The Consolation of Philosophy

The Hydra died, consumed by poison: ^k
The river Achelous, shamed in his brow, ^l
Sank his embarrassed face into the banks:
He laid low Antaeus on the Libyan sands: ^m
Cacus satisfied the anger of Evander: ⁿ
And those shoulders which the high heavens were about to press,
The bristly beast marked with foam: ^o

succumbed, its venom extinguished by flames. The Achelous river, disgraced in his face due to his torn-off horn, hid his shameful countenance in his own banks. The same Hercules killed Antaeus in the fields of Libya; Cacus, killed by the same Hercules, appeased the wrath of Evander, his adversary. The boar stained the shoulders of Hercules with its foam, which the high heaven

in some texts, "Fronte turpatus" disgraced in his brow, which reading the old Basel edition also retained, and which is confirmed by that of Seneca in Hercules Oetaeus, line 495 et seq. Sitzm. See Variorum Notes.

NOTES

But Hercules threw this tyrant to be devoured by the same horses.

^k The Hydra died, consumed by poison] The seventh labor of Hercules. The Hydra was a serpent not only long-lived on land, but also in water—whence it gets its name from ὕδωρ (water)—and it inhabited the Lernean marsh between Mycenae and Argos; wherefore it is called the Lernean plague. It had seven heads, or, as others prefer, fifty; if some were cut off, others would grow back in double the number. Hercules, however, by applying fire to each wound, finally killed the beast.

^l The river Achelous, shamed in his brow] The eighth labor of Hercules. Achelous, son of Oceanus and Tethys, fought with Hercules for Dejanira, daughter of Oeneus, King of Calydon. But Achelous, unequal in strength, first turned himself into a serpent, then into a bull, from which Hercules cut off a horn; this was given to the companion of fortune, Plenty. Whence Achelous, shamed by his one horn, hid himself in the river of the same name. There is no need for me to warn that here "turpatus" shamed/disgraced lengthens the final syllable due to the force of the caesura; of this there are infinite examples among the poets.

^m He laid low Antaeus on the Libyan sands] The ninth labor of Hercules. Antaeus, son of Neptune and the Earth, was endowed with such a body that he grew to forty cubits. When he contended with Hercules, as often as his limbs grew weak, he was refreshed by touching the earth. Observing this, Hercules held him in the air and killed him.

ⁿ Cacus satisfied the anger of Evander] The tenth labor of Hercules. Cacus, son of Vulcan, who infested Latium everywhere with his robberies, did not spare even Hercules himself. Indeed, he dragged the oxen of Hercules into his cave at night, with their tracks reversed for that reason. But warned by the lowing of the oxen, Hercules recovered the cattle and extinguished Cacus, avenging the injury of Evander, whose guest—or, as others wish, whose servant—Cacus had been.

^o The bristly beast marked [his] shoulders with foam] The eleventh labor of Hercules. The Erymanthian Boar in Arcadia, because it was of immense size, devastated the region everywhere. Hercules brought it to Eurystheus. But because that boar was not killed by Hercules at that time, it is therefore said here only that it "marked with foam" the shoulders of Hercules, which "the high heavens were about to press," since Hercules is said to have carried the heavens on his shoulders. Whence