Stern Neptune, in amazement and anger, thrice reared his head above the shrinking waves where his fishes all were dying, and thrice the fierce flames drove him back.
At length Earth, wrapped in her scalding seas, uplifting her scorching brows, appealed to Jupiter.
"See how fierce vapors choke my breath; see my singed hair, my withered face, the heaps of cinders that defile my fair body.... Have pity."
Jupiter heard her prayer. He mounted his high ethereal throne, called all powers, even the god whose son drove the chariot, to witness that what he did he was compelled to do, and launched a thunderbolt at the head of the despairing Phaeton.
Thus with fire the god of gods suppressed the raging fire. Lifeless from the chariot the boy fell like a falling star, and his charred body dropped to the earth far from his own land, far in the western world, beside the river Po.
The horses broke loose from their harness, the chariot was splintered into a thousand shining fragments and scattered far over the steaming earth.
And the story goes, that for the space of one whole day, from morn till eve, the world existed without a sun, lighted only by the lurid glare of the burning ruins.
Beside the waters of the river the Latian nymphs came round and gazed with awe upon the dead youth. His charred body they inclosed in a marble urn and wrote on it an epitaph:
"Here lies a youth as beautiful as brave,
Who through the heavens his father's chariot drave."
His mother Clymené, frantic with grief, ceased not to roam the world, followed by her weeping daughters, until at last she came to the banks of Po, and found there the sculptured urn. She hung above it, bedewing the marble with her tears, crying aloud the name so dear to her. Her daughters stood around, weeping and lamenting with her. All night long they kept their watch, and returning day found them still calling on their brother's name. Four days and nights they kept their stand, till at length, when for their weariness they would have sought rest, they found they could not move. Phaethusa's arms were covered with hardening bark and branching boughs; Lampetia stood rooted to the ground; Æglé, as she tore her hair, only filled her hands with leaves. While their faces were yet untransformed, they cried to their mother for help. But, alas! she was powerless. She tore the bark from their fair bodies, she stripped the leaves from their sprouting fingers, she clung to their hardening limbs in vain. Only blood came trickling where she tore away the leaves and bark, and in faint voices the maidens cried that she only wounded her daughters when she tore their trees.