Metamorphoses, by Ovid

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Book 3

• Bk 3:1-49 Cadmus searches for his sister Europa.
• Bk 3:50-94 Cadmus kills the Dragon.
• Bk 3:95-114 Cadmus sows the Dragon’s teeth.
• Bk 3:115-137 Cadmus founds Thebes.
• Bk 3:138-164 Actaeon returns from the hunt
• Bk 3:165-205 Actaeon sees Diana naked and is turned into a stag.
• Bk 3:206-231 Actaeon is pursued by his hounds.
• Bk 3:232-252 Actaeon is killed by the dogs.
• Bk 3:253-272 Juno sets out to punish Semele.
• Bk 3:273-315 Semele is consumed by Jupiter’s fire.
• Bk 3:316-338 The judgement of Tiresias.
• Bk 3:339-358 Echo sees Narcissus.
• Bk 3:359-401 How Juno altered Echo’s speech.
• Bk 3:402-436 Narcissus sees himself and falls in love.
• Bk 3:437-473 Narcissus laments the pain of unrequited love.
• Bk 3:474-510 Narcissus is changed into a flower
• Bk 3:511-527 Tiresias prophesies Pentheus’s fate.
• Bk 3:528-571 Pentheus rejects the worship of Bacchus.
• Bk 3:572-596 Acoetes is captured and interrogated.
• Bk 3:597-637 Acoetes’s story – the beautiful boy.
• Bk 3:638-691 Acoetes’s ship and crew are transformed.
• Bk 3:692-733 Pentheus is killed by the Maenads.

Bk 3:1-49 Cadmus searches for his sister Europa

And now the god, dispensing with the deceptive image of the bull, confessed who he was, and made for the fields of Crete. Meanwhile Europa’s father, in ignorance of this, orders his son Cadmus to search for the stolen girl, and adds that exile is his punishment if he fails to find her, showing himself, by the same action, both pious and impious. Roaming the world (for who can discover whatever Jupiter has taken?) Agenor’s son, the fugitive, shuns his native land and his parent’s anger and as a suppliant consults Apollo’s oracle and asks in what land he might settle. Phoebus replies ‘A heifer will find you in the fields, that has never submitted to the yoke and is unaccustomed to the curved plough. Go where she leads, and where she finds rest on the grass build the walls of Thebes, your city, and call the land Boeotia.’

Cadmus had scarcely left the Castalian cave when he saw an unguarded heifer, moving slowly, and showing no mark of the yoke on her neck. He follows close behind and chooses his steps by the traces of her course, and silently thanks Phoebus, his guide to the way. Now he had passed the fords of Cephisus and the fields of Panope: the heifer stopped, and lifting her beautiful head with its noble horns to the sky stirred the air with her lowings. Then looking back, to see her companion following, she sank her hindquarters on the ground and lowered her body onto the tender grass. Cadmus gave thanks, pressing his lips to the foreign soil and welcoming the unknown hills and fields.

Intending to offer a sacrifice to Jupiter, he ordered his attendants to go in search of water from a running stream for a libation. There was an ancient wood there, free from desecration, and, in the centre of it, a chasm thick with bushes and willow branches, framed in effect by stones making a low arch, and rich with copious springs. There was a snake sacred to Mars concealed in this cave, with a prominent golden crest. Fire flickered in its eyes, its whole body was swollen with venom, its three-forked tongue flickered, and its teeth were set in a triple row.

After the people of Tyre, setting out, a fatal step, reached the grove, and let their pitchers down into the water, it gave out a reverberation. The dark green snake thrust his head out of the deep cavern, hissing awesomely. The pitchers fell from their hands, the blood left their bodies, and, terrified, a sudden tremor took possession of their limbs. The snake winds his scaly coils in restless writhings, and, shooting upwards, curves into a huge arc. With half its length raised into thin air, it peers down over the whole wood, its body as great, seen in its entirety, as that Dragon that separates the twin constellations of the Bear. Without pause he takes the Phoenicians, whether they prepare to fight, run, or are held by fear itself. Some he slays with his bite, some he kills in his deep embraces, others with the corrupting putrefaction of his venomous breath.

Bk 3:50-94 Cadmus kills the Dragon

The sun had reached the heights of the sky, and driven away the shadows. And now the son of Agenor, wondering what has delayed his friends, searches for the men. He is covered with the pelt stripped from a lion. His sword is tipped with glittering iron. He has a spear, and better still a spirit superior to all. When he enters the wood and sees the dead bodies, and over them the victorious enemy, with its vast body, licking at their sad wounds with a bloody tongue, he cries out ‘Faithful hearts, I shall either be the avenger of your deaths, or become your companion’.

So saying he lifted a massive rock with his right hand and with great effort hurled the huge weight. Steep walls with their high turrets, would have been shattered by the force of the blow, but the snake remained unwounded, protected by its scales like a breastplate, and its dark, hard skin repelled the powerful stroke.

But that same hardness cannot keep out the spear that defeats it, that is fixed in a curve of its pliant back, and sinks its whole iron blade into its entrails. The creature maddened with pain twists its head over its back, sees the wound, and bites at the shaft lodged there. Even when the snake had loosened its hold all round by its powerful efforts, it could scarcely rip it from its flesh and the iron stayed fixed in its spine. Then indeed new purpose was added to its usual wrath: its throat swells, the veins fill, and white spume flecks its baleful jaws. The earth resounds to its scaly scraping and a black breath like that from the mouth of the Styx fouls the corrupted air. At one instant it coils in vast spiraling circles, at another rears up straighter than a high tree. Again it rushes on like a rain-filled river and knocks down all the trees obstructing it in front. The son of Agenor gives way a little withstanding its attacks by means of the lion’s skin and keeps back the ravening jaws by thrusting forward the point of his sword. The snake is maddened and bites uselessly at the hard iron and only drives the sharp point between its teeth.

Now the blood begins to drip from its venomous throat and soak the green grass with its spattering. But the wound is slight, because the serpent draws back from the thrust, pulling its wounded neck away, and, conceding its wound, keeps back the sword, and does not let it sink deeper. But the son of Agenor following it all the time presses the embedded iron into its throat, until an oak-tree blocks its backward course and neck and tree are pinned together. The tree bends under the serpent’s weight and the trunk of the oak groans with the lashing of its tail.

Bk 3:95-114 Cadmus sows the Dragon’s teeth

While the conqueror stares at the vast bulk of his conquered enemy, suddenly a voice is heard. It is not easy to imagine where it comes from, but it is heard. ‘Why gaze, son of Agenor, at the serpent you have killed? You too shall be a serpent to be gazed on.’ For a long time he stands there quaking, and at the same time loses colour in his face, and his hair stands on end in cold terror. Then, behold, Pallas, the hero’s guardian approaches, sinking down through the upper air, and orders him to turn the earth and sow the dragon’s teeth, destined to generate a people. He obeys, and opening the furrows with a slice of his plough, sows the teeth in the ground, as human seed. Then, almost beyond belief, the cultivated earth begins to move, and first spear points appear among the furrows, next helmets nodding their painted crests, then chests and shoulders spring up, and arms weighed down with spears, and the field is thick with the round shields of warriors. Just as at festivals in the theatre, when the curtain is lifted at the end, designs rise in the air, first revealing faces and then gradually the rest, until, raised gently and steadily, they are seen whole, and at last their feet rest on the lower border.

Bk 3:115-137 Cadmus founds Thebes

Alarmed by this new enemy Cadmus was about to take up his weapons: ‘Keep away’ one of the army, that the earth had produced, cried at him ‘and take no part in our internal wars!’ So saying he raised his sharp sword against one of his earth-born brothers nearby, then, himself, fell to a spear thrown from far off. But the one who killed him lived no longer than he did and breathed out the air he had just breathed in. This example stirred them all equally, as if at a storm-wind, and, in their warring, these brothers of a moment were felled by mutual wounds. And now these youths, who were allowed such brief lives, were drumming on their mother’s breast hot with their blood. Five were still standing, one of whom was Echion. He, at a warning from Pallas, threw his weapons on the ground and sought assurances of peace from his brothers, and gave them in return. The Sidonian wanderer had these men as companions in his task when he founded the city commanded by Apollo’s oracle.

Now Thebes stands, and now you might be seen as happy, in your exile, Cadmus. You have Mars and Venus as your bride’s parents, and added to this the children of so noble a wife, so many sons and daughters, and dearly loved descendants, your grandchildren, who now are young men. But in truth we should always wait for a man’s last day, for that time when he has paid his last debt, and we should call no man’s life happy until he is dead.

Bk 3:138-164 Actaeon returns from the hunt

Actaeon, one of your grandsons, was your first reason for grief, in all your happiness, Cadmus. Strange horns appeared on his forehead, and his hunting dogs sated themselves on the blood of their master. But if you look carefully, you will find that it was the fault of chance and not wickedness: what wickedness is there in error? It happened on a mountain, stained with the blood of many creatures, and midday had contracted every shadow and the sun was equidistant from either end of his journey. Then Actaeon, the young Boeotian, with a quiet expression, spoke to his companions in the hunt as they wandered through the solitary wilds ‘Friends, our spears and nets are drenched with the blood of our victims, and the day has been fortunate enough. When Aurora in her golden chariot brings another day we will resume our purpose. Now Phoebus is also between the limits of his task, and is splitting open the earth with his heat. Finish your present task and carry home the netted meshes’ The men obeyed his order and left off their labour.

There was a valley there called Gargaphie, dense with pine trees and sharp cypresses, sacred to Diana of the high-girded tunic, where, in the depths, there is a wooded cave, not fashioned by art. But ingenious nature had imitated art. She had made a natural arch out of native pumice and porous tufa. On the right, a spring of bright clear water murmured into a widening pool, enclosed by grassy banks. Here the woodland goddess, weary from the chase, would bathe her virgin limbs in the crystal liquid.

Bk 3:165-205 Actaeon sees Diana naked and is turned into a stag.

Having reached the place, she gives her spear, quiver and unstrung bow to one of the nymphs, her weapon-bearer. Another takes her robe over her arm, while two unfasten the sandals on her feet. Then, more skilful than the rest, Theban Crocale gathers the hair strewn around her neck into a knot, while her own is still loose. Nephele, Hyale, Rhanis, Psecas and Phiale draw water, and pour it over their mistress out of the deep jars.

While Titania is bathing there, in her accustomed place, Cadmus’s grandson, free of his share of the labour, strays with aimless steps through the strange wood, and enters the sacred grove. So the fates would have it. As soon as he reaches the cave mouth dampened by the fountain, the naked nymphs, seeing a man’s face, beat at their breasts and filling the whole wood with their sudden outcry, crowd round Diana to hide her with their bodies. But the goddess stood head and shoulders above all the others. Diana’s face, seen there, while she herself was naked, was the colour of clouds stained by the opposing shafts of sun, or Aurora’s brightness.

However, though her band of nymphs gathered in confusion around her, she stood turning to one side, and looking back, and wishing she had her arrows to hand. She caught up a handful of the water that she did have, and threw it in the man’s face. And as she sprinkled his hair with the vengeful drops she added these words, harbingers of his coming ruin, ‘Now you may tell, if you can tell that is, of having seen me naked!’ Without more threats, she gave the horns of a mature stag to the head she had sprinkled, lengthening his neck, making his ear-tips pointed, changing feet for hands, long legs for arms, and covering his body with a dappled hide. And then she added fear. Autonoë’s brave son flies off, marvelling at such swift speed, within himself. But when he sees his head and horns reflected for certain in the water, he tries to say ‘Oh, look at me! but no voice follows. He groans: that is his voice, and tears run down his altered face. Only his mind remains unchanged. What can he do? Shall he return to his home and the royal palace, or lie hidden in the woods? Shame prevents the one, and fear the other.

Bk 3:206-231 Actaeon is pursued by his hounds

While he hesitates his dogs catch sight of him. First ‘Black-foot’, Melampus, and keen-scented Ichnobates, ‘Tracker’, signal him with baying, Ichnobates out of Crete, Melampus, Sparta. Then others rush at him swift as the wind, ‘Greedy’, Pamphagus, Dorceus, ‘Gazelle’, Oribasos, ‘Mountaineer’, all out of Arcady: powerful ‘Deerslayer’, Nebrophonos, savage Theron, ‘Whirlwind’, and Laelape, ‘Hunter’.

Then swift-footed Pterelas, ‘Wings’, and trail-scenting Agre, ‘Chaser’, fierce Hylaeus, ‘Woody’, lately gored by a boar, the wolf-born Nape, ‘Valley’, Poemenis, the trusty ‘Shepherd’, and Harpyia, ‘Snatcher’, with her two pups. There is thin-flanked Sicyonian Ladon, ‘Catcher’, Dromas, ‘Runner’, ‘Grinder’, Canache, Sticte ‘Spot’, Tigris ‘Tigress’, Alce, ‘Strong’, and white-haired Leucon, ‘Whitey’, and black-haired Asbolus, ‘Soot’.

Lacon, ‘Spartan’, follows them, a dog well known for his strength, and strong-running Aëllo, ‘Storm’. Then Thoos, ‘Swift’, and speedy Lycisce, ‘Wolf’, with her brother Cyprius ‘Cyprian’. Next ‘Grasper’, Harpalos, with a distinguishing mark of white, in the centre of his black forehead, ‘Black’, Melaneus, and Lachne, ‘Shaggy’, with hairy pelt, Labros, ‘Fury’, and Argiodus, ‘White-tooth’, born of a Cretan sire and Spartan dam, keen-voiced Hylactor, ‘Barker’, and others there is no need to name. The pack of them, greedy for the prey follow over cliffs and crags, and inaccessible rocks, where the way is hard or there is no way at all. He runs, over the places where he has often chased, flying, alas, from his own hounds. He longs to shout ‘I am Actaeon! Know your own master!’ but words fail him, the air echoes to the baying.

Bk 3:232-252 Actaeon is killed by the dogs

First ‘Black-hair’, Melanchaetes, wounds his back, then ‘Killer’, Theridamas, and Oresitrophos, the ‘Climber’, clings to his shoulder. They had set out late but outflanked the route by a shortcut over the mountains. While they hold their master the whole pack gathers and they sink their teeth in his body till there is no place left to wound him. He groans and makes a noise, not human, but still not one a deer could make, and fills familiar heights with mournful cries. And on his knees, like a suppliant begging, he turns his wordless head from side to side, as if he were stretching arms out towards them.

Now his friends, unknowingly, urge the ravening crowd of dogs on with their usual cries, looking out for Actaeon, and shouting, in emulation, for absent Actaeon (he turning his head at the sound of his name) complaining he is not there, and through his slowness is missing the spectacle offered by their prey. He might wish to be absent it’s true, but he is here: he might wish to see and not feel the fierce doings of his own hounds. They surround him on every side, sinking their jaws into his flesh, tearing their master to pieces in the deceptive shape of the deer. They say Diana the Quiver-bearer’s anger was not appeased, until his life had ended in innumerable wounds.

Bk 3:253-272 Juno sets out to punish Semele

The debate is undecided: to some the punishment is more violent than just, merely for seeing the face of a goddess, others approve it and call it fitting because of her strict vow of virginity, and both can make a case. Only Jupiter’s wife was saying nothing, neither of praise or blame. She was glad of the disaster that had come down on the house of Agenor, and had transferred her hatred from Europa, to those who were allied to the Tyrian girl by birth. Then there was a fresh wrong added to the first. She was grieved by the fact that Semele was pregnant, with the seed of mighty Jove. Swallowing words of reproach, she said ‘What, in truth, have I gained from frequent reproaches? I must attack her. If I am rightly to be called most powerful Juno, if it is right for me to hold the jewelled sceptre in my hand, if I am queen, and sister and wife of Jove, sister at least, then it is her I must destroy. Yet I think she is content with her secret, and the injury to my marriage will be brief. But she has conceived – and that damages me – and makes her crime visible in her swollen belly, and wants, what I have barely achieved, to be confirmed as the mother of Jupiter’s child, so great is her faith in her beauty. I will render that faith hollow. I am not Saturnia if she does not plunge into the Stygian waters, overwhelmed by Jove himself.’

Bk 3:273-315 Semele is consumed by Jupiter’s fire.

At this she rose from her seat and cloaked in a dark cloud she came to Semele’s threshold. But before she removed the cloud she disguised herself as an old woman, ageing her hair, ploughing her skin with wrinkles, and walking with bowed legs and tottering steps. She made her voice sound old and was herself Beroë, Semele’s Epidaurian nurse. So, when they came to Jupiter’s name, in the midst of their lengthy gossiping, she sighed, and said ‘I hope, for your sake, that it really is Jupiter, ‘but I am suspicious of all that sort of thing. Many men have entered the bedrooms of chaste women in the name of the gods. It’s not good enough for him merely to be Jove: he must give a proof of his love if it truly is him. Beg him to assume all his powers before he embraces you, and be just as glorious as when Juno welcomes him on high.

With such words Juno gulled the unsuspecting daughter of Cadmus. Semele asked Jupiter for an unspecified gift. ‘Choose!’ said the god, ‘Nothing will be refused, and, so that you may believe it more firmly, I swear it by the Stygian torrent, that is the divine conscience, the fear, and god, of all the gods.’ Pleased by her misfortune, too successful, and doomed to be undone by her lover’s indulgence, Semele said ‘As Saturnia is used to your embrace, when you enter into the pact of Venus, give yourself to me!’ The god would have stopped her lips as she spoke: but her voice had already rushed into the air.

He groans, since she cannot un-wish it or he un-swear it. So, most sorrowfully, he climbs the heights of heaven, and, with a look, gathered the trailing clouds, then added their vapours to lightning mixed with storm-winds, and thunder and fateful lightning bolts. Still, he tries to reduce his power in whatever way he can, and does not arm himself with that lightning with which he deposed hundred-handed Typhoeus: it is too savage in his grasp. There is a lighter dart to which the Cyclops’s hands gave a less violent fire, a lesser anger. The gods call these his secondary weapons. Taking these he enters Agenor’s house. But still Semele’s mortal body could not endure the storm, and she was consumed, by the fire of her nuptial gift.

The infant Bacchus, still unfinished, is torn from the mother’s womb, and (if it can be believed) is sewn into his father’s thigh to complete his full term. Ino, his mother’s sister reared him secretly, in infancy, and then he was given to the nymphs of Mount Nysa who hid him in their cave and fed him on milk.

Bk 3:316-338 The judgement of Tiresias

While these things were brought about on earth because of that fatal oath, and while twice-born Bacchus’s cradle remained safe, they say that Jupiter, expansive with wine, set aside his onerous duties, and relaxing, exchanging pleasantries, with Juno, said ‘ You gain more than we do from the pleasures of love.’ She denied it. They agreed to ask learned Tiresias for his opinion. He had known Venus in both ways.

Once, with a blow of his stick, he had disturbed two large snakes mating in the green forest, and, marvellous to tell, he was changed from a man to a woman, and lived as such for seven years. In the eighth year he saw the same snakes again and said ‘Since there is such power in plaguing you that it changes the giver of a blow to the opposite sex, I will strike you again, now.’ He struck the snakes and regained his former shape, and returned to the sex he was born with.

As the arbiter of the light-hearted dispute he confirmed Jupiter’s words. Saturnia, it is said, was more deeply upset than was justified and than the dispute warranted, and damned the one who had made the judgement to eternal night. But, since no god has the right to void what another god has done, the all-powerful father of the gods gave Tiresias knowledge of the future, in exchange for his lost sight, and lightened the punishment with honour.

Bk 3:339-358 Echo sees Narcissus

Famous throughout all the Aonian cities, Tiresias gave faultless answers to people who consulted him. Dusky Liriope, the Naiad, was the first to test the truth and the accuracy of his words, whom once the river-god Cephisus clasped in his winding streams, and took by force under the waves. This loveliest of nymphs gave birth at full term to a child whom, even then, one could fall in love with, called Narcissus. Being consulted as to whether the child would live a long life, to a ripe old age, the seer with prophetic vision replied ‘If he does not discover himself’.

For a long time the augur’s pronouncement appeared empty words. But in the end it proved true: the outcome, and the cause of his death, and the strangeness of his passion. One year the son of Cephisus had reached sixteen and might seem both boy and youth. Many youths, and many young girls desired him. But there was such intense pride in that delicate form that none of the youths or young girls affected him. One day the nymph Echo saw him, driving frightened deer into his nets, she of the echoing voice, who cannot be silent when others have spoken, nor learn how to speak first herself.

Bk 3:359-401 How Juno altered Echo’s speech

Echo still had a body then and was not merely a voice. But though she was garrulous, she had no other trick of speech than she has now: she can repeat the last words out of many. Juno made her like that, because often when she might have caught the nymphs lying beneath her Jupiter, on the mountain slopes, Echo knowingly held her in long conversations, while the nymphs fled. When Saturnia realised this she said ‘I shall give you less power over that tongue by which I have been deluded, and the briefest ability to speak’ and what she threatened she did. Echo only repeats the last of what is spoken and returns the words she hears.

Now when she saw Narcissus wandering through the remote fields, she was inflamed, following him secretly, and the more she followed the closer she burned with fire, no differently than inflammable sulphur, pasted round the tops of torches, catches fire, when a flame is brought near it. O how often she wants to get close to him with seductive words, and call him with soft entreaties! Her nature denies it, and will not let her begin, but she is ready for what it will allow her to do, to wait for sounds, to which she can return words.

