In the vale of Enna there is a lake embowered in woods, which screen it from the fervid rays of the sun, while the moist ground is covered with flowers, and Spring reigns perpetual. Now do you, if you have any regard for your own interest or mine, join these two in one." The boy unbound his quiver, and selected his sharpest and truest arrow then straining the bow against his knee, he attached the string, and, having made ready, shot the arrow with its barbed point right into the heart of Pluto. Do you not see that even in heaven some despise our power? Minerva the wise, and Diana the huntress, defy us and there is that daughter of Ceres, who threatens to follow their example. Why should he alone escape? Seize the opportunity to extend your empire and mine. While he was thus engaged, Venus, who was sitting on Mount Eryx playing with her boy Cupid, espied him, and said, "My son, take your darts with which you conquer all, even Jove himself, and send one into the breast of yonder dark monarch, who rules the realm of Tartarus. Under this apprehension, he mounted his chariot, drawn by black horses, and took a circuit of inspection to satisfy himself of the extent of the damage. The fall of these monsters shook the earth, so that Pluto was alarmed, and feared that his kingdom would be laid open to the light of day. Their breath comes up through the mountain, and is what men call the eruption of the volcano. They were finally subdued and buried alive under Mount Ætna, where they still sometimes struggle to get loose, and shake the whole island with earthquakes. Some of them had a hundred arms, others breathed out fire. They were the giants Typhon, Briareus, Enceladus, and others. When Jupiter and his brothers had defeated the Titans and banished them to Tartarus, a new enemy rose up against the gods. Bedtime and campfire stories from way, way back in the dayĬheck out our buddy Thomas Bulfinch's version of "Persephone, Demeter, and Hades" from The Age of Fable :
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