was {only} t