By chance, the boy, separated from his faithful band of followers, had called out ‘Is anyone here?’ and ‘Here’ Echo replied. He is astonished, and glances everywhere, and shouts in a loud voice ‘Come to me!’ She calls as he calls. He looks back, and no one appearing behind, asks ‘Why do you run from me?’ and receives the same words as he speaks. He stands still, and deceived by the likeness to an answering voice, says ‘Here, let us meet together’. And, never answering to another sound more gladly, Echo replies ‘Together’, and to assist her words comes out of the woods to put her arms around his neck, in longing. He runs from her, and running cries ‘Away with these encircling hands! May I die before what’s mine is yours. She answers, only ‘What’s mine is yours!’

Scorned, she wanders in the woods and hides her face in shame among the leaves, and from that time on lives in lonely caves. But still her love endures, increased by the sadness of rejection. Her sleepless thoughts waste her sad form, and her body’s strength vanishes into the air. Only her bones and the sound of her voice are left. Her voice remains, her bones, they say, were changed to shapes of stone. She hides in the woods, no longer to be seen on the hills, but to be heard by everyone. It is sound that lives in her.

Bk 3:402-436 Narcissus sees himself and falls in love

As Narcissus had scorned her, so he had scorned the other nymphs of the rivers and mountains, so he had scorned the companies of young men. Then one of those who had been mocked, lifting hands to the skies, said ‘So may he himself love, and so may he fail to command what he loves!’ Rhamnusia, who is the goddess Nemesis, heard this just request.

There was an unclouded fountain, with silver-bright water, which neither shepherds nor goats grazing the hills, nor other flocks, touched, that no animal or bird disturbed not even a branch falling from a tree. Grass was around it, fed by the moisture nearby, and a grove of trees that prevented the sun from warming the place. Here, the boy, tired by the heat and his enthusiasm for the chase, lies down, drawn to it by its look and by the fountain. While he desires to quench his thirst, a different thirst is created. While he drinks he is seized by the vision of his reflected form. He loves a bodiless dream. He thinks that a body, that is only a shadow. He is astonished by himself, and hangs there motionless, with a fixed expression, like a statue carved from Parian marble.

Flat on the ground, he contemplates two stars, his eyes, and his hair, fit for Bacchus, fit for Apollo, his youthful cheeks and ivory neck, the beauty of his face, the rose-flush mingled in the whiteness of snow, admiring everything for which he is himself admired. Unknowingly he desires himself, and the one who praises is himself praised, and, while he courts, is courted, so that, equally, he inflames and burns. How often he gave his lips in vain to the deceptive pool, how often, trying to embrace the neck he could see, he plunged his arms into the water, but could not catch himself within them! What he has seen he does not understand, but what he sees he is on fire for, and the same error both seduces and deceives his eyes.

Fool, why try to catch a fleeting image, in vain? What you search for is nowhere: turning away, what you love is lost! What you perceive is the shadow of reflected form: nothing of you is in it. It comes and stays with you, and leaves with you, if you can leave!

Bk 3:437-473 Narcissus laments the pain of unrequited love

No care for Ceres’s gift of bread, or for rest, can draw him away. Stretched on the shadowed grass he gazes at that false image with unsated eyes, and loses himself in his own vision. Raising himself a little way and holding his arms out to the woods, he asks, ‘Has anyone ever loved more cruelly than I? You must know, since you have been a chance hiding place for many people. Do you remember in your life that lasts so many centuries, in all the long ages past, anyone who pined away like this? I am enchanted and I see, but I cannot reach what I see and what enchants me’ – so deep in error is this lover – ‘and it increases my pain the more, that no wide sea separates us, no road, no mountains, no walls with locked doors.

‘We are only kept apart by a little water! Whenever I extend my lips to the clear liquid, he tries to raise his lips to me. He desires to be held. You would think he could be touched: it is such a small thing that prevents our love. Whoever you are come out to me! Why do you disappoint me, you extraordinary boy? Where do you vanish when I reach for you? Surely my form and years are not what you flee from, and I am one that the nymphs have loved! You offer me some unknown hope with your friendly look, and when I stretch my arms out to you, you stretch out yours. When I smile, you smile back. And I have often seen your tears when I weep tears. You return the gesture of my head with a nod, and, from the movements of your lovely mouth, I guess that you reply with words that do not reach my ears!

‘I am he. I sense it and I am not deceived by my own image. I am burning with love for myself. I move and bear the flames. What shall I do? Surely not court and be courted? Why court then? What I want I have. My riches make me poor. O I wish I could leave my own body! Strange prayer for a lover, I desire what I love to be distant from me. Now sadness takes away my strength, not much time is left for me to live, and I am cut off in the prime of youth. Nor is dying painful to me, laying down my sadness in death. I wish that him I love might live on, but now we shall die united, two in one spirit.’

Bk 3:474-510 Narcissus is changed into a flower

He spoke, and returned madly to the same reflection, and his tears stirred the water, and the image became obscured in the rippling pool. As he saw it vanishing, he cried out ‘ Where do you fly to? Stay, cruel one, do not abandon one who loves you! I am allowed to gaze at what I cannot touch, and so provide food for my miserable passion!’ While he weeps, he tears at the top of his clothes: then strikes his naked chest with hands of marble. His chest flushes red when they strike it, as apples are often pale in part, part red, or as grapes in their different bunches are stained with purple when they are not yet ripe.

As he sees all this reflected in the dissolving waves, he can bear it no longer, but as yellow wax melts in a light flame, as morning frost thaws in the sun, so he is weakened and melted by love, and worn away little by little by the hidden fire. He no longer retains his colour, the white mingled with red, no longer has life and strength, and that form so pleasing to look at, nor has he that body which Echo loved. Still, when she saw this, though angered and remembering, she pitied him, and as often as the poor boy said ‘Alas!’ she repeated with her echoing voice ‘Alas!’ and when his hands strike at his shoulders, she returns the same sounds of pain. His last words as he looked into the familiar pool were ‘Alas, in vain, beloved boy!’ and the place echoed every word, and when he said ‘Goodbye!’ Echo also said ‘Goodbye!’

He laid down his weary head in the green grass, death closing those eyes that had marvelled at their lord’s beauty.

And even when he had been received into the house of shadows, he gazed into the Stygian waters. His sisters the Naiads lamented, and let down their hair for their brother, and the Dryads lamented. Echo returned their laments. And now they were preparing the funeral pyre, the quivering torches and the bier, but there was no body. They came upon a flower, instead of his body, with white petals surrounding a yellow heart.

Bk 3:511-527 Tiresias prophesies Pentheus’s fate

When all this became known it spread the prophet’s fame throughout the cities of Achaia, and his reputation was high. Still, Pentheus, the son of Echion, in scorn of the gods, alone amongst all of them, rejected the seer, laughed at the old man’s words of augury, and taunted him with the darkness, and the ruin of his lost sight. He, shaking his white head in warning, said ‘How happy you would be if these dispossessed orbs were yours, so as not to see the sacred rites of Bacchus! Now the day approaches, and I see it is not far off, when the new god, Liber, son of Semele will come, and unless you think him worthy to be done honour in your sanctuaries, you will be scattered, torn, in a thousand pieces, and stain your mother, and her sisters and the woods themselves with your blood. It will be! You will not think the god worthy of being honoured, and you will lament of me, that in my darkness I have seen too far.’ Even as he speaks, Echion’s son thrusts him away. The truth of his words followed, the oracles of the prophet were performed.

Bk 3:528-571 Pentheus rejects the worship of Bacchus

Liber has come, and the festive fields echo with cries. The crowd all run, fathers, mothers, young girls, princes and people, mixed together, swept towards the unknown rites. Pentheus shouts ‘What madness has stupefied your minds, children of the serpent, people of Mars? Can the clash of brazen cymbals, pipes of curved horn, and magical tricks be so powerful that men, who were not terrified by drawn swords or blaring trumpets or ranks of sharp spears, are overcome by the shrieks of women, men mad with wine, crowds of obscenities, and empty drumming? Should I admire you, elders, who, sailing the deep seas, sited your Tyre here, your exiled Penates, and now let them be taken without a fight? Or you younger men, of fresher age, nearer my own, for whom it was fitting to carry weapons and not the thyrsus, your heads covered with helmets not crowns of leaves? Remember, I beg you, from what roots you were created, and show the spirit of the serpent, who, though one alone, killed many. He died for his spring and pool, but you should conquer for your own glory! He put brave men to death, but you should make craven men run, and maintain the honour of your country! If it is Thebe’s fate to stand for only a short time, I wish her walls might be destroyed by men and siege engines, that fire and iron might sound against her! Then we would be miserable but not sinful, we would lament our fate not try to hide it, our tears would be free from shame. But now Thebes will be taken by an unarmed boy, who takes no pleasure in fighting, or weapons, or the use of horses, but in myrrh-drenched hair, soft wreathes of leaves, and embroidered robes woven with gold. But, if you stand aside, I will quickly force him to confess that his pretended parentage and religion are inventions. Should Pentheus and the rest of Thebes be terrified of his arrival, when Acrisius had courage enough to defy a false god, and shut the gates of Argos at his coming? ‘Go quickly’, he ordered his attendants ‘bind him and drag him here, this conqueror! Don’t be slow in carrying out your orders!’

His grandfather, Cadmus, his uncle, Athamas, and the rest of his advisors reprove his words, and try in vain to restrain him. He is only made more eager by their warning, and his rage is maddened and grows with restraint, and he is provoked by their objections. So I have seen a river, where nothing obstructs its passage, flow calmly and with little noise, but rage and foam wherever trees and obstacles of stone held it back, fiercer for the obstruction.

Bk 3:572-596 Acoetes is captured and interrogated

See now, they return, stained with blood, and when their lord queries where Bacchus is, they deny having seen Bacchus, but reply, ‘We have captured this companion of his, a priest of his sacred rites’ and they hand over a man of Tyrrhenian stock, with his hands bound behind his back, a follower of the worship of the god. Pentheus looks at him, with eyes made terrible by anger, and although he can scarcely wait for the moment of punishment, he says ‘O you who are about to die, and, by your death, teach the others a lesson, tell me your name, your parents’ name and your country, and why you follow the customs of this new religion!’

Without fear, he answers ‘My name is Acoetes, and Maeonia is my country, my parents humble ordinary people. My father did not leave me fields for sturdy oxen to work, no flocks of sheep, nor any cattle. I am poor as he himself was, and he used to catch fish in the streams with a rod and line and a hook to snare them. His skill was his wealth, and when he bequeathed it to me, he said ‘Take what I have. Apply yourself to the work as my successor and heir.’ Dying, he left me nothing but water. The only thing I can call my inheritance.

Soon, so that I was not stuck for ever to the same rocks, I learned how to guide boats, steering oar in hand, and to observe Capella and the rainy stars of the Olenian Goat, Taÿgete among the Pleiades, the Hyades, and the Arctic Bears, the houses of the winds, and the havens for ships.

Bk 3:597-637 Acoetes’s story – the beautiful boy

Heading for Delos, and being driven by chance onto the coast of the island of Chios, making shore by skilful use of the oars, giving a gentle leap, and landing on the wet sand, there we passed the night. As soon as the dawn began to redden, I ordered the getting in of fresh water, and showed the path that lead to a spring. I myself commanded the view from a high hill to find what wind promised, called my comrades and went back to the boat. ‘See, we are here’ said Opheltes, the foremost of my friends, and led a boy, with the beauty of a virgin girl, along the shore, a prize, or so he thought, that he had found in a deserted field. The boy seemed to stumble, heavy with wine and sleep, and could scarcely follow. I examined his clothing, appearance and rank, and I saw nothing that made me think him mortal. And I felt this and said it to my companions ‘I do not know what god is in that body, but there is a god within! Whoever you are, O favour and assist our efforts, and forgive these men!’ ‘Don’t pray for us’ said Dictys, who was the quickest at climbing to the highest yard and sliding down grasping the rigging. So said Libys, and yellow-haired Melanthus, the forward look-out, and Alcimedon agreed, and Epopeus, who with his voice gave the measure and the pauses for the oarsmen to urge on their purpose. All the others said the same, so blind was their greed for gain.

‘I still will not allow this ship to be cursed by a sacred victim to whom violence has been done’ I said. ‘Here I have the greatest authority’. And I prevented them boarding. Then Lycabas the most audacious of them all began to rage at me, he who had been thrown out of Tuscany, and was suffering the punishment of exile from his city for a terrible murder. While I held him off, he punched me in the throat with his strong young fists, and would have thrown me semi-conscious into the sea, if I had not clung on, almost stunned, held back by the rigging. The impious crew cheered on the doer of it. Then, at last, Bacchus (for it was indeed Bacchus) was freed from sleep, as if by the clamour, and the sense returned to his drunken mind. ‘What are you doing? Why this shouting? he said. ‘Tell me, you seamen, how I came here? Where do you intend to take me?’ ‘Have no fear’, said Proreus, ‘and, whatever port you wish to touch at, you will be set down in the country you demand!’ ‘Naxos’ said Liber, ‘set your course for there! That is my home: it will be a friendly land to you!

Bk 3:638-691 Acoetes’s ship and crew are transformed

The treacherous men swore, by the sea and all the gods, it would be so, and told me to get the painted vessel under sail. Naxos was to starboard, but as I trimmed the sails on a starboard tack, they, each one, asked me ‘What are you doing, O madman? Acoetes, what craziness has got into you? Take the port tack!’ most of them letting me know what they intended with a nod of the head, the others in a whisper. I was horrified. ‘Someone else can steer’ I said, and distanced myself from the wickedness and deception. There were cries against me from all sides, the whole crew murmured against me. And one of them, Aethalion, cried ‘You seem to think that all our lives depend on you alone! Then he took my place himself, discharged my office, and abandoning Naxos took the opposite course.

Then the god, playfully, as though he had just realised their deceit, looked at the sea over the curve of the stern, and as though he were weeping said ‘Sailors, these are not the shores you promised me, and this is not the land I chose for myself? What have I done to merit punishment? Where’s the glory in men cheating a boy, or many cheating just one?’ I was already weeping, but the impious crew laughed at my tears, and drove the ship quickly through the water.

Now I swear by the god himself (since there is no god more certainly present than he is) that what I say to you is the truth, though that truth beggars belief. The ship stands still in the waves, just as if it were held in dry dock. Amazed, the crew keep flogging away at the oars, and unfurling the sails, try to run on with double power. But ivy impedes the oars, creeping upwards, with binding tendrils, and drapes the sails with heavy clusters. The god himself waves a rod twined with vine leaves, his forehead wreathed with bunches of grapes. Around him lie insubstantial phantom lynxes, tigers, and the savage bodies of spotted panthers. The men leap overboard, driven to it either by madness or by fear. And Medon is the first to darken all over his body, and his spine to be bent into an arched curve.

Lycabas cries out to him ‘What monster are you turning into?’ And in speaking his jaws widen, his nose becomes hooked, and his skin becomes hard and scaly. But Libys hampered when he wishes to turn the oars sees his hands shrink suddenly in size, and now they are not hands, but can only be called fins. Another, eager to grasp at the tangled ropes, no longer has arms, and goes arching backwards limbless into the sea. His newest feature is a scythe-shaped tail, like the curved horns of a fragmentary moon. The dolphins leap everywhere drenched with spray. They emerge once more, only to return again to the depths, playing together as if they were in a troupe, throwing their bodies around wantonly, and blowing out the seawater drawn in through their broad nostrils.

Of a group of twenty (that was how many the ship carried) I alone was left. The god roused me with difficulty, my body shaking with cold and terror, and barely myself, saying ‘Free your heart from fear, and hold off for Naxos! And consigned to that island, I have adopted its religion, and celebrate the Bacchic rites.

Bk 3:692-733 Pentheus is killed by the Maenads

‘We have only listened to this winding tale’, said Pentheus, ‘so that our anger might spend its strength in delay. ‘You, attendants, remove this man, quickly, and let his body be tortured in greatest anguish, and send him down to Stygian night!’ Acoetes, the Tyrrhenian, was dragged out, straightaway, and shut in a deep dungeon. But while the instruments of cruelty, the irons and the fire, were being prepared to kill him as had been ordered, the doors flew open by themselves, the chains loosening without any effort, so tradition holds.

The son of Echion persisted in his purpose, not ordering others to go, but now going himself, to where Mount Cithaeron, chosen for performing the rites, was sounding with the chants and shrill cries of the Bacchantes. As a brave horse snorts and shows his love for the fight, when the trumpeter’s brass gives the signal for attack, so the heavens pulsating from the long drawn-out cries stirred Pentheus, and, hearing the clamour, his anger flared again.

Near the middle of the mountainside, was a clearing surrounded with remote woods, free of trees, and visible from all sides. Here as he watched the mysteries, with profane eyes, his mother was the first to see Pentheus, the first roused to run at him madly, the first to wound him, hurling her thyrsus. She shouted ‘O you two, sisters, come! That huge boar, who is straying in our fields, that boar is my sacrifice.’ They all rush on him in one maddened crowd: they converge together pursuing the frightened man, frightened now, speaking words free of violence now, cursing himself now, realising his own offence. Stricken, he still shouts ‘Help me, aunt Autonoë! Let Actaeon’s shade move your spirit!

She, not remembering Actaeon, tears away the suppliant’s right arm. Ino, in frenzy, rips off the other. Now the unhappy man has no limbs to hold out to his mother, but, showing his wounded trunk shorn of its members, he cries ‘Mother, see!’. Agave howls, and twists her neck about, and thrashes her hair in the air, and tearing off his head, holding it in her bloody hands, shouts ‘Behold, sisters, this act marks our victory!’

The wind does not strip the leaves clinging there, from the high tree touched by an autumn frost, more quickly than this man’s limbs are torn by those terrible hands. Warned by such an example, the Theban women throng to the new religion, burn incense, and worship at the sacred altars.

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Book 4

• Bk 4:1-30 The Festival of Bacchus.
• Bk 4:31-54 The daughters of Minyas reject Bacchus.
• Bk 4:55-92 Arsippe tells the story of Pyramus and Thisbe.
• Bk 4:93-127 The death of Pyramus.
• Bk 4:128-166 The death of Thisbe.
• Bk 4:167-189 Leuconoë’s story: Mars and Venus.
• Bk 4:190-213 Leuconoë’s story: Venus’s revenge.
• Bk 4:214-255 The transformation of Leucothoë.
• Bk 4:256-273 Clytie is transformed into the heliotrope.
• Bk 4:274-316 Alcithoë tells the story of Salmacis.
• Bk 4:317-345 Salmacis falls for Hermaphroditus.
• Bk 4:346-388 Salmacis and Hermaphroditus merge.
• Bk 4:389-415 The daughters of Minyas become bats.
• Bk 4:416-463 Juno is angered by Semele’s sister Ino.
• Bk 4:464-511 Tisiphone maddens Athamas and Ino.
• Bk 4:512-542 Ino becomes the goddess Leucothoë.
• Bk 4:543-562 Juno transforms the Theban women.
• Bk 4:563-603 Cadmus and Harmonia become serpents.
• Bk 4:604-662 Perseus and Atlas.
• Bk 4:663-705 Perseus offers to save Andromeda.
• Bk 4:706-752 Perseus defeats the sea-serpent
• Bk 4:753-803 Perseus tells the story of Medusa.

Bk 4:1-30 The Festival of Bacchus

But Alcithoë, daughter of Minyas, will not celebrate the Bacchic rites, in acceptance of the god. She is rash enough to deny that Bacchus is the son of Jupiter, and her sisters share in her impiety.

The priest had ordered the observation of the festival, asking for all female servants to be released from work, they and their mistresses to drape animal skins across their breasts, free their headbands, wreathe their hair, and carry an ivy-twined thyrsus in their hand. And he prophesied that the god’s rage would be fierce if he was angered. The young women and mothers obey, leaving their baskets and looms, and their unfinished tasks, and burn incense, calling on Bacchus, on Bromius, ‘the noisy one’, Lyaeus, ‘deliverer from care’, on the child of the lightning, the twice-born, the son of two mothers, and adding to these calls Nyseus, ‘he of Heliconian Nysa’, Thyoneus, ‘the unshorn’ who is Semele’s son, Lenaeus, the planter of joy-giving vines, Nyctelius, ‘the nightcomer’, father Eleleus, of the howls, Iacchus, of the shouts, and Euhan, of the cries, and all of the other names you have, Liber, among the peoples of Greece.

Unfading youth is yours, you boy eternal, you, the most beautiful sight in the depths of the morning and evening sky, your face like a virgin’s when you stand before us without your horns. The Orient calls you its conqueror, as far as darkest India, dipped in the remote Ganges. You, the revered one, punished Pentheus, and Lycurgus, king of Thrace, who carried the double-headed axe, and you sent the Tyrrhenians into the waves. You yoke together two lynxes with bright reins decorating their necks, Bacchantes and Satyrs follow you, and that drunken old man, Silenus, who supports his stumbling body with his staff, and clings precariously to his bent-backed mule. Wherever you go the shouts of youths ring out, and the chorus of female voices, hands beating on tambourines, the clash of cymbals, and the shrill piping of the flute.

