He
continued to drag a wretched life above the earth, haunted by the dreadful
Furies. There was Leda, the wife of Tyndarus, the mother of the beautiful
Helen, and of the two brave brothers Castor and Pollux, who obtained this
grace from Jove, that, being dead, they should enjoy life alternately,
living in pleasant places under the earth. For Pollux had prayed that his
brother Castor, who was subject to death, as the son of Tyndarus, should
partake of his own immortality, which he derived from an immortal sire.
This the Fates denied; therefore Pollux was permitted to divide his
immortality with his brother Castor, dying and living alternately.
There was Iphimedia, who bore two sons to Neptune that were giants, Otus
and Ephialtes: Earth in her prodigality never nourished bodies to such
portentous size and beauty as these two children were of, except Orion. At
nine years old they had imaginations of climbing to heaven to see what the
gods were doing; they thought to make stairs of mountains, and were for
piling Ossa upon Olympus, and setting Pelion upon that, and had perhaps
performed it, if they had lived till they were striplings; but they were
cut off by death in the infancy of their ambitious project. Phaedra was
there, and Procris, and Ariadne, mournful for Theseus's desertion, and
Maera, and Clymene, and Eryphile, who preferred gold before wedlock faith.
But now came a mournful ghost, that late was Agamemnon, son of Atreus, the
mighty leader of all the host of Greece and their confederate kings that
warred against Troy.
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