The Gelludes, the Strygii, the Empusæ, all the infernal goddesses, form one pyramid of blended fangs, vipers, and torches;—and seated upon a vulture-skin at its summit, Eurynome, blue as the flies that corrupt meat, devours her own arms.
Then in one great whirl simultaneously disappear the bloody Orthia, Hymina of Orchomenus, the Laphria of the Patræns, Aphia of Agina, Bendis of Thrace, Stymphalia with thighs like a bird's. Triopas, in lieu of three eyes, has now but three empty orbits. Erichthonius, his legs paralysed, crawls upon his hands like a cripple.)
Hilarion. "What a pleasure, is it not!—to see them all in the abjection of their death-agony! Climb up here beside me, on this rock; and thou shalt be even as Xerxes, reviewing his army.
"Beyond there, very far, dost thou behold that fair-bearded giant, who even now lets fall his sword crimsoned with blood?—that is the Scythian Zalmoxis between two planets,—Artimpasa, Venus, and Orsiloche, the Moon.
"Still further away, now emerging from pallid clouds, are the gods whom the Cimmerians adore, even beyond Thule.
"Their huge halls were warm, and by the gleam of swords that tapestried the vault, they drank their hydromel from horns of ivory. They ate the liver of the whale in dishes of brass wrought by the hammers of demons; or, betimes, they listened to captive sorcerers whose fingers played upon harps of stone.
"They are feeble! They are cold! The snow makes heavy their bearskins; and their feet show through the rents in their sandals.
"They weep for the vast fields upon whose grassy knolls they were wont to draw breath in pauses of battle; they weep for the long ships whose prows forced a way through the mountains of ice;—and the skates wherewith they followed the orb of the poles, upbearing at the length of their mighty arms all the firmament that turned with them."
(A gust of frosty wind carries them off. Anthony turns his eyes another way. And he perceives—outlined in black against a red background—certain strange personages, with chinbands and gauntlets, who throw balls at one another, leap over each other's heads, make grimaces, dance a frenzied dance.)
Hilarion. "Those are the divinities of Etruria, the innumerable Æsars.