Bk 4:31-54 The daughters of Minyas reject Bacchus

The Ismenides pray to Bacchus ‘Be satisfied with us, be gentle’ and they celebrate the rites ordained. Only the daughters of Minyas remain inside, disturbing the festival, with the untimely arts of Minerva, drawing out strands of wool, twisting the threads with their fingers, or staying at their looms, and plying their servants with work. Then one of them, Arsippe, speaks, spinning the thread lightly with her thumb. ‘While the others are leaving their work, and thronging to this false religion, let us, restrained by Pallas, a truer goddess, lighten the useful work of our hands, and take turns in recalling a story to our idle minds, so that the time will not seem so long! Her sisters are pleased with this, and beg her to begin first. She wondered which of many she should tell (since she knew very many), and hesitated whether to tell about you, Babylonian Dercetis, who, as the Syrians of Palestine believe, with altered shape, your lower limbs covered with scales, swam in the waters, or how your daughter, assuming wings, lived her earliest years out among the white dovecotes. Or how a Naiad, with incantations, and all too powerful herbs, changed the bodies of youths into dumb fishes, until the same thing happened to her. Or how the mulberry tree that bore white berries now bears dark red ones, from the stain of blood. This one pleases her. She begins to spin this tale, which is not yet well known, as she spins her woollen thread.

Bk 4:55-92 Arsippe tells the story of Pyramus and Thisbe

‘Pyramus and Thisbe, he the loveliest youth, and she the most sought after girl, the East held, lived in neighbouring houses, in the towering city of Babylon, that Semiramis is said to have enclosed with walls of brick. Their nearness and their first childhood steps made them acquainted and in time love appeared. They would have agreed to swear the marriage oath as well, but their parents prevented it. They were both on fire, with hearts equally captivated, something no parent can prevent. They had no one to confide all this to: nods and signs were their speech, and the more they kept the fire hidden, the more it burned.

There was a fissure, a thin split, in the shared wall between their houses, which traced back to when it was built. No one had discovered the flaw in all those years – but what can love not detect? – You lovers saw it first, and made it a path for your voices. Your endearments passed that way, in safety, in the gentlest of murmurs. Often, when they were in place, Thisbe here, and Pyramus there, and they had each caught the sound of the other’s breath, they said ‘Unfriendly wall, why do you hinder lovers? How hard would it be for you to let our whole bodies meet, or if that is too much perhaps, to open to the kisses we give each other? Not that we are not grateful. We confess that we owe it to you that words are allowed to pass to loving ears’ So they talked, hopelessly, sitting opposite, saying, as night fell, ‘Farewell’, each touching the wall with kisses that could not reach the other side.

One morning when Aurora had quenched the fires of night, and the sun’s rays had thawed the frosty grass, they came to their usual places. Then they decided, first with a little murmur of their great sorrows, to try, in the silence of night, to deceive the guards, and vanish outside. Once out of the house they would leave the city as well, and they agreed, in case they went astray crossing the open country, to meet by the grave of Ninus, and hide in the shelter of a tree. There was a tall mulberry tree there, dense with white berries, bordering a cool fountain. They were satisfied with their plan, and the light, slow to lose its strength, was drowned in the waters, and out of the same waters the night emerged.’

Bk 4:93-127 The death of Pyramus

‘Carefully opening the door, Thisbe, slipped out, deceiving her people, and came to the tomb, her face veiled, and seated herself under the tree they had agreed on. Love made her brave. But a lioness fresh from the kill, her jaws foaming, smeared with the blood of cattle, came to slake her thirst at the nearby spring. In the moonlight, Babylonian Thisbe sees her some way off, and flees in fear to a dark cave, and as she flees, she leaves behind her fallen veil. When the fierce lioness has drunk deeply, returning towards the trees, she chances to find the flimsy fabric, without its owner, and rips it in her bloodstained jaws. Leaving the city a little later, Pyramus sees the creature’s tracks in the thick dust, and his face is drained of colour. When he also discovers the veil stained with blood, he cries, “Two lovers will be lost in one night. She was the more deserving of a long life. I am the guilty spirit. I have killed you, poor girl, who told you to come by night to this place filled with danger, and did not reach it first. O, all you lions, that live amongst these rocks, tear my body to pieces, and devour my sinful flesh in your fierce jaws! Though it is cowardly to ask for death”

He picks up Thisbe’s veil, and carries it with him to the shadow of the tree they had chosen. Kissing the token, and wetting it with tears, he cries, “Now, be soaked in my blood too.” Having spoken he drove the sword he had been wearing into his side, and, dying, pulled it, warm, from the wound. As he lay back again on the ground, the blood spurted out, like a pipe fracturing at a weak spot in the lead, and sending long bursts of water hissing through the split, cutting through the air, beat by beat. Sprinkled with blood, the tree’s fruit turned a deep blackish-red, and the roots, soaked through, also imbued the same overhanging mulberries with the dark purplish colour.’

Bk 4:128-166 The death of Thisbe

‘Now Thisbe returns, not yet free of fear, lest she disappoint her lover, and she calls for him with her eyes and in her mind, eager to tell him about the great danger she has escaped. Though she recognises the place and the shape of the familiar tree, the colour of the berries puzzles her. She waits there: perhaps this is it. Hesitating, she sees quivering limbs writhing on the bloodstained earth, and starts back, terrified, like the sea, that trembles when the slightest breeze touches its surface, her face showing whiter than boxwood. But when, staying a moment longer, she recognises her lover, she cries out loud with grief, striking at her innocent arms, and tearing at her hair. Cradling the beloved body, she bathes his wounds with tears, mingling their drops with blood. Planting kisses on his cold face, she cries out ‘Pyramus, what misfortune has robbed me of you? Pyramus, answer me! Your dearest Thisbe calls to you: obey me, lift your fallen head!’ At Thisbe’s name, Pyramus raised his eyes, darkening with death, and having looked at her, buried them again in darkness.’

‘When she recognised her veil and saw the ivory scabbard without its sword, she said, “Unhappy boy, your own hand, and your love, have destroyed you! I too have a firm enough hand for once, and I, too, love. It will give me strength in my misfortune. I will follow you to destruction, and they will say I was a most pitiful friend and companion to you. He, who could only be removed from me by death, death cannot remove. Nevertheless I ask this for both of us, in uttering these words, O our poor parents, mine and his, do not deny us the right to be laid in one tomb, we whom certain love, and the strangest hour have joined. And you, the tree, that now covers the one poor body with your branches, and soon will cover two, retain the emblems of our death, and always carry your fruit darkened in mourning, a remembrance of the blood of us both.”

Saying this, and placing the point under her heart, she fell forward onto the blade, still warm with his blood. Then her prayer moved the gods, and stirred her parents’ feelings, for the colour of the berry is blackish-red, when fully ripened, and what was left from the funeral pyres rests in a single urn.’

Bk 4:167-189 Leuconoë’s story: Mars and Venus

Arsippe ceased. There was a short pause and then Leuconoë began to speak, while her sisters were quiet.

‘Love even takes Sol prisoner, who rules all the stars with his light. I will tell you about his amours. He was the first god they say to see the adulteries of Venus and Mars: he sees all things first. He was sorry to witness the act, and he told her husband Vulcan, son of Juno, of this bedroom intrigue, and where the intrigue took place. Vulcan’s heart dropped, and he dropped in turn the craftsman’s work he held in his hand. Immediately he began to file thin links of bronze, for a net, a snare that would deceive the eye. The finest spun threads, those the spider spins from the rafters, would not better his work. He made it so it would cling to the smallest movement, the lightest touch, and then artfully placed it over the bed. When the wife and the adulterer had come together on the one couch, they were entangled together, surprised in the midst of their embraces, by the husband’s craft, and the new method of imprisonment he had prepared for them.

The Lemnian, Vulcan, immediately flung open the ivory doors, and let in the gods. There the two lay shamefully bound together, and one of the gods, undismayed, prayed that he might be shamed like that. And the gods laughed. And for a long time it was the best-known story in all the heavens.’

Bk 4:190-213 Leuconoë’s story: Venus’s revenge

‘But Cytherea, remembering the informer, exacted punishment, and took revenge on him. He who harmed her secret affair, was equally harmed by love. Son of Hyperion, what use to you now, are beauty, lustre, and radiant light? Surely, you who make all countries burn with your fires, burn with a new fire. You, who should discern everything, contemplate Leucothoë, and your eyes, that ought to be fixed on the whole earth, are fixed on one virgin girl. Sometimes you rise too early in the dawn sky. Sometimes you sink too late into the waves. Thinking of her, you lengthen the winter hours. Sometimes you vanish, your mind’s defect affecting your light, and, obscured, terrify men’s hearts. It is not because the moon’s shadow, closer to the earth, eclipses you, that you fade. It is that love of yours that determines your aspect. You only love her.

‘You forget Clymene, Phaethon’s mother, and the nymph Rhode, and Perse, the most beautiful mother of Aeaean Circe, and Clytie, although despised, seeks union with you, and, even now, suffers its deep wounds. Leucothoë makes you forget them all, she whom loveliest Eurynome gave birth to, among the people who produce sweet-smelling incense. But when the daughter grew to womanhood, she outshone her mother, as her mother surpassed all others. Her father Orchamus ruled the Achaemenian Cities of Persia, seventh in line from ancient Belus, the founder.’

Bk 4:214-255 The transformation of Leucothoë

‘Under western skies are the fields of the horses of the Sun: they have ambrosia to crop not grass. It nourishes their weary legs after the day’s work, and refreshes them for their labours. While his horses browse on celestial food and while night carries out her role, the god enters his loved one’s room, taking on the shape of her mother, Eurynome. There he finds Leucothoë in the lamplight, amongst her twelve maids, drawing out fine threads, winding them on her spindle. So he gives her a kiss, just as a mother her dear daughter, and says “This is secret: servants, depart, and don’t rob a mother of the power to speak in private.” They obey, and when there are no witnesses left in the room, the god speaks.

“Who measures the long year, I am he. I see all things, earth sees all things by me, I, the world’s eye. Trust me, you please me.” She is afraid, and, in her fear, distaff and spindle fall from her lifeless fingers. Her fear enhances her, and he, waiting no longer, resumes his true form, and his accustomed brightness. And, though the girl is alarmed by this sudden vision, overwhelmed by his brightness, suppressing all complaint, she submits to the assault of the god.

‘Clytie was jealous (there were no bounds to her love for Sol), and goaded by anger at her rival, she broadcast the adultery, and maligning the girl, betrayed her to her father. He in his pride and savagery, buried her deep in the earth, she praying, stretching her hands out towards Sol’s light, crying “He forced me, against my will”, and he piled a heavy mound of sand over her.

‘Poor nymph, Hyperion’s son dispersed this with shafts of light, and gave you a way to show your buried face, but you could not lift your head, crushed by the weight of earth, and lay there, a pale corpse. They say the god of the winged horses had seen nothing more bitter than this, since Phaethon’s fiery death. He tried to see if he could recall life to those frozen limbs, with his powerful rays. But since fate opposed such efforts, he sprinkled the earth, and the body itself, with fragrant nectar, and, after much lamenting, said “You will still touch the air”. Immediately the body, soaked through with heavenly nectar, dissolved, steeping the earth in its perfume. Tentatively, putting out roots, the shoot of a tree, resinous with incense, grew through the soil, and pierced the summit of the mound.

Bk 4:256-273 Clytie is transformed into the heliotrope

‘The god of light no longer visited Clytie, nor found anything to love in her, even though love might have been an excuse for her pain, and her pain for her betrayal. She wasted away, deranged by her experience of love. Impatient of the nymphs, night and day, under the open sky, she sat dishevelled, bareheaded, on the bare earth. Without food or water, fasting, for nine days, she lived only on dew and tears, and did not stir from the ground. She only gazed at the god’s aspect as he passed, and turned her face towards him. They say that her limbs clung to the soil, and that her ghastly pallor changed part of her appearance to that of a bloodless plant: but part was reddened, and a flower like a violet hid her face. She turns, always, towards the sun, though her roots hold her fast, and, altered, loves unaltered.’

She finished speaking: the wonderful tale had charmed their ears. Part of them denies it could have happened, part says that the true gods can do anything. Though Bacchus is not one of those.

Bk 4:274-316 Alcithoë tells the story of Salmacis

When the sisters are silent, Alcithoë is called on next. Standing there, running her shuttle through the threads on her loom, she said ‘I will say nothing of that well-known story, the love of Daphnis, the Idaean shepherd-boy, whom a nymph, angered by a rival, turned to stone: so great is the pain that inflames lovers. Neither will I tell you how, the laws of nature conspiring to alter, Sithon became of indeterminate sex, now man, now woman: how Celmis, you too, now changed to steel, were a most loyal friend to the infant Jupiter: how the Curetes were born from vast showers of rain: how Crocus and Smilax were turned into tiny flowers. I will reject all those, and charm your imaginations with a sweet, new story.

‘Now you will hear where the pool of Salmacis got its bad reputation from, how its enervating waters weaken, and soften the limbs they touch. The cause is hidden, but the fountain’s effect is widely known. The Naiads nursed a child born of Hermes, and a goddess, Cytherean Aphrodite, in Mount Ida’s caves. His features were such that, in them, both mother and father could be seen: and from them he took his name, Hermaphroditus.

‘When he was fifteen years old, he left his native mountains and Ida, his nursery, delighted to wander in unknown lands, and gaze at unknown rivers, his enthusiasm making light of travel. He even reached the Lycian cities, and the Carians by Lycia. Here he saw a pool of water, clear to its very depths. There were no marsh reeds round it, no sterile sedge, no spikes of rushes: it is crystal liquid. The edges of the pool are bordered by fresh turf, and the grass is always green. A nymph lives there, but she is not skilled for the chase, or used to flexing the bow, or the effort of running, the only Naiad not known by swift-footed Diana.

‘Often, it’s said, her sisters would tell her “Salmacis, take up the hunting-spear or the painted quiver and vary your idleness with some hard work, hunting!” But she takes up neither the hunting spear nor the painted quiver, and will not vary her idleness with the hardship of hunting. She only bathes her shapely limbs in the pool, often combs out her hair, with a comb that is made of boxwood from Cytorus, and looks in the water to see what suits it best. Then draped in a translucent robe, she lies down on the soft leaves, or in the soft grass. Often she gathers flowers. And she was also busy gathering them, then, when she saw the boy, and what she saw she longed to have.’

Bk 4:317-345 Salmacis falls for Hermaphroditus

‘She did not go near him yet, though she was quick to go to him, waiting until she had calmed herself, checked her appearance, composed her expression, and merited being seen as beautiful. Then she began to say “Youth, O most worthy to be thought a god, if you are a god, you must be Cupid, or, if you are mortal, whoever engendered you is blessed, and any brother of yours is happy, any sister fortunate, if you have sisters, and even the nurse who suckled you at her breast. But far beyond them, and far more blessed is she, if there is a she, promised to you, whom you think worthy of marriage. If there is someone, let mine be a stolen pleasure, if not, I will be the one, and let us enter into marriage together.”

‘After this the naiad was silent. A red flush branded the boy’s face. He did not know what love was: though the blush was very becoming. Apples are tinged with this colour, hanging in a sunlit tree, or ivory painted with red, or the moon, eclipsed, blushing in her brightness, while the bronze shields clash, in vain, to rescue her. The nymph begged endlessly, at least a sister’s kiss, and, about to throw her arms round his ivory-white neck, he said “Stop this, or shall I go, and leave this place, and you?” Salmacis, afraid, turning away, pretended to go, saying, “I freely surrender this place to you, be my guest.” But she still looked back, and hid herself among bushes in the secluded woods, on her bended knees. But he, obviously at leisure, as if unobserved, walks here and there on the grass and playfully, at the end of his walk, dips his feet and ankles in the pool. Then, quickly captured by the coolness of the enticing water, he stripped the soft clothes from his slender body.

Bk 4:346-388 Salmacis and Hermaphroditus merge.

‘Then she was truly pleased. And Salmacis was inflamed with desire for his naked form. The nymph’s eyes blazed with passion, as when Phoebus’s likeness is reflected from a mirror, that opposes his brightest unclouded orb. She can scarcely wait, scarcely contain her delight, now longing to hold him, now unable to keep her love to herself. He, clapping his open palms to his side, dives into the pool, and leading with one arm and then the other, he gleams through the pure water, as if one sheathed an ivory statue, or bright lilies behind clear glass. “I have won, he is mine”, the naiad cries, and flinging aside all her garments, she throws herself into the midst of the water.

‘She held him to her, struggling, snatching kisses from the fight, putting her hands beneath him, touching his unwilling breast, overwhelming the youth from this side and that. At last, she entwines herself face to face with his beauty, like a snake, lifted by the king of birds and caught up into the air, as Hermaphroditus tries to slip away. Hanging there she twines round his head and feet and entangles his spreading wings in her coils. Or as ivy often interlaces tall tree trunks. Or as the cuttlefish holds the prey, it has surprised, underwater, wrapping its tentacles everywhere.

‘The descendant of Atlas holds out, denying the nymph’s wished-for pleasure: she hugs him, and clings, as though she is joined to his whole body. “It is right to struggle, perverse one,” she says, “but you will still not escape. Grant this, you gods, that no day comes to part me from him, or him from me.” Her prayer reached the gods. Now the entwined bodies of the two were joined together, and one form covered both. Just as when someone grafts a twig into the bark, they see both grow joined together, and develop as one, so when they were mated together in a close embrace, they were not two, but a two-fold form, so that they could not be called male or female, and seemed neither or either.

‘When he saw now that the clear waters which he had penetrated as a man, had made him a creature of both sexes, and his limbs had been softened there, Hermaphroditus, stretching out his hands, said, but not in a man’s voice, “Father and mother, grant this gift to your son, who bears both your names: whoever comes to these fountains as a man, let him leave them half a man, and weaken suddenly at the touch of these waters!” Both his parents moved by this, granted the prayer of their twin-formed son, and contaminated the pool with a damaging drug.’

Bk 4:389-415 The daughters of Minyas become bats

The story was finished, and the daughters of Minyas still pressed on with their work, spurning the god and profaning his festival, when suddenly harsh sounds sprang up from unseen drums, pipes with curved horns sounded, and cymbals clashed. Saffron and myrrh perfumed the air, and unbelievably their looms began to grow like greenwood, the cloth they were weaving put out leaves of hanging ivy, part altered to vines, and what were once threads changed into tendrils: vine shoots came out of the warp, and clusters of dark-coloured grapes took on the splendour of the purple fabric.

Now the day was past, and the time had come when you could not say that it was light or darkness, but a borderland of light and uncertain night. Suddenly the ceiling shook, the oil lamps seemed to brighten, and the house to shine with glowing fires, and fill with the howling of fierce creatures’ deceptive phantoms. Quickly the sisters hide in the smoke-filled house, and, in various places, shun the flames and light. While they seek the shadows, a thin membrane stretches over their slender limbs, and delicate wings enfold their arms. The darkness prevents them knowing how they have lost their former shape. They do not rise on soft plumage, but lift themselves on semi-transparent wings, and trying to speak emit the tiniest squeak, as befits their bodies, and tell their grief in faint shrieks. They frequent rafters, rather than woods, and, hating the light, they fly at night, and derive their name, ‘vespertiliones’, from ‘vesper’, the evening.

Bk 4:416-463 Juno is angered by Semele’s sister Ino

Then indeed Bacchus’s divinity was spoken of throughout Thebes, and Ino, his mother’s sister, told about the new god’s great powers, everywhere. Of all her sisters she was the only one free from trouble, except that which her sisters made. Juno considered this woman, and the lofty pride she had in her sons, her marriage to King Athamas, and her foster-child Bacchus, and could not bear it. She said, to herself, ‘That son of my rival could change the Maeonian sailors, and immerse them in the sea, and give the flesh of a child to be torn in pieces, by his own mother, and enfold the three daughters of Minyas in strange wings. Can Juno do nothing except lament her troubles, unavenged? Is that enough for me? Is that my only power? He teaches me what to do (it is possible to learn from the enemy): he has shown enough, and more than enough, of the power madness has, by the killing of Pentheus. Why should Ino not be tormented, and follow her relatives’ example in her madness?’

There is a downward path, gloomy with fatal yew trees: it leads through dumb silence to the infernal regions. The sluggish Styx exhales vapour, and, by that way, the shadows of the newly dead descend, entombed with full rites, and the ghosts of those, at last, given proper burial. The wide, thorny waste is cold and pallid, and the newly arrived shades are ignorant of the road that leads to the Stygian city, where black Dis has his cruel palace. The roomy city has a thousand entrances, and open gates on every side, and as the ocean accepts the rivers of all the world, so this place accepts all the souls, and is never too small for any populace, nor notices the crowds that come. There the bloodless shadows wander without flesh or bone. Some crowd the forum, some the house of the ruler of the depths, others follow their trades, imitating their previous lives, and still others incur punishment.

Leaving her place in heaven, Saturnian Juno endured the journey there, giving in to such a degree to anger and hatred. As soon as she entered and the threshold sighed at the touch of her sacred body, Cerberus lifted his triple head and let out his threefold baying. She called out for the dread, implacable Furies, the Sisters, the children of Night. They sat in front of the prison gates, closed with steel, combing out their hair, of black snakes. The goddesses rose together, recognising her shadow in the darkness. The place is called Accursed. Here Tityos offers up his innards to be torn, stretched out over nine fields. You, Tantalus, cannot catch the drops of water, and the tree you grasp at, eludes you. You, Sisyphus, attack or pursue the stone that always returns. Ixion turns, and follows after himself and flees, and the forty-nine Belides, who dared to plot the destruction of their cousins, their husbands, fetch again, with incessant labour, the water they have lost.

Bk 4:464-511 Tisiphone maddens Athamas and Ino

After Saturnia had looked grimly, glancing fiercely, at all these, and at Ixion above all, looking back from him to Sisyphus, she asks the Furies ‘Why does this son of Aeolus, suffer perpetual torment, while his brother Athamas, who, with his wife, scorns me, lives, in his pride, in a rich palace?’ And she expounds the causes of her hatred, her journey, and what it is she wishes. What she wished was that the House of Cadmus should no longer stand, and that the Sisters should drive Athamas mad. She urged the goddesses help, mingling promises, commands and prayers together. When Juno had finished speaking, Tisiphone, grey-haired as she was, shook her locks, flinging back the snakes that concealed her face, and said ‘It does not need all these words: consider it done, whatever you have ordered. Leave this unlovely kingdom, and go back to heaven with its sweeter air.’ Juno returned happily, and Iris, her messenger, the daughter of Thaumus, purified her, as she was about to enter heaven, with drops of dew.

