they, in their rage, have seized upon these, and have torn to
pieces the oxen with their threatening horns, they return to the
destruction of the bard; and they impiously murder him, extending his
hands, and then for the first time uttering words in vain, and making no
effect on them with his voice. And (Oh Jupiter!) through those lips
listened to by rocks, and understood by the senses of wild beasts, his
life breathed forth, departs into the breezes.[3] The mournful birds,
the crowd of wild beasts, the hard stones, the woods that oft had
followed thy song bewailed thee. Trees, {too}, shedding their foliage,
mourned thee, losing their leaves. They say, too, that rivers swelled
with their own tears; and the Naiads and Dryads had mourning garments of
dark colour, and dishevelled hair. The limbs lie scattered[4] in various
places. Thou, Hebrus, dost receive the head and the lyre; and (wondrous
{to relate}!) while it rolls down the midst of the stream, the lyre
complains in I know not what kind of mournful strain. His lifeless
tongue, {too}, utters a mournful sound, {to which} the banks mournfully
reply. And now, borne onward to the sea, they leave their native stream,
and reach the shores of Methymnaean Lesbos.[5] Here an infuriated serpent
attacks the head thrown up on the foreign sands, and the hair
besprinkled with the oozing blood. At last Phoebus comes to its aid, and
drives it away as it tries to inflict its sting, and hardens the open
jaws of the serpent into stone, and makes solid its gaping mouth just as
it is. His ghost descends under the earth, and he recognizes all the
spots which he has formerly seen; and seeking Eurydice through the
fields of the blessed, he finds her, and enfolds her in his eager arms.
Here, one while, they walk together side by side,[6] and at another time
he follows her as she goes before, and {again} at another time, walking
in front, precedes her; and now, in safety, Orpheus looks back upon his
own Eurydice.

Yet Lyaeus did not suffer this wickedness to go unpunished; and grieving
for the loss of the bard of his sacred rites, he immediately fastened
down in the woods, by a twisting root, all the Edonian matrons who had
committed this crime. For he drew out the toes of her feet, just as each
one had pursued him, and thrust them by their sharp points into the
solid earth. And, as when a bird has entangled its leg in a snare, which
the cunning fowler has concealed, and perceives that it is