errantes agitare feras primumque gementi
Latonae struxere torum, cum lumina caeli
parturiens geminis ornaret fetibus orbem.
implorat Paeana suum conterrita Delos 125
auxiliumque rogat: “si te gratissima fudit
is this ice that creeps o’er all my limbs? What is this numbness that holds me prisoner in these marble fetters?” Scarce had he uttered these few words when he was what he feared, and savage Damastor, seeking a weapon wherewith to repel the foe, hurled at them in place of a rock his brother’s stony corpse.
Then Echion, marvelling, all ignorant, at his brother’s death, even as he seeks to assail the author of the deed, turned his gaze upon thee, goddess, whom alone no man may see twice. Beaten audacity well deserved its punishment and in death he learned to know the goddess. But Palleneus, mad with anger, turning his eyes aside, rushed at Minerva, striking at her with undirected sword. Nigh at hand the goddess smote him with her sword, and at the same time the snakes froze at the Gorgon’s glance, so that of one body a part was killed by a weapon and a part by a mere look.
Impious Porphyrion, carried by his serpents into the middle of the sea, tries to uproot trembling Delos, wishing to hurl it at the sky. The Aegean was affrighted; Thetis and her agèd sire fled from their watery caverns; the palace of Neptune, regarded with awe by all the denizens of the deep, lay deserted. The summit of Cynthus rang with the cries of the gentle nymphs who had taught Phoebus’ unpractised hand to shoot at the wandering beasts with his bow, they who first had prepared the bed for weeping Latona when, in labour with the lights of heaven, she blessed the world with twin offspring. Delos in terror called her lord Phoebus to help her and begged him for aid. “In remembrance of the