Without delay, Tisiphone, the troubler, grasped a torch soaked with blood, put on a dripping red robe, coiled a writhing serpent round her waist, and left the spot. Grief went as her companion, and Panic, and Terror, and Madness with agitated face. She took up her position on the threshold, and they say the pillars of the doorway of Aeolus’s palace shook, the doors of maple-wood were tainted with whiteness, and the sun fled the place. Athamas and his wife, Ino, were terrified at these portents of doom, and they tried to escape the palace. The baleful Erinys obstructed them, and blocked the way. Stretching out her arms, wreathed with knots of vipers, she flailed her hair, and the snakes hissed at her movements. Some coiled over her shoulders, some slid over her breast, giving out whistling noises, vomiting blood, and flickering their tongues.

Then she pulls two serpents from the midst of her hair, and hurls what she has snatched with a deadly aim. They slither over Ino and Athamas, and blow their oppressive breath into them. Their limbs are not wounded: it is the mind that feels the dreadful stroke. She had brought foul poisonous liquids too, spume from the jaws of Cerberus, Echidna’s venom, those that cause vague delusions, dark oblivions of the mind, wickedness and weeping, rage and love of murder, all seethed together. She had boiled them, mixed with fresh blood, in hollow bronze, stirred with a stalk of green hemlock.

While they stood trembling, she poured this venom of the Furies over the breasts of the two of them, and sent it into the depths of their minds. Then, brandishing her torch, encircled them with fire, by fire’s swift movement, whirling it round in repeated orbit. So having conquered them, and carried out her orders, she returned to the wide kingdom of mighty Dis, and unloosed the serpent she had wrapped around her.

Bk 4:512-542 Ino becomes the goddess Leucothoë

Then Athamas, raving through the centre of his palace, cries out ‘ Friends, spread the nets through these woods! I have just seen a lioness here, with her two cubs’ and in his madness he followed his wife’s steps as if she were a wild beast. Then he snatched his son Learchus, who was laughing and waving his little arms, from his mother’s protection, and whirled him round, two or three times, in the air, in the manner of a sling, and dashed the infant’s head fiercely against the solid rock. Then the mother, roused at last by the pain this caused, or by reason of the poison sprinkled on her, howled like an animal, and fled, insanely, tearing at her hair. In her naked arms she carried you, Melicertes, and cried out ‘Euhoe, Bacchus’. Juno laughed aloud at Bacchus’s name, saying ‘Such help as this may your foster-son give you!’

A cliff overhung the water, carved out at its base by the breakers, and it sheltered the waves it hid, from the rain. Its summit reared up and stretched out, in front, over the water, into empty space. Ino climbed up there (madness had lent her strength) and unrestrained by fear threw herself and her burden into the sea: the wave foamed white where she fell. Venus, pitying her granddaughter’s undeserved sufferings, coaxed her uncle, saying ‘ O Neptune, god of the waters, whose power only ceases near heaven, it’s true that what I ask is great, but take pity on those who are mine, whom you see, fallen into the vast Ionian waters, and add them to your sea-gods. Some kindness is due me from the sea, if once I was made from the spume in the midst of the deep, and from that my Greek name, ‘foam-born’ Aphrodite, remains.’ Neptune accepted her prayer, and taking from them what was mortal, gave them greatness, giving them at the same time new names and forms, calling the god Palaemon, and his mother, Leucothoë, the white goddess.

Bk 4:543-562 Juno transforms the Theban women

Ino’s Sidonian attendants followed the marks of her feet as best they could, only to see her last leap from the pinnacle of rock. Not doubting that she was dead, they mourned for the House of Cadmus, beating their breasts, tearing at their clothes and hair, saying that the goddess had shown too little justice, and too much cruelty, to the rival who had made her jealous. Juno could not bear their protests, and said ‘I will make you the best monument to my cruelty’. What she said was done. Now the one who had been most faithful cried ‘I will follow the queen into the sea’, and starting her leap could not move at all, and stuck fast, fixed to the cliff. Another felt her raised arms grow rigid, when she tried to beat her breasts, as she had been doing. Another chanced to stretch her hands out to the waves of the sea, but now hands made of stone were extended over the same waves. One, as she tore at the crown of her head to pull out her hair, you might see, suddenly with stiffened fingers amongst her hair. Whatever gesture they were caught in, there they remained. Others, Theban women, changed to birds, also, now, skim the surface of those depths with their wings.

Bk 4:563-603 Cadmus and Harmonia become serpents

The son of Agenor, Cadmus, did not know that his daughter and little grandson were now sea-gods. Conquered by the pain of this run of disasters, and daunted by all he had seen, the founder departed his city, as if the misfortunes of the place and not himself were oppressing him. Driven to wandering, at length his journey carried him and his wife to the borders of Illyria. Now, weighed down by age and sadness, they thought of the original destiny of their house, and in talk reviewed their sufferings. Cadmus said ‘Surely that snake, my spear pierced, must have been sacred, when, fresh from Sidon, I scattered the serpent’s teeth, a strange seed, over the earth? If that is what the gods have been avenging with such sure anger, may I myself stretch out as a long-bellied snake.’ And, so speaking, he did extend into a long-bellied snake, and felt his skin hardening as scales grew there, while dark green patches checkered his black body. He lay prone on his breast, and gradually his legs fused together thinning out towards a smooth point. Still his arms were left to him, and what was left of his arms he stretched out, and, with tears running down his still human cheeks, he said ‘Come here, wife, come here, most unfortunate one, and while there is still something left of me, touch me, and take my hand, while it is still a hand, while the snake does not yet have all of me.’

He wanted to say so much more, but suddenly his tongue was split in two, and though he wished for words none came, and whenever he started on some plaintive sound, he hissed: this was the voice that Nature bequeathed him. Then, striking her naked breast with her hands, his wife cried out ‘Cadmus, wait, unhappy one, tear away this monstrous thing! Cadmus, what is it? Where are your feet? Where are your hands, shoulders, face, colour, everything – while I speak? Why do you not change me as well, you gods, into this same snake’s form? She spoke. His tongue flickered over his wife’s face, he slid between her beloved breasts as if known there, and clasped her, and searched about for the neck he knew so well. Everyone who was there (their comrades were present) was horrified, but she stroked the gleaming neck of the crested serpent, and suddenly there were two snakes there, with intertwining coils, until they sought the shelter of the neighbouring woods. Even now they do not avoid human beings or wound them, quiet serpents, remembering what they once were.

Bk 4:604-662 Perseus and Atlas

Nevertheless even in their altered form, their grandson Bacchus gave them great consolation, whom conquered India worshipped, to whose newly created temples the Achaians thronged. Only Acrisius, son of Abas, born from the same roots (through Belus brother of Agenor), was an exception, who closed Argos within its walls, took up arms against the god, and did not consider him a child of Jupiter. Nor did he consider, as a child of Jupiter, his grandson Perseus, whom Danaë conceived of a shower of gold. Though later (such is truth’s power) Acrisius repented of outraging the god, and of not acknowledging his grandson. One had taken his place in the heavens, but the other was travelling through the gentle air, on beating wings, bringing back an amazing, monstrous prize, and as the victor hung above the Lybian sands, bloody drops fell from the Gorgon’s head. The earth caught them and gave them life, as species of snakes, and so that country is infested with deadly serpents.

He was driven from there by conflicting winds, carried this way and that, through vast spaces, like a raincloud. He flew over the whole world, looking down, through the air, from a great height, at remote countries. Three times he saw the frozen constellations of the Bears, three times the Crab’s pincers. Often he was forced below the west, often into the east, and now as the light died, afraid to trust to night, he put down in the western regions of Hesperus, in the kingdom of Atlas. He looked to rest there a while, till Lucifer summoned up Aurora’s fires, and Aurora the chariot of dawn. Here was Atlas, son of Iapetus, exceeding all men by the size of his body.

The most remote land was under Atlas’s rule, and the ocean, into which Sol’s panting horses plunged, and where his straining axle was welcomed. He had a thousand flocks, and as many herds of cattle straying through the grass, and no neighbouring soil was richer than his. The leaves of the trees, bright with radiant gold, covered branches of gold, and fruit of gold. Perseus said to him ‘Friend, if high birth impresses you, Jupiter is responsible for my birth. Or if you admire great deeds, you will admire mine. I ask for hospitality and rest.

Atlas remembered an ancient prophecy. Themis on Parnassus had given that prophecy. ‘Atlas, the time will come when your tree will be stripped of its gold, and he who steals it will be called the son of Jupiter.’ Fearful of this, Atlas had enclosed his orchard with solid walls, and set a huge dragon to guard it, and kept all strangers away from his borders. To Perseus, he said ‘Go far away, lest the glory of the deeds, that you lie about, and Jupiter himself, fail you!’ He added weight to his threats, and tried to push him away with his great hands, Perseus delaying resolutely, and combining that with calm words. Inferior in strength (who could equal Atlas in strength?), he said, ‘Well now, since you show me so little kindness, accept a gift’ and turning away himself, he held out Medusa’s foul head, on his left hand side. Atlas became a mountain, as huge as he himself had been. Now his hair and beard were changed into trees, his shoulders and hands into ridges. What had been his head before was the crest on the mountain summit. His bones became stones. Then he grew to an immense height in every part (so you gods determined) and the whole sky, with its many stars, rested on him.

Bk 4:663-705 Perseus offers to save Andromeda

Aeolus, son of Hippotas, had confined the winds in their prison under Mount Etna, and Lucifer, who exhorts us to work, shone brightest of all in the depths of the eastern sky. Perseus strapped the winged sandals, he had put to one side, to his feet, armed himself with his curved sword, and cut through the clear air on beating pinions. Leaving innumerable nations behind, below and around him, he came in sight of the Ethiopian peoples, and the fields of Cepheus. There Jupiter Ammon had unjustly ordered the innocent Andromeda to pay the penalty for her mother Cassiopeia’s words.

As soon as Perseus, great-grandson of Abas, saw her fastened by her arms to the hard rock, he would have thought she was a marble statue, except that a light breeze stirred her hair, and warm tears ran from her eyes. He took fire without knowing it and was stunned, and seized by the vision of the form he saw, he almost forgot to flicker his wings in the air. As soon as he had touched down, he said ‘O, you do not deserve these chains, but those that link ardent lovers together. Tell me your name, I wish to know it, and the name of your country, and why you are wearing these fetters. At first she was silent: a virgin, she did not dare to address a man, and she would have hidden her face modestly with her hands, if they had not been fastened behind her. She used her eyes instead, and they filled with welling tears. At his repeated insistence, so as not to seem to be acknowledging a fault of her own, she told him her name and the name of her country, and what faith her mother had had in her own beauty.

Before she had finished speaking, all the waves resounded, and a monster menaced them, rising from the deep sea, and covered the wide waters with its breadth. The girl cried out: her grieving father and mother were together nearby, both wretched, but the mother more justifiably so. They bring no help with them, only weeping and lamentations to suit the moment, and cling to her fettered body. Then the stranger speaks ‘There will be plenty of time left for tears, but only a brief hour is given us to work. If I asked for this girl as Perseus, son of Jupiter and that Danaë, imprisoned in the brazen tower, whom Jupiter filled with his rich golden shower; Perseus conqueror of the Gorgon with snakes for hair, he who dared to fly, driven through the air, on soaring wings, then surely I should be preferred to all other suitors as a son-in-law. If the gods favour me, I will try to add further merit to these great gifts. I will make a bargain. Rescued by my courage, she must be mine.’ Her parents accept the contract (who would hesitate?) and, entreating him, promise a kingdom, as well, for a dowry.

Bk 4:706-752 Perseus defeats the sea-serpent

See how the creature comes parting the waves, with surging breast, like a fast ship, with pointed prow, ploughing the water, driven by the sweat-covered muscles of her crew. It was as far from the rock as a Balearic sling can send a lead shot through the air, when suddenly the young hero, pushing his feet hard against the earth, shot high among the clouds. When the shadow of a man appeared on the water’ surface, the creature raged against the shadow it had seen. As Jupiter’s eagle, when it sees a snake, in an open field, showing its livid body to the sun, takes it from behind, and fixes its eager talons in the scaly neck, lest it twists back its cruel fangs, so the descendant of Inachus hurling himself headlong, in swift flight, through empty space, attacked the creature’s back, and, as it roared, buried his sword, to the end of the curved blade, in the right side of its neck. Hurt by the deep wound, now it reared high in the air, now it dived underwater, or turned now, like a fierce wild boar, when the dogs scare him, and the pack is baying around him. Perseus evades the eager jaws on swift wings, and strikes with his curved sword wherever the monster is exposed, now at the back encrusted with barnacles, now at the sides of the body, now where the tail is slenderest, ending fishlike. The beast vomits seawater mixed with purplish blood. The pinions grow heavy, soaked with spray. Not daring to trust his drenched wings any further, he sees a rock whose highest point stands above quiet water, hidden by rough seas. Resting there, and holding on to the topmost pinnacle with his left hand, he drives his sword in three or four times, repeatedly.

The shores, and the high places of the gods, fill with the clamor of applause. Cassiope and Cepheus rejoice, and greet their son-in-law, acknowledging him as the pillar of their house, and their deliverer. Released from her chains, the girl comes forward, the prize and the cause of his efforts. He washes his hands, after the victory, in seawater drawn for him, and, so that Medusa’s head, covered with its snakes, is not bruised by the harsh sand, he makes the ground soft with leaves, and spreads out plants from below the waves, and places the head of that daughter of Phorcys on them. The fresh plants, still living inside, and absorbent, respond to the influence of the Gorgon’s head, and harden at its touch, acquiring a new rigidity in branches and fronds. And the ocean nymphs try out this wonder on more plants, and are delighted that the same thing happens at its touch, and repeat it by scattering the seeds from the plants through the waves. Even now corals have the same nature, hardening at a touch of air, and what was alive, under the water, above water is turned to stone.

Bk 4:753-803 Perseus tells the story of Medusa

To the three gods, he builds the same number of altars out of turf, to you Mercury on the left, to you Minerva, warlike virgin, on the right, and an altar of Jupiter in the centre. He sacrifices a cow to Minerva, a calf to the wing-footed god, and a bull to you, greatest of the gods. Then he claims Andromeda, without a dowry, valuing her as the worthiest prize. Hymen and Amor wave the marriage torch, the fires are saturated with strong perfumes, garlands hang from the rafters, and everywhere flutes and pipes, and singing, sound out, the happy evidence of joyful hearts. The doors fold back to show the whole of the golden hall, and the noble Ethiopian princes enter to a richly prepared banquet already set out for them.

When they have attacked the feast, and their spirits are cheered by wine, the generous gift of Bacchus, Perseus asks about the country and its culture, its customs and the character of its people. At the same time as he instructed him about these, one of the guests said ‘Perseus, I beg you to tell us by what prowess and by what arts you carried off that head with snakes for hair.’ The descendant of Agenor told how there was a cave lying below the frozen slopes of Atlas, safely hidden in its solid mass. At the entrance to this place the sisters lived, the Graeae, daughters of Phorcys, similar in appearance, sharing only one eye between them. He removed it, cleverly, and stealthily, cunningly substituting his own hand while they were passing it from one to another. Far from there, by hidden tracks, and through rocks bristling with shaggy trees, he reached the place where the Gorgons lived. In the fields and along the paths, here and there, he saw the shapes of men and animals changed from their natures to hard stone by Medusa’s gaze. Nevertheless he had himself looked at the dread form of Medusa reflected in a circular shield of polished bronze that he carried on his left arm. And while a deep sleep held the snakes and herself, he struck her head from her neck. And the swift winged horse Pegasus and his brother the warrior Chrysaor, were born from their mother’s blood.

He told of his long journeys, of dangers that were not imaginary ones, what seas and lands he had seen below from his high flight, and what stars he had brushed against with beating wings. He still finished speaking before they wished. Next one of the many princes asked why Medusa, alone among her sisters, had snakes twining in her hair. The guest replied ‘Since what you ask is worth the telling, hear the answer to your question. She was once most beautiful, and the jealous aspiration of many suitors. Of all her beauties none was more admired than her hair: I came across a man who recalled having seen her. They say that Neptune, lord of the seas, violated her in the temple of Minerva. Jupiter’s daughter turned away, and hid her chaste eyes behind her aegis. So that it might not go unpunished, she changed the Gorgon’s hair to foul snakes. And now, to terrify her enemies, numbing them with fear, the goddess wears the snakes, that she created, as a breastplate.

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Book 5

• Bk 5:1-29 Phineus seeks revenge for the loss of his bride.
• Bk 5:30-73 The fight: the death of Athis.
• Bk 5:74-106 The fight: The deaths of Idas, Chromis and others.
• Bk 5:107-148 The fight: Lampetides, Dorylas and others.
• Bk 5:149-199 Perseus uses the Gorgon’s head.
• Bk 5:200-249 Phineus is turned to stone.
• Bk 5:250-293 Minerva on Helicon.
• Bk 5:294-331 The contest between the Pierides and the Muses.
• Bk 5:332-384 Calliope sings: Cupid makes Dis fall in love.
• Bk 5:385-424 Calliope sings: Dis and the rape of Proserpine.
• Bk 5:425-486 Calliope sings: Ceres searches for Proserpine.
• Bk 5:487-532 Calliope sings: Ceres asks Jupiter’s help.
• Bk 5:533-571 Calliope sings: Persephone’s fate.
• Bk 5:572-641 Calliope sings: Arethusa’s story.
• Bk 5:642-678 Calliope sings: Triptolemus. The Fate of the Pierides.

Bk 5:1-29 Phineus seeks revenge for the loss of his bride

While the hero, the son of Danae, is recalling this succession of events, amongst the Ethiopians, the royal halls suddenly fill with a riot of complaints. It is not the sound of a wedding feast that rings out, but that which presages the use of arms. The festivities, turned to sudden confusion, could be likened to a calm sea that the fierce raging of the wind churns into rising waves. Phineus, the king’s brother, is first mover in this, a rash stirrer-up of strife, shaking his ashen spear tipped with bronze. ‘See,’ he shouted ‘See, I come here as an avenger for the carrying off of my bride. Your wings won’t help you escape me, nor even Jupiter, changed to a shower of fool’s gold!’

As he prepared to throw the spear, Cepheus cried ‘What are you doing? Brother, what mad feelings drive you to crime? Are these the thanks you return for such service? Is this the gift with which you pay compensation for a life restored? If you want the truth it was not Perseus who took her from you, but Neptune, the stern god of the Nereids, and horned Jupiter Ammon, and that monster that came from the sea to glut itself on my own flesh and blood. It was then she was taken from you, when she was about to die: but perhaps, hard-hearted one, that is what you want, for her to die, and you to take comfort from my grief. Of course, it is not enough that you saw her fastened there, and brought her no help, you her uncle and her intended. Are you grieved that she was saved by someone else, and would you take away his prize? If it seemed so great a prize to you, you should have sought her among the rocks where she was chained. Now let the man who did seek it, take what he has earned and what was promised, since, thanks to him, I shall not have a childless old age. Realise that it is not Perseus, but the prospect of certain death that has displaced you.’

Bk 5:30-73 The fight: the death of Athis

Phineus said nothing, but turned his face alternately from Perseus to his brother, not knowing whether to aim at the one or the other. Hesitating for a while he hurled his spear, throwing it with the energy of anger, but uselessly, at Perseus. Only when it had stuck fast in the bench, did Perseus leap up from where he was lying. Returning the weapon, fiercely, he would have pierced his enemy’s chest, if Phineus had not dodged behind the altars: and (shamefully) the wretch found safety in that refuge. Nevertheless the javelin was not without effect, and struck Rhoetus full face, who immediately fell, and, when the weapon had been pulled out of the bone, he kicked out and sprayed the laden tables with his blood. Then the crowd of men was truly ablaze with anger, and they hurled their spears, and there were those who said Cepheus deserved to die with his son-in-law. But Cepheus had already crossed the threshold, calling on justice, good faith, and on the gods of friendship, to witness that what was being done was forbidden. Warlike Pallas came and protected her brother, Perseus, with her shield, the aegis, and gave him courage.

There was a youth from India, Athis, whom Limnaee, a nymph of the River Ganges is said to have given birth to, under its glassy waters. He was of outstanding beauty, his sixteen years unimpaired, enhanced by his rich robes, wearing his military cloak of Tyrian purple, fringed with gold. A gold collar ornamented his neck, and a curved coronet his myrrh-drenched hair. He was skilled at piercing anything with the javelins he launched, however distant, but was even more skilled at shooting with the bow. While he was bending the pliant tips in his hands, Perseus struck him, with a log that had been smouldering in the middle of the altar, and shattered his face to splintered bone.

When Lycabas, the Assyrian, closest to him, as a friend, and, most probably, a lover, saw his much praised features masked with blood, he wept bitterly for Athis, breathing out his life through that sad wound. He caught up the bow Athis had strung and said ‘Now match yourself with me! You will not have long to rejoice over the death of a child, an act which holds more shame than praise.’ He had not finished speaking when the sharp arrow shot from the bowstring, but Perseus avoided it, and it was left hanging from a fold of his clothes. The grandson of Acrisius turned against him that scimitar, tried and proven in his killing of Medusa, driving it into his chest. But even in death, his eyes failing, he looked round for Athis, in that gloomy night, and fell next to him, taking for his solace, to the shadows, the fact of being joined with him in death.

