1 Fate withstands, and lays divine bars on unmoved mortal ears.
2 The gods in Jove's house pity the vain rage of either and all the agonising of mortals.
3 Truly I think my wounds are yet to come, and I thy child am keeping some mortal weapons idle.
4 If you slight human kinship and mortal arms, yet look for gods unforgetful of innocence and guilt.
5 Thus Apollo began, and yet speaking retreated from mortal view, vanishing into thin air away out of their eyes.
6 No gods are they who bear us down; mortals, we feel the pressure of a mortal foe; we have as many lives and hands as he.
7 No gods are they who bear us down; mortals, we feel the pressure of a mortal foe; we have as many lives and hands as he.
8 As these words left his lips the Cyllenian, yet speaking, quitted mortal sight and vanished into thin air away out of his eyes.
9 Look, for all the cloud that now veils thy gaze and dulls mortal vision with damp encircling mist, I will rend from before thee.
10 Then the Lord omnipotent, indignant that any mortal should rise from the nether shades to the light of life, launched his thunder and hurled down to the Stygian water the Phoebus-born, the discoverer of such craft and cure.
11 After hunger is driven from the banquet, and the board cleared, they talk with lingering regret of their lost companions, swaying between hope and fear, whether they may believe them yet alive, or now in their last agony and deaf to mortal call.
12 Tarchon flies like fire over the plain, carrying the armed man, and breaks off the steel head from his own spear and searches the uncovered places, trying where he may deal the mortal blow; the other struggling against him keeps his hand off his throat, and strongly parries his attack.
13 As he speaks thus he raises himself painfully on his thigh, and though the violence of the deep wound cripples him, yet unbroken he bids his horse be brought, his beauty, his comfort, that ever had carried him victorious out of war, and says these words to the grieving beast: 'Rhoebus, we have lived long, if aught at all lasts long with mortals.'
14 Rumour is that in his headlong hurry, when mounting behind his yoked horses to begin the battle, he left his father's sword behind and caught up his charioteer Metiscus' weapon; and that served him long, while Teucrian stragglers turned their backs; when it met the divine Vulcanian armour, the mortal blade like brittle ice snapped in the stroke; the shards lie glittering upon the yellow sand.