48
To wander like a god-devoted thing
Along earth's outmost tracts; and if he failed
A fiery thunderbolt would come from Zeus
And smite his whole race into nothingness.
Then, by such oracles of Loxias moved, 685 (687)
He drove me forth and closed his home to me,
We both unwilling, but the strong hand of Zeus
Despite himself constrained him to do this.
And instantly my shape and mind were, changed,
And, horned as you behold me now and galled 690 (692)
By the sharp stinging fly, with furious bounds
I hied me to Kerchneia's limpid stream
And Lerna's springs. And then an earth-born herdsman,
Hot in his furies, Argus, tracked my steps,
Gazing upon me with his countless eyes. 695 (697)
And him an unforeseen and sudden fate
Despoiled of life. But I, by the gad-fly spurred,
Beneath a scourge divine from land to land
Am driven on. Thou hearst the past, and now,
If thou canst tell what ills remain, say on, 700 (702)
And do not, pitying, soothe me with false tales.
For a mean fault methinks is specious talk.