Bk 5:74-106 The fight: The deaths of Idas, Chromis and others

Phorbas of Syene, the son of Metion, and Libyan Amphimedon, eager to commit to the fight, fell, having slipped on the ground, warm and drenched with blood on every side. Rising, they were stopped by the sword, piercing Phorbas’s throat, and Amphimedon’s ribs. But Perseus did not challenge Eurytus, son of Actor, who had a battle-axe, with his scimitar, instead, lifting a mixing bowl, embossed with decorations and very heavy in weight, high in the air, with both hands, he dashed it down on the man, who vomited bright red blood, and, lying on his back, beat the earth with his head. Then Perseus overthrew Polydegmon, born of the blood of Queen Semiramis, Abaris from Caucasia, Lycetus from the River Spercheos region, Helices with flowing hair, Clytus and Phlegyas, and trod on a mounting pile of the dying.

Phineus did not dare to fight hand to hand with his enemy, but threw his spear, which felled Idas, by mistake, who, though unavailingly, had no part in the fight, and was a follower of neither side. He, looking fiercely at Phineus, and said ‘Since I have been forced to take part, then, Phineus, acknowledge the enemy you have made, and repay me wound for wound!’ He was about to hurl back the javelin he had pulled from his body when he collapsed dying, his limbs drained of blood.

Then Hodites, the greatest of the Ethiopians next to the king, was killed by Clymenus’s sword. Hypseus struck Prothoënor, and Lyncides struck Hypseus. One very old man, Emathion, was there who upheld justice, and feared the gods. He stepped forward, and since his age prevented him fighting, he warred in words, cursing their sinful weapons. Chromis decapitated him with his sword, as he clung to the altar with trembling hands, and the head fell straight on to the hearth, and there the half living tongue still uttered imprecations, and its life expired in the midst of the flames.

Bk 5:107-148 The fight: Lampetides, Dorylas and others

Then two brothers fell at the hands of Phineus. They were Broteas, and Ammon the famous boxers, who would have been able to overcome anything, if boxing gloves were able to overcome swords, and Ampycus, priest of Ceres, his forehead wreathed with white fillets. And you Lampetides, summoned, but not for this purpose, who played the lute and sang, the work of peace, ordered to help celebrate the feast, and recite the bridal songs. Pedasus, mockingly shouted to him, as he stood to one side holding his unwarlike plectrum, ‘Go and sing the rest to the Stygian shades!’ and pierced his left temple with his blade. He fell, and tried to pluck the lyric strings again, with dying fingers, and, falling, struck a plaintive note.

Lycormas, angered, did not allow him to die without taking revenge. Grasping a heavy bar from the door on his right, he struck Pedasus, in the middle of his neck-bones, and he fell dead to the ground, like a bullock at the sacrifice. Pelates, from the banks of Cinyps, tried to take the bar from the left door, and, while attempting to do so, his right hand was transfixed by the spear of Corythus, from Marmarica, and pinned to the wood. Abas pierced him in the side as he was fastened there, and he did not fall, but hung there, dying, from the post to which his hand was nailed. Melaneus, a follower of Perseus’s cause, was also killed, and Dorylas, the wealthiest man in the fields of Nasamonia, Dorylas whose wealth was in fields, than whom no man held a greater tract, nor could pile up as many heaps of spices. A missile thrown from the side stuck in his groin, that fatal place. When Halcyoneus of Bactria, the perpetrator of the wound, saw him gasping for life, his eyes rolling, he said ‘Of all your lands you shall have only this earth you lie on!’ and left his bloodless corpse. But Perseus, the avenger, the descendant of Abas, turned against him the spear, pulled hot from the wound. Catching the nose, it went through the middle of the neck, jutting out front and back.

While Fortune aided his hand, Perseus killed Clytius and Clanis, born of one mother, with different wounds. An ashen spear, from his strong arm, went through both Clytius’s thighs, while Clanis’s jaw bit on a javelin. Mendesian Celadon was killed, Astreus, of unknown father and Syrian mother, Aethion, once skilled in telling the future, now deceived by lack of foresight, Thoactes, the armour-bearer of the king, and Agyrtes, notorious for murdering his own father.

Bk 5:149-199 Perseus uses the Gorgon’s head

There is yet more to be done, despite what he has endured: the purpose of all is to overwhelm this one man. The bands of conspirators oppose him on all sides, in a cause opposed to justice, and good faith. His father, with helpless loyalty, and his new bride and her mother, support him to the best of their abilities, filling the palace with their cries. But the clash of weapons and the groans of the fallen, drown them out, and at the same time Bellona, goddess of war, pollutes and drenches the penates, the household gods, with blood, and stirs renewed conflict.

Phineus and a thousand followers of Phineus, surround the one man. Spears to the right of him, spears to the left of him, fly thicker than winter hail, past his eyes and ears. He sets his back and shoulders against a massive stone column, and protected behind, turns towards the opposing crowd of men, and withstands their threat. The Chaonian, Molpeus, presses him on the left, and on the right Ethemon, a Nabatean. Like a tiger, goaded by hunger, that hears the bellowing of two herds of cattle in separate valleys, and does not know which it would rather rush at, fired up to rush at either, so Perseus hesitates whether to strike right or left. He drives Molpeus off, piercing him with a wound to the leg, and is content to let him go: but Ethemon allows him no time, and raging and eager to give him a wound high on the neck, flails at him, incautiously and violently, and fractures his sword, striking it on the extreme edge of the column. The blade is detached, and fixes itself in its owner’s throat. The wound it gives him is not serious enough to cause his death, but as he stands there, quivering, and uselessly stretching out his defenceless arms, Perseus stabs him with Cyllenian Mercury’s curved sword.

When Perseus saw indeed that, his efforts would succumb to the weight of numbers, he said ‘Since you plan it like this, I will ask help of the enemy. If there are any friends here, turn your face away!’ and he held up the Gorgon’s head. ‘Find others, who might be worried by your marvel’ said Thesculus, but as he prepared to throw his deadly javelin, he was frozen, like a marble statue, in the act. Ampyx, next to him, thrust his sword straight at the heart of the courageous descendant of Lynceus, and, in thrusting, his right hand stiffened, without movement this way or that. But Nileus who falsely claimed that he was born of the Nile with its seven mouths, his shield engraved with its seven streams, part gold, part silver, cried ‘Perseus, see, the sources of my people: it will be a great consolation to you to take with you, in death, to the silent shadows, the knowledge of having fallen to so noble a man’. The last echo of his voice was cut off in mid-flight, and you might believe his mouth still wished to speak, though it was no longer pervious to words.

Eryx rebuked them, saying, ‘Lack of courage, not the power of the Gorgon, freezes you. Rush in with me and knock this youth and his magic weapon to the ground!’ He had started his rush, but the floor held his feet fast, and there he stayed, unmoving stone, a fully-armed statue.

Bk 5:200-249 Phineus is turned to stone

They all deserved the punishment they suffered, except one of Perseus’s warriors. While he was fighting on his side, Aconteus, saw the Gorgon’s head, and took the shape of hardened stone. Astyages struck him with his long sword thinking he was still alive, and the blade gave a high-pitched ringing noise. While Astyages stood there amazed, the same power transformed him, and he remained there with a wondering look on his marble face. It would take a long time to tell the names of the middle ranks of men: two hundred bodies survived the fight, two hundred bodies were turned to stone, at sight of the Gorgon’s head.

Now, at last, Phineus regrets the unjust fight, but what can he do? He sees the figures in diverse attitudes, and recognises the men, and calling on each by name, asks his help. Disbelieving, he touches the bodies nearest to him. They are marble. He averts his gaze from Perseus, and in supplication, he stretches out his hands in acknowledgement, his arms still held out towards him. ‘Perseus’, he cries, ‘you have won! Take away that monstrous thing of yours: remove your head of the Medusa, whoever she may be, that turns men to stone. Take it away, I beg you! It was not hate, or desire for power, that drove me to war. I took up arms to win a bride! Your claim was greater by merit, but mine by precedence. I do not regret ending it. Give me nothing, except my life, most resolute of men, the rest is yours!’ So speaking, not daring to look towards him to whom he directed his request, Perseus replied ‘Have no fear, most cowardly Phineus, I will grant both what I can grant, and what is a great gift to the fearful! You will not suffer the sword. Rather I will cause you to be an enduring monument through the ages, and you will always be seen in my father-in-law’s palace, so that my wife may find solace in the statue of her intended.’ He spoke, and carried the head of Phorcys’s daughter to where Phineus had turned his frightened face. As Phineus tried to avert his gaze, his neck hardened, and the tears on his cheeks were turned to stone. Now the frightened face, the suppliant expression, the submissive hands, and the slavish appearance, remained, in marble.

The victorious descendant of Abas, with his bride, enters Argos, his ancestral city, and as the champion and vindicator of his grandfather Acrisius, who little deserves it, he attacks Proetus, who has made his brother a fugitive by force of arms, and seized his stronghold. But neither by force of arms, nor by possession of the stronghold he had taken in his wickedness, could he overcome the fierce gaze of the snake-wreathed monster.

Still, you, O Polydectes, king of tiny Seriphos, softened neither by the young man’s virtue, visible in all his efforts, nor by his suffering, nursed a harsh and unrelenting hatred, and there was no limit to your baseless anger. You disparaged the praise given him, and accused his account of the killing of Medusa of being a lie. ‘I will give you evidence of its truth. Friends, protect your eyes!’ cried Perseus, and with the face of Medusa he turned the face of the king to bloodless stone.

Bk 5:250-293 Minerva on Helicon

p to this point Tritonian Minerva had given her time, freely, in friendship, to this brother of hers, conceived in a shower of gold, but now, surrounded by vaulted cloud, she vanished from the island of Seriphos, and leaving Cythnus and Gyarus behind on her right, she headed for Thebes, and Mount Helicon, home of the virgin Muses, crossing the sea by whichever way seemed quickest. Reaching it, she alighted there, and spoke to the sisters, learned in song, saying ‘Talk of a new fountain has reached my ears, that gushed out from under the hard hoof of winged Pegasus, born of Medusa. That is the reason for my journey. I wanted to see this wonderful creation. He himself I saw born from his mother’s blood.’

Urania replied ‘Whatever reason brings you here, to see our home, goddess, you are dear to our hearts. But the tale is true: Pegasus is the source of our fountain’, and she led her to the sacred waters. Pallas, having looked in wonder, for a long time, at this stream, made by the blow of the horses hoof, gazed around her at the groves of ancient trees, the caves, and the grass, embroidered with innumerable flowers, and said that the daughters of Mnemosyne were equally happy in their home and their pursuits. At which one of the sisters answered, ‘O, Tritonia, who would have been one of our choir, if your virtues had not formed you for greater things, what you say is true, and you rightly approve our arts and our haunts. Our life is happy, if only it were safe. But (nothing is sacred to the wicked), all things frighten virgin minds. Dread Pyreneus’s destruction is in front of my eyes, and my mind has not yet recovered fully.

That fierce man had captured Daulis and the Phocian fields, with his Thracian warriors, and wrongly held the kingdom. We were heading for the shrine on Parnassus. He saw us going by, and his face showing apparent reverence for our divinity, he said (knowing us), “Mnemonides, wait, don’t be afraid, I beg you, to shelter from the rain and the lowering skies” (it was raining): “The gods have often entered humbler homes”. Responding to his words, and the weather, we gave the man our assent, and went into the entrance hall of the palace. The rain stopped, the north wind overcame the south, and the dark clouds fled from the clearing sky. We wished to go. Pyreneus closed the doors, and prepared for violence, and we escaped that only by taking to our wings. He stood on the highest summit, as if he would follow us, saying “Whatever is your way, is also mine”, and foolishly threw himself from the roof of the main tower. He fell headlong, breaking his skull, hammering the ground in dying, and staining the earth with his evil blood.’

Bk 5:294-331 The contest between the Pierides and the Muses

The Muse was speaking: wings sounded in the air, and voices in greeting came out of the high branches. The daughter of Jupiter looked up, and questioned where the sound came from, that was so much like mouths speaking, and thought it human, though it was birdsong. Nine of them, magpies, that imitate everything, had settled in the branches, bemoaning their fate. While she wondered, the other began speaking, goddess to goddess, ‘Defeated in a contest, they have been added only recently to the flocks of birds. Pierus of Pella, rich in fields, was their father, and Paeonian Euippe was their mother. Nine times, while giving birth, she called, nine times, to powerful Lucina. Swollen with pride in their numbers, this crowd of foolish sisters came here, to us, through the many cities of Achaia and Haemonia, and challenged us to a singing competition, saying “Stop cheating the untutored masses with your empty sweetness. If you have faith in yourselves, contend with us, you goddesses of Thespiae. We cannot be outdone in voice or art, and we are your equals in numbers. If you want, if you are defeated, you can grant us the Heliconian fountains, Hippocrene, of Medusa’s offspring, and Boeotian Aganippe. Or we will grant you the Emathian plains as far as snow-covered Paeonia! Let the nymphs decide the outcome.”

It was shameful to compete with them, but it seemed more shameful to concede. The nymphs were elected, and swore on their streams to judge fairly, and sat on platforms of natural rock. Then, without drawing lots, the one who had first declared the contest sang, of the war with the gods, granting false honours to the giants, and diminishing the actions of the mighty deities. How Typhoeus, issued forth from his abode in the depths of the earth, filling the heavenly gods with fear, and how they all turned their backs in flight, until Egypt received them, and the Nile with its seven mouths. She told how earth-born Typhoeus came there as well, and the gods concealed themselves in disguised forms. “Jupiter” she said, “turned himself into a ram, the head of the flock, and even now Libyan Ammon is shown with curving horns. Delian Apollo hid as a crow, Bacchus, Semele’s child, as a goat, Diana, the sister of Phoebus, a cat, Saturnian Juno a white cow, Venus a fish, and Cyllenian Mercury the winged ibis.”

Bk 5:332-384 Calliope sings: Cupid makes Dis fall in love

‘This much she played on her lute, with singing voice. Then called on us, - but perhaps you are not at leisure, or free to listen to a repetition of our music?’ ‘Do not stop’ said Pallas, ‘but sing your song again as you arranged it!’ and she sat amongst the light shadows of the grove. The Muse renewed her tale ‘We gave our best singer to the contest. Calliope, who rose, with her loose hair bound with ivy, tried out the plaintive strings with her fingers, then accompanied the wandering notes with this song.

‘“Ceres first turned the soil with curving plough, first ripened the crops and produce of the earth, first gave us laws: all things are Ceres’s gift. My song is of her. If only I could create a song in any way worthy of the goddess! This goddess is truly a worthy subject for my song.

‘“Trinacris, the vast isle of Sicily, had been heaped over the giant’s limbs, and with its great mass oppressed buried Typhoeus, he who had dared to aspire to a place in heaven. He struggles it’s true and often tries to rise, but his right hand is held by the promontory of Ausonian Pelorus, and his left hand by you, Pachynus. Lilybaeum presses on his legs, Etna weighs down his head, supine beneath it, Typhoeus throws ash from his mouth, and spits out flame. Often, a wrestler, he throws back the weight of earth, and tries to roll the high mountains and the cities from his body, and then the ground trembles, and even the lord of the silent kingdom is afraid lest he be exposed, and the soil split open in wide fissures, and the light admitted to scare the anxious dead.

‘“Fearing this disaster, the king of the dark had left his shadowy realm, and, drawn in his chariot by black horses, carefully circled the foundations of the Sicilian land. When he had checked and was satisfied that nothing was collapsing, he relinquished his fears. Then Venus, at Eryx, saw him moving, as she sat on the hillside, and embraced her winged son, Cupid, and said ‘My child, my hands and weapons, my power, seize those arrows, that overcome all, and devise a path for your swift arrows, to the heart of that god to whom the final share of the triple kingdom fell. You conquer the gods and Jupiter himself, the lords of the sea, and their very king, who controls the lords of the sea. Why is Tartarus excepted? Why not extend your mother’s kingdom and your own? We are talking of a third part of the world. And yet, as is evident to me, I am scorned in heaven, and Love’s power diminishes with mine.

‘“‘Don’t you see how Pallas, and the huntress Diana, forsake me? And Ceres’s daughter too, Proserpine, will be a virgin if we allow it, since she hopes to be like them. But you, if you delight in our shared kingdom, can mate the goddess to her uncle.’ So Venus spoke: he undid his quiver, and at his mother’s bidding took an arrow, one from a thousand, and none was sharper, more certain, or better obeyed the bow. Then he bent the pliant tips against his knee, and with his barbed arrow struck Dis in the heart.”

Bk 5:385-424 Calliope sings: Dis and the rape of Proserpine

‘“Not far from the walls of Enna, there is a deep pool. Pergus is its name. Caÿster does not hear more songs than rise from the swans on its gliding waves. A wood encircles the waters, surrounds them on every side, and its leaves act as a veil, dispelling Phoebus’s shafts. The branches give it coolness, and the moist soil, Tyrian purple flowers: there, it is everlasting Spring. While Proserpine was playing in this glade, and gathering violets or radiant lilies, while with girlish fondness she filled the folds of her gown, and her basket, trying to outdo her companions in her picking, Dis, almost in a moment, saw her, prized her, took her: so swift as this, is love. The frightened goddess cries out to her mother, to her friends, most of all to her mother, with piteous mouth. Since she had torn her dress at the opening, the flowers she had collected fell from her loosened tunic, and even their scattering caused her virgin tears. The ravisher whipped up his chariot, and urged on the horses, calling them by name, shaking out the shadowy, dark-dyed, reins, over their necks and manes, through deep pools, they say, and the sulphurous reeking swamps of the Palici, vented from a crevice of the earth, to Syracuse where the Bacchiadae, a people born of Corinth between two seas, laid out their city between unequal harbours.

‘“Between Cyane and Pisaean Arethusa, there is a bay enclosed by narrow arms. Here lived Cyane, best known of the Sicilian nymphs, from whom the name of the spring was also taken. She showed herself from the pool as far as her waist, and recognising the goddess, cried out to Dis, ‘No’, and ‘Go no further!’ ‘You cannot be Ceres’s son against her will: the girl should have been asked, and not abused. If it is right for me to compare small things with great, Anapis prized me and I wedded him, but I was persuaded by talk and not by terror.’ Speaking, she stretched her arms out at her sides, obstructing him. The son of Saturn could scarcely contain his wrath, and urging on the dread horses, he turned his royal sceptre with powerful arm, and plunged it through the bottom of the pool. The earth, pierced, made a road to Tartarus, and swallowed the headlong chariot, into the midst of the abyss.

Bk 5:425-486 Calliope sings: Ceres searches for Proserpine

‘“Cyane, mourning the rape of the goddess, and the contempt for the sanctities of her fountain, nursed an inconsolable grief in her silent heart, and pined away wholly with sorrow. She melted into those waters whose great goddess she had previously been. You might see her limbs becoming softened, her bones seeming pliant, her nails losing their hardness. First of all the slenderest parts dissolve: her dusky hair, her fingers and toes, her feet and ankles (since it is no great transformation from fragile limbs to cool waters). Next her breast and back, shoulders and flanks slip away, vanishing into tenuous streams. At last the water runs in her ruined veins, and nothing remains that you could touch.

‘“Meanwhile the mother, fearing, searches in vain for the maid, through all the earth and sea. Neither the coming of dewy-haired Aurora, nor Hesperus, finds her resting. Lighting pine torches with both hands at Etna’s fires, she wanders, unquiet, through the bitter darkness, and when the kindly light has dimmed the stars, she still seeks her child, from the rising of the sun till the setting of the sun.

‘“She found herself thirsty and weary from her efforts, and had not moistened her lips at any of the springs, when by chance she saw a hut with a roof of straw, and she knocked on its humble door. At that sound, an old woman emerged, and saw the goddess, and, when she asked for water, gave her something sweet made with malted barley. While she drank what she had been given a rash, foul-mouthed boy stood watching, and taunted her, and called her greedy. The goddess was offended, and threw the liquid she had not yet drunk, mixed with the grains of barley, in his face. His skin, absorbing it, became spotted, and where he had once had arms, he now had legs. A tail was added to his altered limbs, and he shrank to a little shape, so that he has no great power to harm. He is like a lesser lizard, a newt, of tiny size. The old woman wondered and wept, and, trying to touch the creature, it ran from her and searched out a place to hide. It has a name fitting for its offence, stellio, its body starred with various spots.

‘“It would take too long to tell through what lands and seas the goddess wandered. Searching the whole earth, she failed to find her daughter: she returned to Sicily, and while crossing it from end to end, she came to Cyane, who if she had not been changed would have told all. But though she wished to, she had neither mouth nor tongue, nor anything with which to speak. Still she revealed clear evidence, known to the mother, and showed Persephone’s ribbon, fallen, by chance, into the sacred pool. As soon as she recognised it, the goddess tore her dishevelled hair, and beat her breast again and again with her hands, as if she at last comprehended the rape. She did not know yet where Persephone was, but condemned all the lands, and called them thankless and unworthy of her gift of corn, Sicily, that Trinacria, above all, where she had discovered the traces of her loss.

