Advanced in years he died; one common date
His reign concluded, and his mortal state.
Their tears plebeians and patricians shed,
And pious matrons wept their monarch dead.
His mournful wife, her sorrows to bewail,
Withdrew from Rome, and sought the Arician vale:
Hid in thick woods, she made incessant moans,
Disturbing Cynthia’s sacred rites with groans.
How oft the nymphs, who ruled the wood and lake,
Reproved her tears, and words of comfort spake!
“How oft in vain,” the son of Theseus said,
“Thy stormy sorrows be with patience laid;
Nor are thy fortunes to be wept alone;
Weigh others’ woes, and learn to bear thine own.
Be mine an instance to assuage thy grief:
Would mine were none! yet mine may bring relief.
“You’ve heard, perhaps, in conversation told,
What once befell Hippolytus of old;
To death by Theseus’ easy faith betray’d,
And caught in snares his wicked stepdame laid.
The wondrous tale your credit scarce may claim,
Yet, strange to say, behold in me the same
Whom amorous Phaedra oft had press’d in vain,
My father’s honour and my own to stain;
Till, seized with fear, or by revenge inspired,
She charged on me the crimes herself desired.
Expell’d by Theseus, from his home I fled,
With heaps of curses on my guiltless head.
Forlorn, I sought Pitthean Troezen’s land,
And drove my chariot o’er Corinthus’ strand;
When from the surface of the level main
A billow rising, heaved above the plain,
Rolling and gathering, till so high it swell’d,
A mountain’s height the enormous mass excell’d;
Then bellowing, burst, when from the summit cleaved,
A horned bull his ample chest upheaved:
His mouth and nostrils storms of briny rain,
Expiring, blew. Dread horror seized my train.
I stood unmoved. My father’s cruel doom
Claim’d all my soul, nor fear could find a room.
Amazed, a while my trembling coursers stood,
With prick’d-up ears, contemplating the flood;
Then, starting sudden from the dreadful view,
At once like lightning from the seas they flew,
And o’er the craggy rocks the chariot drew.
In vain to stop the hot-mouthed steeds I tried,
And, bending backward, all my strength applied;
The frothy foam in driving flakes distains
The bits and bridles, and bedews the reins.
But though as yet untamed they run, at length
Their heady rage had tired beneath my strength,
When in the spokes a stump entangling, tore
The shatter’d wheel, and from its axle bore.
The shock impetuous toss’d me from the seat,
Caught in the reins, beneath my horses’ feet;
Then stretch’d, the well-knit limbs in pieces haled;
Part stuck behind, and part the chariot trail’d,
Till, midst my cracking joints and breaking bones,
I breathed away my wearied soul in groans.
No part distinguish’d from the rest was found,
But all my parts a universal wound.
“Now say, self-tortured nymph, can you compare
Our griefs as equal, or in justice dare?
I saw besides the darksome realms of wo,
And bathed my wounds in smoking streams below.
There I had stay’d, nor second life enjoy’d,
But Paean’s son his wondrous art employ’d.
To light restored, by medicinal skill,
In spite of fate, and rigid Pluto’s will,
The invidious object to preserve from view,
A misty cloud around me Cynthia threw;
And lest my sight should stir my foes to rage,
She stamp’d my visage with the marks of age.
My former hue was changed, and for it shown
A set of features and a face unknown.
A while the goddess stood in doubt, or Crete,
Or Delos’ isle, to choose for my retreat.
Delos and Crete refused, this wood she chose,
Bade me my former luckless name depose,
Which kept alive the memory of my woes;
Then said, ‘Immortal life be thine, and thou,
Hippolytus once call’d, be Virbius now.’
Here then a god, but of the inferior race,
I serve my goddess, and attend her chase.”