praemia digna manent: nullos patiere ligones
et nullo rigidi versabere vomeris ictu.
sponte tuus florebit ager; cessante iuvenco
rock? Whence flows forth that fiery stream? Whether it be that the wind, forcing its way past hidden barriers, rages amid the fissured rocks that seek to bar its passage and, seeking a way of escape, sweeps the crumbling caverns with its wandering blasts in its bid for freedom, or that the sea, flowing in through the bowels of the sulphurous mountain, bursts into flame when its waters are compressed and casts up great rocks, I know not.
When the loving mother had entrusted her charge to the secret keeping of Henna she went freed from care to visit tower-crowned Cybele in her Phrygian home, driving a car drawn by twining serpents which cleave the pervious clouds on their wingèd course and fleck the bit with harmless poison. Their heads are crested and spots of green mottle their backs while sparkling gold glints amid their scales. Now they swim circling through the air, now they skim the fields with low-driven course. The passing wheels sow the plough-land with golden grain and their track grows yellow with corn. Sprouting stalks cover their traces and attendant crops clothe the path of the goddess.
Now is left behind Aetna, and all Sicily sinks lessening into the distance. Ah, how often, foreknowing of coming ill, did she mar her cheek with welling tears; how often look back upon her home with words like these: “Be happy, dear land, dearer than heaven to me, into thy safe keeping I commend my daughter, my sole joy, loved fruit of my labour. No despicable reward shall be thine, for thou shalt suffer no hoe nor shall the cruel iron of the ploughshare know thy soil. Untilled thy fields shall bear fruit, and though thine oxen plough not, a richer
ditior oblatas mirabitur incola messes.” 200
sic ait et fulvis tetigit serpentibus Idam.