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Hercules, prepared to die, ascended Mount OEta, where he built a funeral pile of trees, gave his bow and arrows to Philoctetes, and laid himself down on the pile, his head resting on his club, and his lion's skin spread over him. With a countenance as serene as if he were taking his place at a festal board, he commanded Philoctetes to apply the torch.
Behold now the melancholy train cross the flats of Thrace, and wind through the defiles, and over the mountains of Macedonia, coast the clear waves of the Peneus, cross the Larissean plain, pass the straits of Thermopylae, and ascending in succession Oeta and Parnassus, descend to the fertile plain of Athens.
He steered by the peak of Othrys and a spur of Oeta, as he had learnt from a slave who had travelled the road. Presently he was in the muddy Malian waters, and the sun was scattering the mist on the landward side. And then he became aware of a greater commotion than Poseidon's play with the ships off Pelion. A murmur like a winter's storm came seawards.
Full of joy I came from Epidaurus; but with shame To Epidaurus must retrace my steps. Despair I take with me. Alas, my people! E'en to the second Deluge now the plague May rage at will, may pile mount Oeta high With corpses upon corpses, and may turn All Greece into one mighty charnel-house, Ere Semele can bend the angry gods. I, thou, and Greece, and all, have been betrayed!
Before us, blue and dark under a weight of clouds, lay Parnassus; and far across the immense plain the blue peaks of Mount Oeta. In three hours we reached the foot of Helicon, and looked up at the streaks of snow which melt into the Fountain of the Muses....
It is the same with Aetolia: there you will find Althaea, Meleager, Atalanta, and the fatal brand; the strife of Achelous with Heracles, the birth of the Sirens, the origin of the Echinades, those islands on which Alcmaeon dwelt after his frenzy was past; and, following these, the story of Nessus, and of Deianira's jealousy, which brought Heracles to the pyre upon Oeta.
On the following day the attack was renewed, but with no better success: and Xerxes was beginning to despair of forcing his way through the pass, when a Malian, of the name of Ephialtes, betrayed to the Persian king that there was an unfrequented path across Mount OEta, ascending on the northern side of the mountain and descending on the southern side near the termination of the pass.
A few narrow and difficult tracts traverse the ridge of Oeta; but these, though passable to a small body of infantry, present insurmountable obstacles to the advance of an army. To the pass of Thermopylæ, in the spring of the year 280 B.C., the Brenn directed his march.
Corinth, Orchomenus, Argos, Sparta in the Peloponnesus, and Heraclea near to Oeta and to reduce their league to the condition in which it stood at the end of the Hannibalic war.
He who conquered all else is not to be conquered by those flames which you see blazing on Mount Oeta. Only his mother's share in him can perish; what he derived from me is immortal. I shall take him, dead to earth, to the heavenly shores, and I require of you all to receive him kindly. If any of you feel grieved at his attaining this honor, yet no one can deny that he has deserved it."
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