METAMORPHOSES BOOK VII deserts them and they see the end of their malady only in death, they indulge their desires, and they have no care for what is best-for nothing is best. Everywhere, shameless they lie, in fountain-basins, in streams and roomy wells; nor by drinking is their thirst quenched so long as life remains. Many of these are too weak to rise, and die in the very water; and yet others drink even that water. To many poor wretches so great is the irksomeness of their hatefub beds that they jump out, or, if they have not strength enough to stand, they roll out on the ground. They flee from their own homes: for each man's home seems a place of death to him. Since the cause of the disease is hidden, that small spot is held to blame. You might have seen them wandering half dead along the ways while they could keep on their feet, others lying on the ground and weeping bitterly,turning their dull eyes upward with a last weak effort, and stretch- ing out their arms to the sky that hung over them like a pall-here, there, wherever death has caught them, breathing out their lives.
- " What were my feelings then? Was it not natural
s? Wherever I turned my eyes there was a confused heap of dead, as mellow apples fall when the boughs are shaken, and acorns from the wind-tossed oak. You see a temple yonder, raised on high, approached by a long flight of steps. It is sacred to Jupiter. Who did not bear his fruitless offerings to those altars? How often a husband for his wife's sake, a father for his son, w hile still uttering his prayer, has died before the implacable altars, and in his hand a portion of the incense was unused! How often the sacrificial bulls brought to the temples, while yet the priest was praying and pouring pure wine between their 383 that I should hate life and long to be with my friend
