The Age of Fable

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