So the girl spoke, as the bull ferried her on his back.
Then Cadmos, passing in his travels from land to land, followed the never-staying tracks of the bull turned bridesman. He came to the bloodstained cave of Arima, when the mountains had moved from their seats and were beating at the gate of inexpugnable Olympos, when the gods took wing above the rainless Nile, like a flight of birds far out of reach, caring their strange track in the winds of heaven, and the seven zones of the sky were sore assailed.
This was the reason. Zeus Cronides had hurried to Pluto’s bed,” to beget Tantalos, that mad robber of the heavenly cups ; and he laid his celestial weapons well hidden with his lightning in a deep cavern. From underground the thunderbolts belched out smoke, the white cliff was blackened ; hidden sparks from a fire-barbed arrow heated the water-springs ; torrents boiling with foam and steam poured down the Mygdonian gorge, until it boomed again.
Then at a nod from his mother, the Earth, Cilician Typhoeus stretched out his hands, and stole the snowy tools of Zeus, the tools of fire; then spreading his row of rumble-rattling throats, he’ yelled as his watery the cries of all wild beasts together : the snakes that grew from him waved over his leopards’ heads, licked the grim lions’ manes, girdled with their curly tails spiral-wise round the bulls” horns, mingled the shooting poison of their, long thin tongues with the foam-spittle of the boars.
Now he laid the gear of Cronides in a cubbyhole of the rock, and spread the harvest of his clambering hands into the upper air. And that battalion of hands! One throttled Cynosuris beside the ankle-tip of Olympos ; one gripped the Parrhasian Bear’s mane as she rested on heaven’s axis, and dragged her off; another caught the Oxdrover and knocked him out ; another dragged Phosphoros, and in vain under the circling turning-post sounded the whistling of the heavenly lash in the morning; he carried off the Dawn, and held in the Bull, so that timeless, half-complete, horsewoman Season rested her team. And in the shadowy curls of his serpent-hair heads the light was mingled with gloom; the Moon shone rising in broad day with the Sun.
Still there was no rest. The Giant turned back, and passed from north to south; he left one pole and stood by the other. With a long arm he grasped the Charioteer, and flogged the back of hail-storming Aigoceros ; he dragged the two Fishes out of the sky and cast them into the sea; he buffeted the Ram, that midnipple star of Olympos, who balances with equal pin day and darkness over the fiery orb of his spring-time neighbour. With trailing feet Typhoeus mounted close to the clouds : spreading abroad the far-scattered host of his arms, he shadowed the bright radiance of the unclouded sky by darting forth his tangled army of snakes. One of them ran up right through the rim of the polar circuit and skipt upon the backbone of the heavenly Serpent, hissing his mortal challenge. One made for Cepheus’s daughter,” and with starry fingers twisting a ring as close as the other, enchained Andromeda, bound already, with a second bond aslant under her bands. Another, a horned serpent, entwined about the forked horns of the Bull’s horned head of shape like his own, and dangled coiling over the Bull’s brow, tormenting with open jaws the Hyades opposite ranged like a crescent moon. Poison-spitting tangles of serpents in a bunch girdled the Ox-drover. Another made a bold leap, when he saw another Snake in Olympos, and jumped around the Ophiuchos’s arm that held the viper; then curving his neck and coiling his crawling belly, he braided a second chaplet about Ariadne’s crown. Then Typhoeus many-armed turned to both ends, shaking with his host of arms the girdle of Zephyros and the wing of Euros opposite, dragging first Phosphoros, then Hesperos and the crest of Atlas. Many a time in the weedy gulf he seized Poseidon’s chariot, and dragged it from the depths of the sea to land ; again he pulled out a stallion by his brine-soaked mane from the undersea manger, and threw the vagabond nag to the vault of heaven, shooting his shot at Olympos— hit the Sun’s chariot, and the horses on their round whinnied under the yoke. Many a time he took a bull at rest from his rustic plow-tree and shook him with a threatening hand, bellow as he would, then shot him against the Moon like another moon, and stayed her course, then rushed hissing against the goddess, checking with the bridle her bulls’ white yokestraps, while he poured out the mortal whistle of a poison-spitting viper.
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