- ing with fresh carnage; fixed to its imperious portals
were hanging human countenances ghastly with hideous gore. This monster's father was Vulcan: Vulcan's were the murky fires that he disgorged from his mouth as he towered along in enormous bulk. To us also at length 5 in our yearning need time brought the arrival of a divine helper. For the mightiest of avengers, Alcides, triumphing in the slaughter and the spoils of the triple Geryon,[o] was in our land, and was driving by this road as a conqueror those giant oxen, and the cattle were filling valley 10 and river-side. But Cacus, infatuated by fiendish frenzy, not to leave aught of crime or craft undared or unessayed, carries off from the stalls four bulls of goodly form, and heifers no fewer of surpassing beauty. And these, that they might leave no traces by their forward motion, he 15 dragged by the tail to his cave, haled them with reversed footprints to tell the story, and so concealed them in the dark rocky den. Thus the seeker found no traces to lead him to the cavern. Meantime, when Amphitryon's son was at last removing from their stalls his feasted herds 20 and preparing to quit the country, the oxen gave a farewell low, filling the whole woodland with their plainings, and taking clamorous leave of the hills. One of the heifers returned the sound, lowing from the depth of the vast cavern, and thus baffled the hopes of her jealous 25 guardian. Now, if ever, Alcides' wrath blazed up from the black choler of his heart: he snatches up his weapons and his club with all its weight of knots, and makes at full speed for the skyey mountain's height. Then first the men of our country saw Cacus' limbs tremble and his 30 eyes quail: away he flies swifter than the wind, and seeks his den; fear has winged his feet. Scarce had he shut himself in, and let down from its burst fastenings the huge stone, suspended there by his father's workmanship in iron, and with that barrier fortified his straining doorway, 35 when lo! the hero of Tiryns[o] was there in the fury of his soul: scanning every inlet he turns his face hither and thither, gnashing with his teeth. Thrice in white
