O ye sovereigns of this world, to whom it has been given to be the
arbiters of our destinies, let a night intervene between your wrath and
the storm which follow!


Mercury, light of wing and sweet of tongue, descended to the abode of
the dread sisters Tisiphone, Megæra, and Alecto, and his choice fell
upon the latter, the pitiless one. She, feeling proud of the preference,
grew so arrogant as to swear by Pluto that the whole of the human brood
should soon people his domains. But Jupiter did not approve of the vow
this member of the Eumenides had sworn, and he sent her back to Hades.
At the same time he launched a thunderbolt upon one particularly
perfidious race of men. This, however, being hurled by a father's arm,
mercifully fell in a desert, causing less ruin than alarm. What followed
from this was simply that the wicked brood took heart at such indulgence
and did not trouble to mend their ways. Then all the gods in Olympus
complained, until he who controls the clouds swore by the Styx that
further storms should be sent and that they should not fail as the other
had.

The Olympians only smiled at this. They told Jupiter that as he was the
father it would be better if he left in other hands the making of
thunderbolts. Vulcan undertook the task. Soon his furnaces glowed with
bolts of two kinds; one that hits its mark with a deadly unerring--and
that is the sort which any of the Olympian gods will hurl; whilst the
other sort was that which becomes scattered on its course and does
damage only to the mountain tops, or perchance is even lost on the way.
It is this kind of thunderbolt that Jupiter sends. His fatherly heart
permits him to use no other.