‘“So, in that place, with cruel hands, she broke the ploughs that turned up the soil, and, in her anger, dealt destruction to farmers, and the cattle in their fields, alike, and ordered the ever-faithful land to fail, and spoiled the sowing. The fertility of that country, acclaimed throughout the world, was spoken of as a fiction: the crops died as young shoots, destroyed by too much sun, and then by too much rain. Wind and weather harmed them, and hungry birds gathered the scattered seed. Thistles and darnel and stubborn grasses ruined the wheat harvest.

Bk 5:487-532 Calliope sings: Ceres asks Jupiter’s help

‘“Then Arethusa, once of Elis, whom Alpheus loved, lifted her head from her pool, and brushed the wet hair from her forehead, saying ‘O great goddess of the crops, mother of that virgin sought through all the earth, end your fruitless efforts, and do not anger yourself so deeply against the faithful land. The land does not deserve it: it opened to the rape against its will. It is not my country, I pray for: I came here as a stranger. Pisa is my country, and Elis is my source. I am a foreigner in Sicily, but its soil is more to me than other lands. Here is my home: here are my household gods. Most gentle one, preserve it. A fitting time will come for me to tell you, how I moved from my country, and came to Ortygia, over such a great expanse of sea, when you are free of care, and of happier countenance. The fissured earth showed me a way, and slipping below the deepest caverns, here, I lifted up my head, and saw the unfamiliar stars.

‘“‘So, while I glided underground down there, among Stygian streams, with these very eyes, I saw your Proserpine. She was sad indeed, but, though her face was fearful still, she was nevertheless a queen, the greatest one among the world of shadows, the powerful consort, nevertheless, of the king of hell!’ The mother was stunned to hear these words, as if petrified, and was, for a long time, like someone thunderstruck, until the blow of deep amazement became deep indignation. She rose, in her chariot, to the realms of heaven. There, her whole face clouded with hate, she appeared before Jove with dishevelled hair.

‘“‘Jupiter I have come to you in entreaty for my child and for your own’ she cried. ‘If the mother finds no favour with you, let the daughter move you, and do not let your concern for her be less, I beg you, because I gave her birth. See, the daughter I have searched for so long, has been found, if you call it finding to lose her more surely, if you call it finding merely to know where she is. I can bear the fact that she has been raped, if he will only return her! A spoiler is not worthy to be the husband of your daughter, even if she is no longer my daughter.’ Jupiter replied ‘Our child is a pledge and a charge, between us, you and I. But if only we are willing to give things their right names, the thing is not an insult in itself: the truth is it is love. He would not be a shameful son-in-law for us, if only you would wish it, goddess. How great a thing it is to be Jupiter’s brother, even if all the rest is lacking! Why, what if there is nothing lacking at all, except what he yielded to me by lot? But if you have such a great desire to separate them, Proserpine shall return to heaven, but on only one condition, that no food has touched her lips, since that is the law, decreed by the Fates.’

Bk 5:533-571 Calliope sings: Persephone’s fate

‘“He spoke, and Ceres felt sure of regaining her daughter. But the Fates would not allow it, for the girl had broken her fast, and wandering, innocently, in a well-tended garden, she had pulled down a reddish-purple pomegranate fruit, hanging from a tree, and, taking seven seeds from its yellow rind, squeezed them in her mouth. Ascalaphus was the only one to see it, whom, it is said, Orphne bore, to her Acheron, in the dark woods, she not the least known of the nymphs of Avernus. He saw, and by his cruel disclosure, prevented Proserpine’s return. Then the queen of Erebus grieved, and changed the informant into a bird of ill omen: she sprinkled his head with water from the Phlegethon, and changed him to a beak, plumage, and a pair of huge eyes. Losing his own form he is covered by his tawny wings, and looks like a head, and long, curving claws. He scarcely stirs the feathers growing on his idle wings. He has become an odious bird, a messenger of future disaster, the screech owl, torpid by day, a fearful omen to mortal creatures.

‘“He indeed can be seen to have deserved his punishment, because of his disclosure and his words. But why have you, Sirens, skilled in song, daughters of Acheloüs, the feathers and claws of birds, while still bearing human faces? Is it because you were numbered among the companions, when Proserpine gathered the flowers of Spring? When you had searched in vain for her on land, you wanted, then, to cross the waves on beating wings, so that the waters would also know of your trouble. The gods were willing, and suddenly you saw your limbs covered with golden plumage. But, so that your song, born, sweetly, in our ears, and your rich vocal gift, might not be lost with your tongues, each virgin face and human voice remained.

‘“Now Jupiter, intervening, between his brother and grieving sister, divides the turning year, equally. And now the goddess, Persephone, shared divinity of the two kingdoms, spends so many months with her mother, so many months with her husband. The aspect of her face and mind alters in a moment. Now the goddess’s looks are glad that even Dis could see were sad, a moment ago. Just as the sun, hidden, before, by clouds of rain, wins through and leaves the clouds.

Bk 5:572-641 Calliope sings: Arethusa’s story

‘“Ceres, kindly now, happy in the return of her daughter, asks what the cause of your flight was, Arethusa, and why you are now a sacred fountain. The waters fall silent while their goddess lifts her head from the deep pool, and wringing the water from her sea-green tresses, she tells of the former love of that river of Elis.

‘“‘I was one of the nymphs, that lived in Achaia,’ she said ‘none of them keener to travel the woodland, none of them keener to set out the nets. But, though I never sought fame for my beauty, though I was wiry, my name was, the beautiful. Nor did my looks, praised too often, give me delight. I blushed like a simpleton at the gifts of my body, those things that other girls used to rejoice in. I thought it was sinful to please.

‘“‘Tired (I remember), I was returning, from the Stymphalian woods. It was hot, and my efforts had doubled the heat. I came to a river, without a ripple, hurrying on without a murmur, clear to its bed, in whose depths you could count every pebble: you would scarce think it moving. Silvery willows and poplars, fed by the waters, gave a natural shade to the sloping banks. Approaching I dipped my toes in, then as far as my knees, and not content with that I undressed, and draped my light clothes on a hanging willow, and plunged, naked, into the stream. While I gathered the water to me and splashed, gliding around in a thousand ways, and stretching out my arms to shake the water from them, I thought I heard a murmur under the surface, and, in fear, I leapt for the nearest bank of the flood.

‘“‘“What are you rushing for, Arethusa?” Alpheus called from the waves. “Why are you rushing?” He called again to me, in a strident voice. Just as I was, I fled, without my clothes (I had left my clothes on the other bank): so much the more fiercely he pursued and burned, and being naked, I seemed readier for him. So I ran, and so he wildly followed, as doves fly from a hawk on flickering wings, as a hawk is used to chasing frightened doves. Even beyond Orchemenus, I still ran, by Psophis, and Cyllene, and the ridges of Maenalus, by chill Erymanthus, Elis, he no quicker than I. But I could not stay the course, being unequal in strength: he was fitted for unremitting effort. Still, across the plains, over tree-covered mountains, through rocks and crags, and where there was no path, I ran. The sun was at my back. I saw a long shadow stretching out before my feet, unless it was my fear that saw it, but certainly I feared the sound of feet, and the deep breaths from his mouth stirred the ribbons in my hair. Weary with the effort to escape him, I cried out “Help me: I will be taken. Diana, help the one who bore your weapons for you, whom you often gave your bow to carry, and your quiver with all its arrows!” The goddess was moved, and raising an impenetrable cloud, threw it over me.

‘“‘The river-god circled the concealing fog, and in ignorance searched about the hollow mist. Twice, without understanding, he rounded the place, where the goddess had concealed me, and twice called out “Arethusa, O Arethusa!” What wretched feelings were mine, then? Perhaps those the lamb has when it hears the wolves, howling round the high fold, or the hare, that, hidden in the briars, sees the dogs hostile muzzles, and does not dare to make a movement of its body? He did not go far: he could see no signs of my tracks further on: he observed the cloud and the place. Cold sweat poured down my imprisoned limbs, and dark drops trickled from my whole body. Wherever I moved my foot, a pool gathered, and moisture dripped from my hair, and faster than I can now tell the tale I turned to liquid. And indeed the river-god saw his love in the water, and putting off the shape of a man he had assumed, he changed back to his own watery form, and mingled with mine. The Delian goddess split the earth, and plunging down into secret caverns, I was brought here to Ortygia, dear to me, because it has the same name as my goddess, the ancient name, for Delos, where she was born, and this was the first place to receive me, into the clear air.’

Bk 5:642-678 Calliope sings: Triptolemus. The Fate of the Pierides

‘“That was as far as Arethusa went. The goddess of all that is fertile, fastened twin dragons to her chariot, curbing them with the bit, between their teeth, and was carried through the air, between heaven and earth. Reaching Eleusis, by Athens, city of Tritonian Minerva, she gave her swift chariot to Triptolemus, and ordered him to scatter the seeds she gave, partly in untilled soil, partly in fields reclaimed, after lying for a long time fallow.

‘“Now the youth was carried high over Europe and Asia. He turned his face towards Scythia where, Lyncus was king. He stood before the king’s household gods. He was asked how he had come there, and the reason for his journey, his name and his country. He said ‘Athens, the famous city, is my home, Triptolemus, my name. I came not by ship, on the sea, or by foot, over land. The clear air parted for me. I bring you the gifts of Ceres. If you scatter them through the wide fields, they will give you back fruitful harvests, and ripening crops.’ The barbarian was jealous. So that he might be the author, of so great a gift, he received him like a guest, but attacked Triptolemus, with a sword, while he was in deep sleep. As he attempted to pierce the youth’s breast, Ceres turned the king into a lynx, then ordered the youth, of Athens, the city of Mopsopus, to drive the sacred team back through the air.”

‘So ended the singing, from the greatest of our singers, and the nymphs, with one harmonious voice, said that the goddesses of Helicon had taken the honours. When the losers hurled abuse at us, I said “Seeing that you deserve punishment enough for your challenge, and now add profanities to your offence, and since our patience is not unlimited, we will move on to sentence you, and follow where anger prompts us.” The Emathides laughed and ridiculed these threatening words, but as they tried to speak, and, attack us with insolent hands, making a great clamour, they saw feathers spring from under their nails, and plumage cover their arms. Each one saw the next one’s mouth harden to a solid beak, and a new bird enter the trees. When they wanted to beat their breasts in sorrow, they hung in the air, lifted by the movement of their arms, magpies now, the slanderers of the woods. Even now, as birds, their former eloquence remains, their raucous garrulity, and their monstrous capacity for chatter.’

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Book 6

• Bk 6:1-25 Arachne rejects Minerva.
• Bk 6:26-69 Pallas Minerva challenges Arachne.
• Bk 6:70-102 Pallas weaves her web.
• Bk 6:103-128 Arachne weaves hers in reply.
• Bk 6:129-145 Arachne is turned into a spider
• Bk 6:146-203 Niobe rejects the worship of Latona.
• Bk 6:204-266 The gods’ vengeance: Niobe’s sons are killed.
• Bk 6:267-312 Niobe’s daughters are killed: Her fate.
• Bk 6:313-381 The story of Latona and the Lycians.
• Bk 6:382-400 The tale of Marsyas.
• Bk 6:401-438 The marriage of Procne and Tereus.
• Bk 6:438-485 Tereus’s passion for Procne’s sister Philomela.
• Bk 6:486-548 Tereus forces Philomela.
• Bk 6:549-570 Philomela is mutilated.
• Bk 6:571-619 The truth is revealed.
• Bk 6:619-652 The pitiless feast
• Bk 6:653-674 They are transformed into birds.
• Bk 6:675-721 Boreas and Orithyia.

Bk 6:1-25 Arachne rejects Minerva

Tritonian Minerva had listened to every word, and approved of the Aonian Muses’s song, and their justified indignation. Then she said, to herself, ‘To give praise is not enough, let me be praised as well, and not allow my divine powers to be scorned without inflicting punishment.’ Her thoughts turned to Arachne, of Maeonia, whom she had heard would not give her due credit, in the art of spinning. The girl was not known for her place of birth, or family, but for her skill. Her father, Idmon of Colophon, dyed the absorbent wool purple, with Phocaean murex. Her mother was dead. She too had been of humble birth, and the father the same. Nevertheless, though she lived in a modest home, in little Hypaepa, Arachne had gained a name for artistry, throughout the cities of Lydia.

Often the nymphs of Mount Tmolus deserted their vine-covered slopes, and the nymphs of the River Pactolus deserted their waves, to examine her wonderful workmanship. It was not only a joy to see the finished cloths, but also to watch them made: so much beauty added to art. Whether at first she was winding the rough yarn into a new ball, or working the stuff with her fingers, teasing out the clouds of wool, repeatedly, drawing them into long equal threads, twirling the slender spindle with practised thumb, or embroidering with her needle, you could see she was taught by Pallas. Yet she denied it, and took offense at the idea of such a teacher. ‘Contend with me’ she said ‘I will not disagree at all if I am beaten’.

Bk 6:26-69 Pallas Minerva challenges Arachne

Pallas Minerva took the shape of an old woman: adding grey hair to her temples, and ageing her limbs, which she supported with a stick. Then she spoke, to the girl, as follows. ‘Not everything old age has is to be shunned: knowledge comes with advancing years. Do not reject my advice: seek great fame amongst mortals for your skill in weaving, but give way to the goddess, and ask her forgiveness, rash girl, with a humble voice: she will forgive if you will ask.’ Arachne looked fiercely at her and left the work she was on: scarcely restraining her hands, and with dark anger in her face. Pallas, disguised it is true, received this answer. ‘Weak-minded and worn out by tedious old age, you come here, and having lived too long destroys you. Let your daughter-in-law if you have one, let your daughter if you have one, listen to your voice. I have wisdom enough of my own. You think your advice is never heeded: that is my feeling too. Why does she not come herself? Why does she shirk this contest?

The goddess said ‘She is here!’ and, relinquishing the old woman’s form, revealed Pallas Minerva. The nymphs and the Phrygian women worshipped her godhead: the girl alone remained unafraid, yet she did blush, as the sky is accustomed to redden when Aurora first stirs, and, after a while, to whiten at the sun from the east. She is stubborn in her attempt, and rushes on to her fate, eager for a worthless prize. Now, Jupiter’s daughter does not refuse, and does not give warning, or delay the contest a moment. Immediately they both position themselves, in separate places, and stretch out the fine threads, for the warp, over twin frames. The frame is fastened to the cross-beam; the threads of the warp separated with the reed; the thread of the weft is inserted between, in the pointed shuttles that their fingers have readied; and, drawn through the warp, the threads of the weft are beaten into place, struck by the comb’s notched teeth. They each work quickly, and, with their clothes gathered in tight, under their breasts, apply skilful arms, their zeal not making it seem like work. There, shades of purple, dyed in Tyrian bronze vessels, are woven into the cloth, and also lighter colours, shading off gradually. The threads that touch seem the same, but the extremes are distant, as when, often, after a rainstorm, the expanse of the sky, struck by the sunlight, is stained by a rainbow in one vast arch, in which a thousand separate colours shine, but the eye itself still cannot see the transitions. There, are inserted lasting threads of gold, and an ancient tale is spun in the web.

Bk 6:70-102 Pallas weaves her web

Pallas Athene depicts the hill of Mars, and the court of the Aeropagus, in Cecrops’s Athens, and the old dispute between Neptune and herself, as to who had the right to the city and its name. There the twelve gods sit in great majesty, on their high thrones, with Jupiter in the middle. She weaves the gods with their familiar attributes. The image of Jupiter is a royal one. There she portrays the Ocean god, standing and striking the rough stone, with his long trident, and seawater flowing from the centre of the shattered rock, a token of his claim to the city. She gives herself a shield, a sharp pointed spear, and a helmet for her head, while the aegis protects her breast. She shows an olive-tree with pale trunk, thick with fruit, born from the earth at a blow from her spear, the gods marvelling: and Victory crowns the work.

Then she adds four scenes of contest in the four corners, each with miniature figures, in their own clear colours, so that her rival might learn, from the examples quoted, what prize she might expect, for her outrageous daring. One corner shows Thracian Mount Rhodope and Mount Haemus, now icy peaks, once mortal beings who ascribed the names of the highest gods to themselves. A second corner shows the miserable fate of the queen of the Pygmies: how Juno, having overcome her in a contest, ordered her to become a crane and make war on her own people. Also she pictures Antigone, whom Queen Juno turned into a bird for having dared to compete with Jupiter’s great consort: neither her father Laomedon, nor her city Ilium were of any use to her, but taking wing as a white stork she applauds herself with clattering beak. The only corner left shows Cinyras, bereaved: and he is seen weeping as he clasps the stone steps of the temple that were once his daughters’ limbs. Minerva surrounded the outer edges with the olive wreaths of peace (this was the last part) and so ended her work with emblems of her own tree.

Bk 6:103-128 Arachne weaves hers in reply

The Maeonian girl depicts Europa deceived by the form of the bull: you would have thought it a real bull and real waves. She is seen looking back to the shore she has left, and calling to her companions, displaying fear at the touch of the surging water, and drawing up her shrinking feet. Also Arachne showed Asterie, held by the eagle, struggling, and Leda lying beneath the swan’s wings. She added Jupiter who, hidden in the form of a satyr, filled Antiope, daughter of Nycteus with twin offspring; who, as Amphitryon, was charmed by you, Alcmena, of Tiryns; by Danaë, as a golden shower; by Aegina, daughter of Asopus, as a flame; by Mnemosyne, as a shepherd; by Proserpine, Ceres’s daughter, as a spotted snake.

She wove you, Neptune, also, changed to a fierce bull for Canace, Aeolus’s daughter. In Enipeus’s form you begot the Aloidae, and deceived Theophane as a ram. The golden-haired, gentlest, mother of the cornfields, knew you as a horse. The snake-haired mother of the winged horse, knew you as a winged bird. Melantho knew you as a dolphin. She gave all these their own aspects, and the aspects of the place. Here is Phoebus like a countryman, and she shows him now with the wings of a hawk, and now in a lion’s skin, and how as a shepherd he tricked Isse, Macareus’s daughter. She showed how Bacchus ensnared Erigone with delusive grapes, and how Saturn as the double of a horse begot Chiron. The outer edge of the web, surrounded by a narrow border, had flowers interwoven with entangled ivy.

Bk 6:129-145 Arachne is turned into a spider

Neither Pallas nor Envy itself could fault that work. The golden-haired warrior goddess was grieved by its success, and tore the tapestry, embroidered with the gods’ crimes, and as she held her shuttle made of boxwood from Mount Cytorus, she struck Idmonian Arachne, three or four times, on the forehead. The unfortunate girl could not bear it, and courageously slipped a noose around her neck: Pallas, in pity, lifted her, as she hung there, and said these words, ‘Live on then, and yet hang, condemned one, but, lest you are careless in future, this same condition is declared, in punishment, against your descendants, to the last generation!’ Departing after saying this, she sprinkled her with the juice of Hecate’s herb, and immediately at the touch of this dark poison, Arachne’s hair fell out. With it went her nose and ears, her head shrank to the smallest size, and her whole body became tiny. Her slender fingers stuck to her sides as legs, the rest is belly, from which she still spins a thread, and, as a spider, weaves her ancient web.

Bk 6:146-203 Niobe rejects the worship of Latona

All of Lydia murmurs: the tale goes through the towns of Phrygia, and fills the whole world with talk. Niobe had known Arachne. As a girl, before her marriage, she had lived in Maeonia, near Mount Sipylus. Nevertheless she was not warned by her countrywoman’s fate, to give the gods precedence, and use more modest words. Many things swelled her pride, but neither her husband Amphion’s marvellous art in music, nor both of their high lineages, nor the might of their great kingdom of Thebes, pleased her, though they did please her, as much as her children did. And Niobe would have been spoken of as the most fortunate of mothers, if she had not seemed so to herself.

Now Manto, the daughter of Tiresias, prescient of the future, stirred by divine impulse, went through the middle of the streets, declaiming. ‘Women of Thebes, Ismenides, go, as a crowd, and wreathe your hair with laurel, and bring incense with holy prayer to Latona, and Latona’s children, Diana and Apollo. Latona commands it through my mouth.’

They obey: all the Theban women, as commanded, dress their temples with sweet-bay, and bring incense and words of prayer to the sacred flames.

Look, Niobe comes, followed by a crowded thong, visible, in her Phrygian robes woven with gold, and as beautiful as anger will let her be. Turning her lovely head with the hair falling loose over both her shoulders, she pauses, and looks around with pride in her eyes, from her full height, saying ‘ What madness, to prefer the gods you are told about to the ones you see? Why is Latona worshipped at the altars, while as yet my godhead is without its incense? Tantalus is my father, who is the only man to eat the food of the gods. My mother is one of the seven sisters, the Pleiades. Great Atlas, who carries the axis of the heavens on his shoulders, is one of my grandfathers. Jupiter is the other, and I glory in having him as my father-in-law as well. The peoples of Phrygia fear me. Cadmus’s royal house is under my rule: and the walls, built to my husband’s lyre, and Thebes’s people, will be ruled by his power and mine. Whichever part of the palace I turn my eyes on, I look at immense wealth. Augment it with my beauty, worthy of a goddess, and add to this my seven daughters, as many sons, and soon my sons- and my daughters-in-law! Now, ask what the reason is for my pride, and then dare to prefer Latona to me, that Titaness, daughter of Coeus, whoever he is. Latona, whom the wide earth once refused even a little piece of ground to give birth on.

