Page:The Aeneid of Virgil JOHN CONINGTON 1917 V2.pdf/223

 heat of wrath he surveys the whole mass of Aventine; thrice he attempts in vain the stony portal; thrice, staggering from the effort, he sits down in the hollow. Before him stood a pointed crag with abrupt rocky sides rising over the cave behind, high as the eye can reach, a     5 fitting home for the nests of unclean and hateful birds. This, as sloping down it inclined towards the river on the left, pushing it full on the right he upheaved and tore it loose from its seat, then suddenly sent it down, with a shock at which high heaven thunders, the banks start     10 apart, and the river runs back in terror. Then the cave and the vast halls of Cacus were seen unroofed, and the dark recesses lay open to their depths—even as if earth, by some mighty force laid open to her depths, should burst the doors of the mansions below, and expose the     15 realms of ghastly gloom which the gods hate, and from above the vast abyss were to be seen, and the spectres dazzled by the influx of day. So as Cacus stares surprised by the sudden burst of light, pent by the walls of his cave, and roars in strange and hideous sort, Alcides     20 from above showers down his darts, and calls every weapon to his aid, and rains a tempest of boughs and huge millstones. But he, seeing that no hope of flight remains, vomits from his throat huge volumes of smoke, marvellous to tell, and wraps the whole place in pitchy     25 darkness, blotting out all prospect from the eyes, and in the depth of the cave masses a smothering night of blended blackness and fire. The rage of Alcides brooked not this: headlong he dashed through the flame, where the smoke surges thickest and the vast cavern seethes with billows     30 of black vapour. Here while Cacus in the heart of the gloom is vomiting his helpless fires he seizes him, twines his limbs with his own, and in fierce embrace compresses his strangled eyeballs and his throat now bloodless and dry. At once the doors are burst and the black den laid     35 bare, and the plundered oxen, the spoil that his oath had disclaimed, are exposed to light, and the hideous carcase is dragged out by the heels. The gazers look unsatisfied