I saw Nimrod at the foot of his great toil, as if bewildered, and gazing at the people who in Shinar had with him been proud.
O Niobe! with what grieving eyes did I see thee portrayed upon the road between thy seven and seven children slain!
O Saul! how on thine own sword here didst thou appear dead on Gilboa, that after felt not rain or dew![1]
[1] I Samuel, xxxi. 4, and 2 Samuel, i. 24.
O mad Arachne,[1] so I saw thee already half spider, wretched on the shreds of the work that to thy harm by thee was made!
[1] Changed to a spider by Athena, whom she had challenged to a trial of skill at the loom.
O Rehoboam! here thine image seems not now to threaten, but full of fear, a chariot bears it away before any one pursues it.[1]
[1] 1 Kings, xii. 13-18.
The hard pavement showed also how Alcmaeon made the ill-fated ornament seem costly to his mother.[1]
[1] Amphiaraus, the soothsayer, foreseeing his own death if he went to the Theban war, hid himself to avoid being forced to go. His wife, Eriphyle, bribed by a golden necklace, betrayed his hiding-place, and was killed by her son Alcmaeon, for thus bringing about his father’s death.