Land, sea, and sky were no refuge for your goddess. She was exiled from the world, until Delos, pitying the wanderer, gave her a precarious place, saying ‘Friend, you wander the earth, I the sea.’ There she gave birth to twins, only a seventh of my offspring. I am fortunate (indeed, who can deny it?) and I will stay fortunate (and who can doubt that too?). My riches make me safe. I am greater than any whom Fortune can harm, and though she could take much away, she would leave me much more. Surely my comforts banish fear. Imagine that some of this host of children could be taken from me, I would still not, bereaved, be reduced to the two of Latona’s family. In that state, how far is she from childlessness? Go home – enough of holy things – and take those laurel wreaths from your hair!’ They relinquish them, and leave the rite unfinished, except what is their right, reverencing the goddess in a secret murmur.

Bk 6:204-266 The gods’ vengeance: Niobe’s sons are killed

The goddess was deeply angered, and on the summit of Mount Cynthus she spoke to her twin children. ‘See, it will be doubted whether I, your mother, proud to have borne you, and giving way to no goddess, except Juno, am a goddess, and worship will be prevented at my altars through all the ages, unless you help me, my children. Nor is this my only grief. This daughter of Tantalus has added insult to injury, and has dared to put her children above you, and has called me childless, may that recoil on her own head, and has shown she has her father’s tongue for wickedness.’ Latona would have added her entreaties to what she had related, but Phoebus cried ‘Enough! Long complaint delays her punishment! Phoebe said the same, and falling swiftly through the air, concealed by clouds, they reached the house of Cadmus.

There was a broad, open plain near the walls, flattened by the constant passage of horses, where many wheels and hard hooves had levelled the turf beneath them. There, a number of Amphion’s seven sons mounted on their strong horses, and sitting firmly on their backs, bright with Tyrian purple, guided them using reins heavy with gold. While Ismenus, one of these, who had been the first of his mother’s burdens, was wheeling his horse’s path around in an unerring circle, and hauling at the foaming bit, he cried out ‘Oh, I am wounded!’ and revealed an arrow fixed in his chest, and loosing the reins from his dying hands, slipped gradually, sideways, over his mount’s right shoulder.

Next Sipylus, hearing the sound of a quiver in the empty air, let out the reins, just as a shipmaster sensing a storm runs for it when he sees the cloud, and claps on all sail, so that not even the slightest breeze is lost. Still giving full rein, he was overtaken, by the arrow none can avoid, and the shaft stuck quivering in his neck, and the naked tip protruded from his throat. Leaning forward, as he was, he rolled down over the mane and the galloping hooves, and stained the ground with warm blood.

Unlucky Phaedimus, and Tantalus, who carried his grandfather’s name, at the end of the usual task imposed on them, had joined the exercise of the young men, and were gleaming with oil in the wrestling match. And now they were fully engaged, in a tight hold, chest to chest, when an arrow, loosed from the taut bow, pierced them both, as they were. They groaned as one, and fell as one, their limbs contorted with pain. As they lay there, they cast a last dying look, as one, and, as one, gave up the ghost. Alphenor saw them die, and striking at his breast in anguish, he ran to them to lift their cold bodies in his embrace. In this filial service he also fell, for Delian Apollo tore at his innermost parts with deadly steel. As the shaft was removed, a section of his lung was drawn with it, caught on the barbs, and with his life’s blood his spirit rushed out into the air.

But it was not a simple wound that longhaired Damasicthon suffered. He was hit where the shin begins, and where the sinews of the knee leave a soft place between. While he was trying to pull out the fatal shaft with his hand, another arrow was driven into his throat as far as the feathers. The rush of blood expelled it, and gushing out, spurted high in the air, in a long jet. The last son, Ilioneus, stretched out his arms in vain entreaty. ‘O you company of all the gods, spare me!’ he cried, unaware that he need not ask them all. The archer god Apollo was moved, though already the dart could not be recalled: yet only a slight wound killed the boy, the arrow not striking deeply in his heart.

Bk 6:267-312 Niobe’s daughters are killed: Her fate.

The rumour of trouble, the people’s sorrow, and the tears of her own family, confirming sudden disaster to the mother, left her astounded that the gods could have done it, and angered that they had such power, and dared to use it. Now, she learned that the father, Amphion, driving the iron blade through his heart, had, in dying, ended pain and life together. Alas, how different this Niobe from that Niobe, the one, who a moment ago chased the people from Latona’s altar, and made her way through the city with head held high, enviable to her friends, and now more to be pitied by her enemies. She threw herself on the cold bodies, and without regard for due ceremony, gave all her sons a last kiss. Turning from them she lifted her bruised arms to the sky, and cried out ‘Feed your heart, cruel one, Latona, on my pain, feed your heart, and be done! Be done, savage spirit! I am buried seven times. Exult and triumph over your enemy! But where is the victory? Even in my misery I have more than you in your happiness. After so many deaths, I still outdo you!’

She spoke, and the twang of a taut bowstring sounded, terrifying all of them, except Niobe. Pain gave her courage. The sisters, with black garments, and loosened hair, were standing by their brothers’ bodies. One, grasping at an arrow piercing her side, falling, fainted in death beside her brother’s face. A second, attempting to comfort her grieving mother, fell silent, and was bent in agony with a hidden wound. She pressed her lips together, but life had already fled. One fell trying in vain to run, and her sister fell across her. One tried to hide, while another trembled in full view. Now six had been dealt death, suffering their various wounds: the last remained. The mother, with all her robes and with her body, protected her, and cried out ‘Leave me just one, the youngest! I only ask for one, the youngest of all!’ While she prayed, she, for whom she prayed, was dead. Childless, she sat among the bodies of her sons, her daughters, and her husband, frozen in grief.

The breeze stirs not a hair, the colour of her cheeks is bloodless, and her eyes are fixed motionless in her sad face: nothing in that likeness is alive. Inwardly her tongue is frozen to the solid roof of her mouth, and her veins cease their power to throb. Her neck cannot bend, nor her arms recall their movement, nor her feet lead her anywhere. Inside, her body is stone. Yet she weeps, and, enclosed in a powerful whirlwind, she is snatched away to her own country: there, set on a mountain top, she wears away, and even now tears flow from the marble.

Bk 6:313-381 The story of Latona and the Lycians

Now all men and women are indeed afraid of the anger manifested by divine being, and all pay more respect to the great power of the goddess, the mother of the twins. As often happens, because of recent events they tell old stories, and one says ‘In Lycia’s fertile fields, in ancient times, also, the farmers spurned the goddess, and not without suffering for it. The thing is not well known, it is true, because the men were unknown, nevertheless, it was wonderful. I myself saw the place, and the lake made notable by the strangeness of it, since my father, getting old, and unable to endure the journey, had ordered me to collect some choice cattle from there, and one of the men of that country had offered himself as a guide. While I crossed the pastureland with him, there was an old altar, black with ashes, standing in the middle of a lake, surrounded by trembling reeds. My guide stopped and, shivering with fear, said in a murmur ‘Have mercy on me!’ and I, similarly, said in a murmur ‘Have mercy!’

Then I asked him whether it was an altar to the Naiads, Faunus, or a local god, and my friend replied ‘Young man, it is no mountain spirit in this altar. She calls it hers, whom the queen of heaven once banned from the world, and whom vagrant Delos, a lightly floating island, would barely accept, at her prayer. There, between Pallas’s olive tree and a date-palm, Latona bore her twins, against their step-mother Juno’s will. Having endured her labour, even then she fled Juno, carrying the divine twins clasped to her breast.

Then, inside the borders of Lycia, home of the Chimaera, as the fierce sun scorched the fields, the goddess, weary from her long struggle, and parched by the radiant heat, felt her thirst: also her hungry children had drunk all her rich milk. By chance she saw a smallish lake in a deep valley. Countrymen were there, gathering bushy osiers, rushes, and the fine marsh sedges. The Titan’s daughter approached, and putting her knee to the ground, rested, to enjoy a drink of the cool water. The group of rustics denied it to her. The goddess, denied, spoke. ‘Why do you forbid me your waters? The use of water is everyone’s right. Nature has not made the sun, or the air, or the clear waves, private things. I come for a public gift, and yet I beg you to grant it to me as a suppliant. I was not preparing to bathe my limbs and my weary body here, only to quench my thirst. My mouth lacks moisture from speaking, my throat is dry, and there’s scarcely a path here for speech. A drink of water would be nectar to me, and I would bear witness to accepting life from it, as well: you will be giving life from your waves. Let these children move you, also, who stretch their little arms out from my breast.’

And it chanced that they did stretch out their arms. Who would not have been moved by the goddess’s winning words? Yet, despite her prayers they persisted in denying her, with threats, if she did not take herself off, and added insults besides. Not content with that, they also stirred the pool with their hands and feet, and churned up the soft mud from the depths, by leaping about, maliciously. Anger forgot thirst, for now the daughter of Coeus could not bear to beg from the unworthy, nor speak in words inferior to those of a goddess, and stretching her palms to the heavens, she said ‘Live in that swamp for ever!’ It happened as the goddess wished: It is their delight to be under the water, now to submerge their bodies completely in the deep pool, now to show their heads, now to swim on the surface. Often they squat on the edges of the marsh, often retreat to the cool lake, but now as before they employ their ugly voices in quarrelling, and shamefully, even though they are under the water, from under the water they try out their abuse. Now their voices are also hoarse, their inflated throats are swollen, and their croaking distends their wide mouths. Their shoulders and heads meet, and their necks appear to have vanished. Their backs are green; their bellies, the largest part of their body, are white, and, as newly made frogs, they leap in their muddy pool.

Bk 6:382-400 The tale of Marsyas

When whoever it was had finished relating the ruin of the men of Lycia, another storyteller remembered the satyr, Marsyas, whom Apollo, Latona’s son, had defeated, playing on the flute, that Tritonian Minerva invented. He had exacted punishment. Marsyas cried ‘Why do you peel me out of myself? ‘Aah! I repent’, he screamed in agony. ‘Aah! Music is not worth this pain!’ As he screams, the skin is flayed from the surface of his body, no part is untouched. Blood flows everywhere, the exposed sinews are visible, and the trembling veins quiver, without skin to hide them: you can number the internal organs, and the fibres of the lungs, clearly visible in his chest. The woodland gods, and the fauns of the countryside, wept, and his brother satyrs, Olympus his friend and pupil, still dear to him then, and the nymphs, and all who pastured their fleecy sheep and horned cattle on those mountains. The fertile soil was drenched, and the drenched earth caught the falling tears, and absorbed them into its deep veins. It formed a stream then, and sent it into the clear air. From there it ran within sloping banks, quickly, to the sea, the clearest river of Phrygia, taking Marsyas’s name.

Bk 6:401-438 The marriage of Procne and Tereus

From such tales as these the company turns immediately to the present, and mourns the loss of Amphion and his children. The mother was blamed, though even then one man, her brother Pelops, is said to have wept for her and, after taking off his tunic, to have shown the ivory, of his left shoulder. This was of flesh, and the same colour as his right shoulder, at the time of his birth. Later, when he had been cut in pieces, by his father, it is said that the gods fitted his limbs together again. They found the pieces, but one was lost, between the upper arm and the neck. Ivory was used in place of the missing part, and by means of that Pelops was made whole.

The princes, of countries to the southwest, near neighbours of Thebes, gathered, and the cities related to Thebes urged their kings to go and offer sympathy. Argos and Sparta, and Peloponnesian Mycenae, Calydon not yet cursed for rejecting Diana, fertile Orchomenos, and Corinth famous for bronze; warlike Messene, Patrae, and low-lying Cleonae, Nelean Pylos, and Troezen not yet ruled by Pittheus; and whichever of the other cities were southwest of the Isthmus, lying between its two seas, or seen to the northeast of the Isthmus, lying between its two seas. But who can believe this? Athens, alone, did nothing. War prevented them doing so. A Barbarian army had crossed the sea and brought terror to the walls of the city of Mopsopius.

Tereus of Thrace routed these Barbarians, with his army of auxiliaries, and won a great name by his victory. Since Tereus was a master of men and riches, and happened to trace his descent from mighty Mars himself, Pandion, king of Athens, made them allies, by giving him his daughter Procne in marriage. Neither Juno, who attends on brides, nor Hymen, nor the three Graces, was there. The Eumenides, the Furies, held torches snatched from a funeral. The Eumenides, the Furies, prepared their marriage bed, and the unholy screech owl brooded over their house, and sat on the roof of their chamber. By this bird-omen, Procne and Tereus were joined. By this bird-omen, they were made parents. Thrace of course rejoiced with them, and they themselves gave thanks to the gods, and the day when Pandion’s daughter married her illustrious king, and the day on which Itys their son was born, they commanded to be celebrated as festivals: so, always, our real advantages escape us.

Bk 6:438-485 Tereus’s passion for Procne’s sister Philomela

Now, Titan, the sun, had guided the turning year through five autumns when Procne said, coaxingly to her husband, ‘If any thanks are due me, either send me to see my sister, or let my sister come here. You can promise my father she will return after a brief stay. It would be worth a great deal to me, if you allowed me to see Philomela.’ Tereus ordered his ship to sea, and with sail and oar reached the harbour of Cecrops, and landed on the shore of Piraeus.

As soon as he gained access to his father-in-law, right hand was joined to right hand, and they began by wishing each other favourable omens. Tereus had started to tell of the reason for his visit, his wife’s request, and promise a speedy return if she were sent back with him, when, see, Philomela entered, dressed in rich robes, and richer beauty, walking as we are used to being told the naiads and dryads of the deep woods do, if only one were to give them like her culture and dress. Seeing the girl, Tereus took fire, just as if someone touched a flame to corn stubble, or burned the leaves, or hay stored in a loft. Her beauty was worthy of it, but he was driven by his natural passion, and the inclination of the people of his region is towards lust: he burnt with his own vice and his nation’s. His impulse was to erode her attendants care, and her nurse’s loyalty, even seduce the girl herself with rich gifts, to the extent of his kingdom, or rape her and defend the rape in savage war. There was nothing he would not dare, possessed by unbridled desire, nor could he contain the flame in his heart.

Now he suffered from impatience, and eagerly returned to Procne’s request, pursuing his own wishes as hers. Desire made him eloquent, and whenever he petitioned more strongly than was seemly, he would make out that Procne wished it so. He even embellished his speeches with tears, as though she had commissioned him to do that too. You gods, what secret darknesses human hearts hide! Due to his efforts, Tereus is viewed as faithful, in his deceit, and is praised for his crime. Moreover Philomela wishes his request granted, and resting her forearms on her father’s shoulders, coaxing him to let her go to visit her sister, she urges it, in her own interest, and against it. Tereus gazes at her, and imagining her as already his, watching her kisses, and her arms encircling her father’s neck, it all spurs him on, food and fuel to his frenzy. Whenever she embraces her father, he wishes he were that father: though of course his intentions would be no less wicked. The father is won over by the twin entreaties. The girl is overjoyed, and thanks her father, and thinks, poor wretch, that what will bring sorrow to both sisters is actually a success for both.

Bk 6:486-548 Tereus forces Philomela

Now little was left of Phoebus’s daily labour, and his horses were treading the spaces of the western sky. A royal feast was served at Pandion’s table, with wine in golden goblets. Then their bodies sated, they gave themselves to quiet sleep. But though the Thracian king retired to bed, he was disturbed by thoughts of her, and remembering her features, her gestures, her hands, he imagined the rest that he had not yet seen, as he would wish, and fuelled his own fires, in sleepless restlessness. Day broke, and Pandion, clasping his son-in-law’s right hand, in parting, with tears welling in his eyes, entrusted his daughter to him. ‘Dear son, since affectionate reasons compel it, and both of them desire it (you too have desired it, Tereus), I give her over to you, and by your honour, by the entreaty of a heart joined to yours, and by the gods above, I beg you, protect her with a father’s love, and send back to me, as soon as is possible (it will be all too long a wait for me), this sweet comfort of my old age. You too, as soon as is possible (it is enough that your sister is so far away), if you are at all dutiful, Philomela, return to me!’

So he commanded his daughter and kissed her, and soft tears mingled with his commands. As a token of their promise he took their two right hands and linked them together, and asked them, with a prayer, to remember to greet his absent daughter, and grandson, for him. His mouth sobbing, he could barely say a last farewell, and he feared the forebodings in his mind.

As soon as Philomela was on board the brightly painted ship, and the sea was churned by the oars, and the land left behind them, the barbarian king cried ‘I have won! I carry with me what I wished for! He exults, and his passion can scarcely wait for its satisfaction. He never turns his eyes away from her, no differently than when Jupiter’s eagle deposits a hare, caught by the curved talons, in its high eyrie: there is no escape for the captive, and the raptor gazes at its prize.

Now they had completed their journey, and disembarked from the wave-worn ship, on the shores of his country. The king took her to a high-walled building, hidden in an ancient forest, and there he locked her away, she, pale and trembling, fearing everything, in tears now, begging to know where her sister was. Then, confessing his evil intent, he overcame her by force, she a virgin and alone, as she called out, again and again, in vain, to her father, her sister, and most of all to the great gods. She quivered like a frightened lamb, that fails to realise it is free, wounded and discarded by a grey wolf, or like a dove trembling, its feathers stained with its blood, still fearing the rapacious claws that gripped it. After a brief while, when she had come to her senses, she dragged at her dishevelled hair, and like a mourner, clawed at her arms, beating them against her breasts. Hands outstretched, she shouted ‘Oh, you savage. Oh, what an evil, cruel, thing you have done. Did you care nothing for my father’s trust, sealed with holy tears, my sister’s affection, my own virginity, your marriage vows? You have confounded everything. I have been forced to become my sister’s rival. You are joined to both. Now Procne will be my enemy! Why not rob me of life as well, you traitor, so that no crime escapes you? If only you had done it before that impious act. Then my shade would have been free of guilt. Yet, if the gods above witness such things, if the powers of heaven mean anything, if all is not lost, as I am, then one day you will pay me for this! I, without shame, will tell what you have done. If I get the chance it will be in front of everyone. If I am kept imprisoned in these woods, I will fill the woods with it, and move the stones, that know of my guilt, to pity. The skies will hear of it, and any god that may be there!’

Bk 6:549-570 Philomela is mutilated

The king’s anger was stirred by these words, and his fear also. Goaded by both, he freed the sword from its sheath by his side, and seizing her hair gathered it together, to use as a tie, to tether her arms behind her back. Philomela, seeing the sword, and hoping only for death, offered up her throat. But he severed her tongue with his savage blade, holding it with pincers, as she struggled to speak in her indignation, calling out her father’s name repeatedly. Her tongue’s root was left quivering, while the rest of it lay on the dark soil, vibrating and trembling, and, as though it were the tail of a mutilated snake moving, it writhed, as if, in dying, it was searching for some sign of her. They say (though I scarcely dare credit it) that even after this crime, he still assailed her wounded body, repeatedly, in his lust.

He controlled himself sufficiently to return to Procne, who, seeing him returned, asked where her sister was. He, with false mourning, told of a fictitious funeral, and tears gave it credence. Procne tore her glistening clothes, with their gold hems, from her shoulders, and put on black robes, and built an empty tomb, and mistakenly brought offerings, and lamented the fate of a sister, not yet due to be lamented in that way.

Bk 6:571-619 The truth is revealed

The sun-god has circled the twelve signs, and a year is past. What can Philomela do? A guard prevents her escape; the thick walls of the building are made of solid stone; her mute mouth can yield no token of the facts. Great trouble is inventive, and ingenuity arises in difficult times. Cleverly, she fastens her thread to a barbarian’s loom, and weaves purple designs on a white background, revealing the crime. She entrusts it, when complete, to a servant, and asks her, by means of gestures, to take it to her mistress. She, as she is asked, takes it to Procne, not knowing what it carries inside. The wife of the savage king unrolls the cloth, and reads her sister’s terrible fate, and by a miracle keeps silent. Grief restrains her lips, her tongue seeking to form words adequate to her indignation, fails. She has no time for tears, but rushes off, in a confusion of right and wrong, her mind filled with thoughts of vengeance.

It was the time when the young Thracian women used to celebrate the triennial festival of Bacchus. (Night knew their holy rites: by night, Mount Rhodope rang with the high-pitched clashing of bronze). By night the queen left her palace, prepared herself for the rites of the god, and took up the weapons of that frenzied religion. Tendrils of vine wreathed her head; a deerskin was draped over her left side; a light javelin rested on her shoulder. Hurtling through the woods with a crowd of her companions, terrifying, driven by maddening grief, Procne embodies you, Bacchus. She comes at last to the building in the wilderness, and howls out loud, giving the ecstatic cry of Euhoe, breaks the door down, seizes her sister, disguises her with the tokens of a wild Bacchante, hides her face with ivy leaves, and dragging her along with her, frightened out of her wits, leads her inside the palace walls.

When Philomela realised that she had reached that accursed house, the wretched girl shuddered in horror, and her whole face grew deathly pale. Procne, once there, took off the religious trappings; uncovered the downcast face of her unhappy sister, and clutched her in her arms. But Philomela could not bear to lift her eyes, seeing herself as her sister’s betrayer. With her face turned towards the ground, wanting to swear by the gods, and call them to witness, that her shame had been visited on her by force, she made signs with her hands in place of speech. Procne burned, and could not control her anger, reproaching her sister for weeping, saying ‘Now is not the time for tears, but for the sword, or for what overcomes the sword, if you know of such a thing. I am prepared for any wickedness, sister; to set the palace alight with a torch, and throw Tereus, the author of this, into the midst of the flames; or to cut out his eyes and tongue, and the parts which brought shame to you; or to force out his guilty spirit through a thousand wounds! I am ready for any enormity: but what it should be, I still do not know yet.’

