Page:The Music of the Spheres.djvu/36

 final effort to storm the home of the Gods, but Jupiter, hurling his thunderbolts, struck Ossa from under Pelion and buried the giants beneath the ponderous mass. The violence of this battle shook the foundations of the world:

Only one giant escaped, a terrible monster named Typhon, who picked up a whole mountain in a paroxysm of supernatural rage and hurled it at his adversaries. He was finally subdued, after a terrible struggle, by a thunderbolt from Olympus, which knocked him into the sea. There the gods lashed him with the Lightnings of Jupiter and heaped the vast three-cornered island of Sicily upon his limbs, two of the corners weighing down his arms and the third one crushing his feet, while his head was entombed beneath Mount Etna which hurled off its crown to let out his fiery breath. The lame god Vulcan took advantage of this situation and henceforth used the location for his workshop where he forged many wonderful works of art within its fires.

This last war left Jupiter reigning in peace. He was the greatest of the deities, the king of gods and men; he watched over the state and family; his hand wielded the lightnings and guided the stars; and, in short, he regulated the whole course of Nature. Since the world soon became far enough advanced to understand natural phenomena, he was also the last of the Olympian rulers. He is probably the best known of any of the gods and one finds many of the stories of his loves and adventures immortalized in the skies. His daughter Urania was the Muse of