Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/106

98 vain defence of her winding recesses the viper perishes, and the snake with scales stiffened in dismay: to the very birds the air is cruel, and they drop, leaving their life high under the clouds. Furthermore, no change of food is now aught of avail, and arts are sought but for harm; Chiron son of Phillyra and Amythaonian Melampus give up their mastery. Loosed into daylight from Stygian gloom wan Tisiphone maddens, and drives plague and panic before her, and day by day towers insatiate with higher uplifted head; river and parched bank and couchant hill echo with incessant lowings and bleating of flocks. And now she deals destruction in battalions, and heaps the very folds with carcases rotting in foul decay, till men learn to cover them with earth and hide them out of sight in pits. For neither might the hides be used nor can any one dissolve or consume the flesh in water or flame: not even can they shear the fleeces, eaten through by corruption of the pestilence, nor set hand to the rotten web: nay, even if any had braved so abhorred a garment burning pustules and foul-smelling sweat overran his limbs, and in no long space of delay thereafter the fatal fire devoured his infected frame.