Two cypresses in the grass hard by raised their inviolate heads to heaven; Simois looks not on such in amaze amid the crags of Ida, nor does Orontes water their like, Orontes that feeds Apollo’s grove and harbours rich cities on his banks. You would know them for sisters for they tower equal in height and look down upon the wood with twin tops. These she would have as torches; she attacks each with vigorous blows, her gown girt back, her arms bared and armed with the axe. First one she strikes, then the other, and rains blows upon their trembling trunks with might and main. Together they crash to the ground, lay their foliage in the dust and lie upon the plain, wept of Fauns and wood-nymphs. She seizes both just as they are, uplifts them and, with hair out-streaming behind her, climbs panting the slopes of the mountain, passes beyond the flames and inaccessible precipices, and treads the lava that brooks no mortal footstep: even as the grim Megaera hastens to kindle yew-trees to light her to crime, speeding her journey to the walls of Cadmus’ city or meaning to work her devilment in Thyestean Mycenae; darkness and the shades give her passage, and Hell rings to her iron tread, till she halts beside Phlegethon’s wave and fires her torch from its brimming waves.
When she had climbed to the mouth of the burning rock, straightway, turning aside her head, she thrust the kindling cypresses into its inmost depths, thus closing in the cavern on all sides and stopping up the
compresso mons igne tonat claususque laborat
Mulciber: obducti nequeunt exire vapores.
coniferi micuere apices crevitque favillis
Aetna novis: strident admisso sulphure rami.
tum, ne deficerent tantis erroribus, ignes 400
semper inocciduos insopitosque manere
iussit et arcano perfudit robora suco,