the folly of King Salmoneus

from the book of Vigidotus, a tale of the Ancient times:

Wicked King Salmoneus of the Barbarians

We shall endeavour to set forth the facts concerning wicked Salmoneus. He was a son of Aeolus, God of the Winds. He founded a city in Hyperborea on the banks of a river and called it Salmonia after his own name. And by his first wife he begat a daughter, her who was given the name Tyro, a maiden of surpassing beauty. She loved a river, the divine Enipeus, who flows from Mount Othrys, occupied by the Titans.

Salmoneus, being an overbearing man and impious, came to be hated by his barbarous subjects. In his mockery of the gods he would celebrate neither sacrifices nor festivals in their honour, as the other rulers were accustomed to do. He made it his practice to ridicule the divinity and to declare that his achievements excelled those of Zeus; and he took away the sacrifices of the god and ordered them to be offered to himself.

Consequently he used to make a tremendous noise by dragging behind his chariot dried hides stretched over bronze kettles, and thereby he said that he thundered more loudly than Zeus, and by flinging lighted torches at the sky he said that he lightened. Borne by four horses, he rode triumphant through his city, claiming as his own the homage of deity, saying that he was himself Zeus.

Madman, to mimic the storm clouds and inimitable thunder with brass and the tramp of horn-footed horses! But the Father Almighty amid thick clouds launched his bolt, wiped out the city impious Salmoneus had founded with all its inhabitants, and drove him headlong with furious whirlwind into the pit of Tartaros. Being arrogant and wishful to put himself on an equality with Zeus, he was punished for his impiety.

Far below, where the uttermost depth of the pit lies under earth, where there are gates of iron and a brazen doorstone, as far beneath the house of Hades as from earth the sky lies, wicked Salmoneus is broken alive on the wheel, and exposed thereon, while Tartaros stands deeply about him.

being broken on the wheel