The Age of Fable, Thomas Bulfinch [mini ebook reader TXT] 📗

his right hand launched it against the charioteer, and struck him at the same moment from his seat and from existence! Phaeton, with his hair on fire, fell headlong, like a shooting star which marks the heavens with its brightness as it falls, and Eridanus, the great river, received him and cooled his burning frame. The Italian Naiads reared a tomb for him, and inscribed these words upon the stone:

"Driver of Phoebus' chariot Phaeton, Struck by Jove's thunder, rests beneath this stone. He could not rule his father's car of fire, Yet was it much so nobly to aspire"

[Footnote: See Proverbial Expressions]

His sisters, the Heliades, as they lamented his fate, were turned into poplar trees, on the banks of the river, and their tears