blow produces an echo, as on a body of marble when struck; and the
shivered blade flies different ways, upon striking his neck.

"After Caeneus had enough exposed his unhurt limbs to him in his
amazement, 'Come now,' said he, 'let us try thy body with my steel;' and
up to the hilt he plunged his fatal sword into his shoulder-blade, and
extended his hand unseen into his entrails, and worked it about, and in
the wound made a {fresh} wound. Lo! the double-limbed {monsters,}
enraged, rush on in an impetuous manner, and all of them hurl and thrust
their weapons at him alone. Their weapons fall blunted. Unstabbed and
bloodless the Elateian Caeneus remains from each blow. This strange thing
makes them astonished. 'Oh great disgrace!' cries Monychus; 'a {whole}
people, we are overcome by one, and that hardly a man; although,
{indeed}, he is a man; and we by our dastardly actions, are what he
{once} was. What signify our huge limbs? What our twofold strength? What
that our twofold nature has united in us the stoutest animals in
existence? I neither believe that we are born of a Goddess for our
mother, nor of Ixion, who was so great a person, that he conceived hopes
of {even} the supreme Juno. By a half male foe are we baffled. Heap upon
him stones and beams, and entire mountains, and dash out his long-lived
breath, by throwing {whole} woods {upon him}. Let a {whole} wood press
on his jaws; and weight shall be in the place of wounds.'

"{Thus} he said; and by chance having got a tree, thrown down by the
power of the boisterous South wind, he threw it against the powerful
foe: and he was an example {to the rest}; and in a short time, Othrys,
thou wast bare of trees, and Pelion had no shades. Overwhelmed by this
huge heap, Caeneus swelters beneath the weight of the trees, and bears on
his brawny shoulders the piled-up oaks. But after the load has increased
upon his face and his head, and his breath has no air to draw; at one
moment he faints, at another he endeavours, in vain, to raise himself
into the {open} air, and to throw off the wood cast {upon him}: and
sometimes he moves it. Just as lo! we see, if lofty Ida is convulsed
with earthquakes. The event is doubtful. Some gave out that his body was
hurled to roomy Tartarus by the weight of the wood. The son of Ampycus
denied this, and saw go forth into the liquid air, from amid the pile,
a bird with tawny wings; which then was beheld by me for the first time,
then, {too}, for the