"Then Prometheus in pitying accents said, 'Listen now to me, and I will tell thee, Io, what other sorrows thou must bear from Here; for it is she who brought this woe upon thee and who hounds thee thus from land to land. Thou shalt journey onward from these mountain regions through the Scythian land, and the region of the uncouth Chalybes who work in iron. Thence thou shalt cross the mountains to the dwelling-place of the Amazons, who shall lead thee to the place where the ocean-gates are narrowest. There thou shalt plunge into the waves, and swim with fearlessness of heart to Asia's shore. And that strait shall by its name, Bosphorus, tell to latest ages the story of thy wandering. But what I have told thee is only the beginning of thy doom.'
"'Were it not better to die,' she asked, 'than to endure this hopeless misery?'
"'Not so, O maiden,' answered the Titan; 'for if thou livest, then a son of thine shall loose me from my fetters, and perchance shall shake the throne of Zeus himself. When thou hast crossed the sea-ways which part the continent, thou shalt wander on until thou hast reached the outmost islands where the Gorgons dwell; then returning thou shalt pass through the country of the griffins and the region of Ethiopia, and shalt come at last to the three-cornered ground where flows the Nile. There thou shalt rest, and thy maiden form with all its comeliness shall be thine again. In Canobus, a fair city by the sea, shall a home be made for thee; and there shall Epaphos thy son be born, from whom in after-times shall spring great Heracles, who shall break my bonds and set me free from these hated fetters.'
"Then Io, with a sigh of mingled hope and despair, went on her weary way, and left Prometheus alone again in the everlasting solitudes. And the wild eagles swooped down from their high-built nests, and circled with threatening screams about him; a grim vulture flapped its wings in his face, and buried its talons in his bosom; a mighty storm came hurtling down through the mountain passes; the earth shook to and fro, and the peaks of Caucasus seemed as if toppling to their base; a hurricane of snow and hail and rattling ice smote the Titan about the head, and wrapped his body in eddying gusts; the lightnings leaped with lurid glare athwart the sky, and the thunders crashed with deafening roar among the crags; and earth and air and sea seemed blent together in a mighty turmoil, and whirling into utter chaos. Yet, in the midst of all, the old Titan quailed not; but with voice serene and strong he sang of the day when right shall triumph over might, when truth shall trample error in the dust, and the reign of Zeus give place to that of a nobler monarch just and perfect in all his ways.