Impatient to revenge her injured bed, She wreaks her anger on her rival’s head; With furies frights her from her native home, And drives her, gadding, round the world to roam; Nor ceased her madness, and her flight, before She touch’d the limits of the Pharian shore. At length, arriving on the banks of Nile, Wearied with length of ways, and worn with toil, She laid her down, and, leaning on her knees, Invoked the cause of all her miseries, And cast her languishing regards above, For help from Heaven and her ungrateful Jove. She sigh’d, she wept, she low’d; ’twas all she could; And with unkindness seem’d to tax the god: Last, with an humble prayer, she begg’d repose, Or death, at least, to finish all her woes. Jove heard her vows, and, with a flattering look, In her behalf to jealous Juno spoke. He cast his arms about her neck, and said, “Dame, rest secure; no more thy nuptial bed This nymph shall violate; by Styx I swear, And every oath that binds the Thunderer.” The goddess was appeased; and at the word Was Io to her former shape restored:

Her son was Epaphus, at length believed The son of Jove, and as a god received; With sacrifice adored, and public prayers, He common temples with his mother shares. Equal in years, and rival in renown, With Epaphus, the youthful Phaeton Like honour claims, and boasts his sire the sun. His haughty looks, and his assuming air, The son of Isis could no longer bear. “Thou takest thy mother’s word too far,” said he, “And hast usurp’d thy boasted pedigree: Go, base pretender to a borrow’d name.” Thus tax’d, he blush’d with anger and with shame: But shame repressed his rage: the daunted youth Soon seeks his mother, and inquires the truth. “Mother,” said he, “this infamy was thrown By Epaphus on you, and me your son. He spoke in public, told it to my face, Nor durst I vindicate the dire disgrace: Even I, the bold, the sensible of wrong, Restrain’d by shame, was forced to hold my tongue. To hear an open slander is a curse; But not to find an answer is a worse. If I am heaven-begot, assert your son,

By some sure sign, and make my father known, To right my honour, and redeem your own.” He said, and saying, cast his arms about Her neck, and begg’d her to resolve the doubt.

His travel urging, till he came in sight, And saw the palace by the purple light.

Phaeton, the son of Apollo and Clymene, obtains from his fond father an oath that he will grant him whatever he requires, which is no sooner uttered than the rash youth demands the guidance of his chariot for one day⁠—Phoebus represents the impropriety of such a request, and the dangers to which it will expose him, but in vain; and, as the oath is in violable, the youth is instructed how to proceed through the regions of the air⁠—The advice, however, is disregarded; and the flying horses, becoming sensible of the incapacity of their driver, depart from their usual track; and the heavens and earth are threatened with a universal conflagration, when Jupiter strikes the charioteer with a thunderbolt, and hurls him headlong from heaven into the river Po.