Page:Metamorphoses.djvu/387

 METAMORPHOSES BOOK VII around his bed. " Why do you hesitate now, you laggards?" Medea said. "Come, draw your swords, and let out his old blood that I may refill his empty veins with young blood again. In your own hands rests your father's life and youth filial love, and if the hopes are not vain that you are cherishing, come, do your duty by your father; drive out age at your weapon's point; let out his enfeebled blood with the stroke of the steel." Spurred on by these words, as each was filial she became first in the unfilial act, and that she might not be wicked did the wicked deed. Nevertheless, none could bear to see her own blows; they turned their eyes away ; and so with averted faces they blindly struck with cruel hands. The old man, streaming with blood, still aised himself on his elbow and half mangled trie to get up from his bed; and with all those swords round himm, he stretched out his pale arms and cried: ' What are you doing, my daughters? What arms you to your father's death ?" Their courage left them, their hands fell. When he would have spoken further, the Colchian cut his throat and plunged his mangled bodv into the boiling water. . If you have anv But had she not gone away through the air drawn by her winged dragons, she would not have escaped punishment. High up she sped over shady Pelion, the hone of Chiron, over Othrys and the regions made famous by the adventure of old Cerambus. (He, by the aid of the nymphs borne up into the air on wings, at the time when the heavy earth had sunk beneath the overwhelming sea, escaped Deucalion's flood undrowned.) Aeolian Pitane she passed by on the left, with its huge serpent image made of stone; and Ida's grove, where Bacchus, to conceal his son's theft, changed the bullock into the seeming form of 867