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 METAMORPHOSES BOOKVII are wont to roar, or as limestones burned in the lime. kiln hiss and grow hot when water is poured upon them; so did the bulls' chests and parched throats rumble with the fires pent up within. Nevertheless the son of Aeson went forward to meet them. As he came towards them the fierce beasts turned upon him terrible faces and sharp horns tipped with iron, pawed the dusty earth with their cloven feet, and filled the place with their fiery bellowings. The Minyans were stark with fear; he went up to the bulls, not feeling their hot breath at all, so great is the power of charmed drugs; and stroking their hanging dew laps with fearless hand, he placed the yoke on their necks and made them draw the heavy plow and cut through the field that had never felt steel before. The Colchians are amazed; but the Minyans shouted aloud and increased their hero's courage. Next he took from a brazen helmet the serpent's teeth and sowed them broadcast in the plowed field. The earth softened these seeds steeped in virulent oison and the sown teeth swelled up and took on ne forms. And just as in its mother's body an infart gradually assumes human form, and is perfected within through all its parts, and does not come forth to the common air until it is fully formed; so, when the forms of men had been completed in the womb of the pregnant earth, they rose up on the teeming soil and, what is yet more wonderful, each clashed weapons that had been brought forth with him. When the Greeks saw them preparing to hurl sharp-pointed spears at the head of the Thessalian hero, their faces fell with fear and their hearts failed them. She also, who had safeguarded him, was sore afraid; and when she saw him, one man, attacked by so many foes, she grew pale, and 351