Bk 6:619-652 The pitiless feast

While Procne was going over these things, Itys came to his mother. His arrival suggested what she might do, and regarding him with a cold gaze, she said ‘Ah! How like your father you are!’ Without speaking further, seething in silent indignation, she began to conceive her tragic plan. Yet, when the boy approached, and greeted his mother, and put his little arms round her neck, and kissed her with childish endearments, she was moved, her anger was checked, and her eyes were wet with the tears that gathered against her will. But, realising that her mind was wavering through excess affection, she turned away from him, and turned to look at her sister’s face again, till, gazing at both in turn, she said ‘Why should the one be able to speak his endearments, while the other is silent, her tongue torn out?’

Though he calls me mother, why can she not call me sister? Look at the husband you are bride to, Pandion’s daughter! This is unworthy of you! Affection is criminal in a wife of Tereus’

Without delay, she dragged Itys off, as a tigress does an unweaned fawn, in the dark forests of the Ganges. As they reached a remote part of the great palace, Procne, with an unchanging expression, struck him with a knife, in the side close to the heart, while he stretched out his hands, knowing his fate at the last, crying out ‘Mother! Mother!’, and reaching out for her neck. That one wound was probably enough to seal his fate, but Philomela opened his throat with the knife. While the limbs were still warm, and retained some life, they tore them to pieces. Part bubble in bronze cauldrons, part hiss on the spit: and the distant rooms drip with grease.

The wife invites the unsuspecting Tereus to the feast, and giving out that it is a sacred rite, practised in her country, where it is only lawful for the husband to be present, she sends away their followers and servants. Tereus eats by himself, seated in his tall ancestral chair, and fills his belly with his own child. And in the darkness of his understanding cries ‘Fetch Ithys here’.

Bk 6:653-674 They are transformed into birds

Procne cannot hide her cruel exultation, and now, eager to be, herself, the messenger of destruction, she cries ‘You have him there, inside, the one you ask for.’ He looks around and questions where the boy is. And then while he is calling out and seeking him, Philomela, springs forward, her hair wet with the dew of that frenzied murder, and hurls the bloodstained head of Itys in his father’s face. Nor was there a time when she wished more strongly to have the power of speech, and to declare her exultation in fitting words.

The Thracian king pushed back the table with a great cry, calling on the Furies, the snake-haired sisters of the vale of Styx. Now if he could, he would tear open his body, and reveal the dreadful substance of the feast, and his half-consumed child. Then he weeps, and calls himself the sepulchre of his unhappy son, and now pursues, with naked sword, the daughters of Pandion.

You might think the Athenian women have taken wing: they have taken wings. One of them, a nightingale, Procne, makes for the woods. The other, a swallow, Philomela, flies to the eaves of the palace, and even now her throat has not lost the stain of that murder, and the soft down bears witness to the blood. Tereus swift in his grief and desire for revenge, is himself changed to a bird, with a feathered crest on its head. An immoderate, elongated, beak juts out, like a long spear. The name of the bird is the hoopoe, and it looks as though it is armed.

Bk 6:675-721 Boreas and Orithyia

This tragedy sent Pandion down to the shadows of Tartarus before his time, before the last years of old age. His rule over the kingdom, and his wealth passed to Erectheus, whose ability for sound government, and superiority in warfare, was never in doubt. He had four sons and the same number of daughters, and two of the daughters were rivals in beauty. Of these two, Procris made you happy in marriage, Cephalus, grandson of Aeolus. But you, Boreas, god of the north wind, were long denied your beloved, Orithyia, harmed by your origins, with Tereus, among the Thracians.

This was so while Boreas wooed her, and preferred prayers to force. But when charm got him nowhere, he bristled with anger, which is his usual mood for too much of the time, and said ‘I deserve it! Why have I relinquished my own weapons, force and ferocity, and anger and menacing moods, and turned to prayers, that are unbecoming for me to use? Force is fitting for me. By force, I drive forward the mists, by force move the sea. I overturn knotted oaks, harden the snow, and strike earth with hail. And, when I meet my brothers under the open sky (since that is my battleground) I struggle so fiercely with them that the midst of the heavens echoes with our collisions, and lightnings leap, hurled from the vaulted clouds. So, when I penetrate the hollow openings of the earth, and apply my proud back to the deepest cave roofs, I trouble the shades, and the whole world with the tremors. That is how I should have sought a wife, and not become Erectheus’s son-in-law by prayer but by action.’

With these, or other equally forceful words, Boreas unfurled his wings, by whose beating the whole world is stirred, and made the wide ocean tremble. Trailing his cloak of dust over the mountain summits, he swept the land, and, shrouded in darkness, the lover embraced his Orythia, with his dusky wings, as she shivered with fear. As he flew, his own flames of passion were fanned, and burned fiercer. Nor did the thief halt in his flight through the air, till he reached the walls of the city and people of Thrace, the Cicones.

There the girl from Attica married the chilly tyrant, and became a mother, giving birth to twin brothers, who took after their mother, in everything else but their father’s wings. Yet they say the wings were not present, on their bodies, when they were born, but while they still were lacking beards, to match their red hair, Calais, and Zetes, as boys, were wingless. But both alike, soon after, began to sprout the pinions of birds on their shoulders, and both their jaws and cheeks grew tawny. And, when their boyhood was over, the youths sailed, as Argonauts, with the Minyans, in that first ship, through unknown seas, to seek the glittering wool of a golden fleece.

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Book 7

• Bk 7:1-73 Medea agonises over her love for Jason.
• Bk 7:74-99 Jason promises to marry Medea
• Bk 7:100-158 Jason wins the Golden Fleece
• Bk 7:159-178 Jason asks Medea to lengthen Aeson’s life
• Bk 7:179-233 Medea summons the powers and gathers herbs
• Bk 7:234-293 Medea rejuvenates Aeson.
• Bk 7:294-349 Medea’s destruction of Pelias
• Bk 7:350-403 Medea flees and reaches Athens
• Bk 7:404-424 Medea attempts Theseus’s life, then vanishes
• Bk 7:425-452 The praise for Theseus
• Bk 7:453-500 Minos threatens war
• Bk 7:501-613 Aeacus tells of the plague at Aegina
• Bk 7:614-660 The creation of the Myrmidons
• Bk 7:661-758 The infidelities of Cephalus and Procris
• Bk 7:759-795 The transformation of Cephalus’s dog Laelaps
• Bk 7:796-865 The death of Procris

Bk 7:1-73 Medea agonises over her love for Jason

And now the Argonauts were ploughing through the sea in their ship, built in Thessalian Pagasae. They had visited Phineus, king of Thracian Salmydessus, living out a useless old age in perpetual blindness, and the winged sons of Boreas had driven the birdlike Harpies from the presence of the unhappy, aged man. At last, after enduring many trials, under their famous leader, Jason, they reached the turbulent river-waters of the muddy Phasis, in the land of Colchis. While they were standing before King Aeetes, of Aea, requesting the return of the Golden Fleece, taken from the divine ram that carried Phrixus, and while extreme terms were being imposed, involving daunting tasks, Medea, the daughter of the king, conceived an overwhelming passion for Jason. She fought against it for a time, but when reason could not overcome desire, she debated with herself.

‘Medea, you struggle in vain: some god, I do not know which, opposes you. I wonder if this, or something, like this, is what people indeed call love? Or why would the tasks my father demands of Jason seem so hard? They are more than hard! Why am I afraid of his death, when I have scarcely seen him? What is the cause of all this fear? Quench, if you can, unhappy girl, these flames that you feel in your virgin heart! If I could, I would be wiser! But a strange power draws me to him against my will. Love urges one thing: reason another. I see, and I desire the better: I follow the worse. Why do you burn for a stranger, royal virgin, and dream of marriage in an alien land? This earth can also give you what you can love. Whether he lives or dies, is in the hands of the gods. Let him live! I can pray for this even if I may not love him: what is Jason guilty of? Who, but the heartless, would not be touched by Jason’s youth, and birth, and courage? Who, though the other qualities were absent, could not be stirred by his beauty?

He has stirred my heart, indeed. And unless I offer my help, he will feel the fiery breath of the bronze-footed bulls; have to meet that enemy, sprung from the soil, born of his own sowing; or be given as captured prey to the dragon’s greed. If I allow this, then I am born of the tigress: then I show I have a heart of stone and iron! Why can I not watch him die, and shame my eyes by seeing? Why do I not urge the bulls on, to meet him, and the wild earth-born warriors, and the unsleeping dragon? Let the gods also desire the better! Though it is not for me to pray for, but to bring about.

Shall I betray my father’s country? Shall some unknown be saved by my powers, and unhurt because of me, without me, set his sails to the wind, and be husband to another, leaving Medea to be punished? If he could do that, if he could set another woman above me, let him die, the ungrateful man! But his look, his nobility of spirit, and his graceful form, do not make me fear deceit or forgetfulness of my kindness. And he will give me his word beforehand, and I will gather the gods to witness our pledge. Why fear when it is certain? Prepare yourself, and dispel all delay: Jason will be for ever in your debt, take you to himself in sacred marriage, and through the cities of Pelasgian Greece, the crowds of women will glorify you as his saviour.

Carried by the winds, shall I leave my native country, my sister, my brother, my father, and my gods? Well then, my father is barbarous, and my country is savage, and my brother is still a child: my sister’s prayers are for me, and the greatest god is within! I will not be leaving greatness behind, but pursuing greatness: honour as a saviour of these Achaean people, familiarity with a better land and with cities whose fame is flourishing even here, the culture and arts of those places, and the man, the son of Aeson, for whom I would barter those things that the wide world owns, joined to whom I will be called fortunate, dear to the gods, and my head will be crowned with the stars.

What of the stories of mountains that clash together in mid-ocean, and Charybdis the bane of sailors, now sucking in, now spewing out the sea, and rapacious dog-headed Scylla, yelping over the Sicilian deeps? Well, holding what I love, clinging to Jason’s breast, I shall be carried over the wide seas: in his arms, I will fear nothing, or if I am afraid, I will only be afraid for him.

But do you call that marriage, Medea, and clothe your fault with fair names? Consider instead, how great a sin you are near to, and while you can, shun the crime!’ She spoke, and in front of her eyes, were rectitude, piety, modesty: and now, Cupid, defeated, was turning away.

Bk 7:74-99 Jason promises to marry Medea

She went to the ancient altars of Hecate, daughter of the Titan Perses, that the shadowy grove conceals, in the remote forest. And now she was strong and her passion, now conquered, had ebbed, when she saw the son of Aeson and the flame, that was dead, relit. Her cheeks flushed, and then her whole face became pallid. Just as a tiny spark that lies buried under the ashes, takes life from a breath of air, and grows and, living, regains its previous strength, so now her calmed passion, that you would have thought had dulled, when she saw the young hero, flared up at his visible presence.

It chanced that Aeson’s son was more than usually handsome that day: you could forgive her for loving him. She gazed at him, and fixed her eyes on him as if she had never looked at him before, and in her infatuation, seeing his face, could not believe him mortal, nor could she turn away. So that when, indeed, the stranger grasped her right hand, and began to speak, and in a submissive voice asked for her help, promising marriage, she replied in a flood of tears. ‘I see what I am doing: it is not ignorance of the truth that ensnares me, but love. Your salvation is in my gift, but being saved, remember your promise!’

He swore by the sacred rites of the Triple Goddess, by the divine presence of the grove, by the all-seeing Sun, who was the father of King Aeetes, his father-in-law to be, and by his own good fortune, and by his great danger. Immediately, as he was now trusted, he accepted the magic herbs from her, and learnt their use, and returned to the palace, joyfully.

Bk 7:100-158 Jason wins the Golden Fleece

The next day’s dawn dispelled the glittering stars. Then the people gathered on the sacred field of Mars and took up their position on the ridge. The king was seated in the middle, clothed in purple, and distinguished by his ivory sceptre. Behold, the bronze-footed bulls, breathing Vulcan’s fire from nostrils of steel. At the touch of their heat the grass shrivels, and as stoked fires roar, or as broken limestone, that has absorbed the heat inside an earthen furnace, hisses explosively, when cool water is scattered over it, so the flames sounded, pent up in their heaving chests and burning throats. Still the son of Aeson went out to meet them.

As he came to them, the fierce creatures, with their iron-tipped horns, turned their terrible gaze towards him, pawed the dusty ground with their cloven feet, and filled the air with the steam of their bellowing. The Minyans were frozen in fear. He went up to the bulls, not feeling their fiery breath (so great is the power of magic drugs!), and stroking their hanging dewlaps, with a bold hand, yoked them together, and forced them to pull the heavy blade, and till the virgin field with the iron plough. The Colchians were stunned, but the Argonauts increased their shouting, and heightened his courage.

Then he took the dragon’s teeth from the bronze helmet, and scattered them over the turned earth. The soil softened the seeds that had been steeped in virulent poison, and they sprouted, and the teeth, freshly sown, produced new bodies. As an embryo takes on human form in the mother’s womb, and is fully developed there in every aspect, not emerging to the living air until it is complete, so when those shapes of men had been made in the bowels of the pregnant earth, they surged from the teeming soil, and, what is even more wonderful, clashed weapons, created with them. The Pelasgians’ faces fell in fear, and their courage failed them, when they saw these warriors preparing to hurl their sharp spears, at the head of the Haemonian hero. She also, who had rendered him safe, was afraid. When she saw the solitary youth attacked by so many enemies, she grew pale, and sat there, suddenly cold and bloodless. And in case the herbs she had given him had not been potent enough, she chanted a spell to support them, and called on her secret arts.

He threw a boulder into the midst of his enemies, and this turned their attack, on him, against themselves. The earth-born brothers died at each other’s hands, and fell as in civil war. The Achaeans cheered, and clung to the victor, and hugged him in eager embraces. You also, princess among the Barbarians, longed to hold the victorious man: but modesty prevented it. Still, you might have held him, but concern for your reputation stopped you from doing so. What you might fittingly do you did, rejoicing silently, giving thanks, for your incantations, and the gods who inspired them.

The final task was to put the dragon to sleep with the magic drugs. Known for its crest, its triple tongues and curved fangs, it was the dread guardian of the tree’s gold. But when Jason had sprinkled it with the Lethean juice of a certain herb, and three times repeated the words that bring tranquil sleep, that calm the rough seas and turbulent rivers, sleep came to those sleepless eyes, and the heroic son of Aeson gained the Golden Fleece. Proud of his prize, and taking with him a further prize, the one who had helped him gain it, the hero, and his wife Medea, returned to the harbour at Iolchos.

Bk 7:159-178 Jason asks Medea to lengthen Aeson’s life

The elderly Haemonian mothers and fathers bring offerings to mark their sons’ return, and melt incense heaped in the flames. The sacrifice, with gilded horns, that they have dedicated, is led in and killed. But Aeson is absent from the rejoicing, now near death, and weary with the long years. Then Jason, his son, said ‘O my wife, to whom I confess I owe my life, though you have already given me everything, and the total of all your kindnesses is beyond any promises we made, let your incantations, if they can (what indeed can they not do?) reduce my own years and add them to my father’s!’ He could not restrain his tears. Medea was moved by the loving request, and the contrast with Aeetes, abandoned by her, came to mind. Yet, not allowing herself to be affected by such thoughts, she answered ‘Husband, what dreadful words have escaped your lips? Do you think I can transfer any part of your life to another? Hecate would not allow it: nor is yours a just request. But I will try to grant a greater gift than the one you ask for, Jason. If only the Triple Goddess will aid me, and give her assent in person to this great act of daring, I will attempt to renew your father’s length of years, without need for yours.’

Bk 7:179-233 Medea summons the powers and gathers herbs

Three nights were lacking before the moon’s horns met, to make their complete orb. When it was shining at its fullest, and gazed on the earth, with perfect form, Medea left the palace, dressed in unclasped robes. Her feet were bare, her unbound hair streamed down, over her shoulders, and she wandered, companionless, through midnight’s still silence. Men, beasts, and birds were freed in deep sleep. There were no murmurs in the hedgerows: the still leaves were silent, in silent, dew-filled, air. Only the flickering stars moved. Stretching her arms to them she three times turned herself about, three times sprinkled her head, with water from the running stream, three times let out a wailing cry, then knelt on the hard earth, and prayed:

‘Night, most faithful keeper of our secret rites;
Stars, that, with the golden moon, succeed the fires of light;
Triple Hecate, you who know all our undertakings,
and come, to aid the witches’ art, and all our incantations:
You, Earth, who yield the sorceress herbs of magic force:
You, airs and breezes, pools and hills, and every watercourse;
Be here; all you Gods of Night, and Gods of Groves endorse.
Streams, at will, by banks amazed, turn backwards to their source.
I calm rough seas, and stir the calm by my magic spells:
bring clouds, disperse the clouds, raise storms and storms dispel;
and, with my incantations, I break the serpent’s teeth;
and root up nature’s oaks, and rocks, from their native heath;
and move the forests, and command the mountain tops to shake,
earth to groan, and from their tombs the sleeping dead to wake.
You also, Luna, I draw down, eclipsed, from heaven’s stain,
though bronzes of Temese clash, to take away your pains;
and at my chant, the chariot of the Sun-god, my grandsire,
grows pale: Aurora, at my poisons, dims her morning fire.
You quench the bulls’ hot flame for me: force their necks to bow,
beneath the heavy yoke, that never pulled the curving plough:
You turn the savage warfare, born of the serpent’s teeth,
against itself, and lull the watcher, innocent of sleep;
that guard deceived, bring golden spoil, to the towns of Greece.
Now I need the juice by which old age may be renewed,
that can regain the prime of years, return the flower of youth,
and You will grant it. Not in vain, stars glittered in reply:
not in vain, winged dragons bring my chariot, through the sky.’

There, sent from the sky, was her chariot. When she had mounted, stroked the dragons’ bridled necks, and shaken the light reins in her hands, she was snatched up on high. She looked down on Thessalian Tempe far below, and sent the dragons to certain places that she knew. She considered those herbs that grow on Mount Ossa, those of Mount Pelion, Othrys and Pindus, and higher Olympus, and of those that pleased her, plucked some by the roots, and cut others, with a curved pruning-knife of bronze. Many she chose, as well, from the banks of the Apidanus. Many she chose, as well, from the Amphrysus. Nor did she omit the Enipeus. Peneus, and Spercheus’s waters gave something, and the reedy shores of Boebe. And at Anthedon, by Euboea, she picked a plant of long life, not yet famous for the change it made in Glaucus’s body.

Bk 7:234-293 Medea rejuvenates Aeson

Then she returned, after nine days and nine nights surveying all the lands she had crossed, from her chariot, drawn by the winged dragons. The dragons had only smelt the herbs, yet they shed their skins of many years. Reaching her door and threshold, she stopped on the outside, and under the open sky, avoiding contact with any man, she set up two altars of turf, one on the right to Hecate, one on the left to Youth. She wreathed them with sacred boughs from the wildwood, then dug two trenches near by in the earth, and performed the sacrifice, plunging her knife into the throat of a black-fleeced sheep, and drenching the wide ditches with blood. She poured over it cups of pure honey, and again she poured over it cups of warm milk, uttering words as she did so, calling on the spirits of the earth, and begging the shadowy king and his stolen bride, not to be too quick to steal life from the old man’s limbs.

When she had appeased the gods by prayer and murmured a while, she ordered Aeson’s exhausted body to be carried into the air, and freeing him to deep sleep with her spells, she stretched him out like a corpse on a bed of herbs. She ordered Jason, his son, to go far off, and the attendants to go far off, and warned them to keep profane eyes away from the mysteries. They went as she had ordered. Medea, with streaming hair, circled the burning altars, like a Bacchante, and dipping many-branched torches into the black ditches filled with blood, she lit them, once they were darkened, at the twin altars. Three times with fire, three times with water, three times with sulphur, she purified the old man.

Meanwhile a potent mixture is heating in a bronze cauldron set on the flames, bubbling, and seething, white with turbulent froth. She boils there, roots dug from a Thessalian valley, seeds, flowerheads, and dark juices. She throws in precious stones searched for in the distant east, and sands that the ebbing tide of ocean washes. She adds hoar-frost collected by night under the moon, the wings and flesh of a vile screech-owl, and the slavering foam of a sacrificed were-wolf, that can change its savage features to those of a man. She does not forget the scaly skin of a thin Cinyphian water-snake, the liver of a long-lived stag, the eggs and the head of a crow that has lived for nine human life-times.

With these, and a thousand other nameless things, the barbarian witch pursued her greater than mortal purpose. She stirred it all with a long-dry branch of a fruitful olive, mixing the depths with the surface. Look! The ancient staff turned in the hot cauldron, first grew green again, then in a short time sprouted leaves, and was, suddenly, heavily loaded with olives. And whenever the flames caused froth to spatter from the hollow bronze, and warm drops to fall on the earth, the soil blossomed, and flowers and soft grasses grew.

As soon as she saw this, Medea unsheathed a knife, and cut the old man’s throat, and letting the old blood out, filled the dry veins with the juice. When Aeson had absorbed it, part through his mouth, and part through the wound, the white of his hair and beard quickly vanished, and a dark colour took its place. At a stroke his leanness went, and his pallor and dullness of mind. The deep hollows were filled with rounded flesh, and his limbs expanded. Aeson marvelled, recalling that this was his self of forty years ago.

Bk 7:294-349 Medea’s destruction of Pelias

Bacchus saw this wondrous miracle from heaven’s heights, and realising from it, that the Nymphs of Mount Nysa, who had nursed him, could have their youth restored, he secured that gift from the witch of Colchis. There was no end to her magic. Phasian Medea, pretending to a sham quarrel with her husband, fled as a suppliant to Pelias’s threshold, he who had usurped Aeson’s throne. There, the king’s daughters received her, since he himself was weighed down by the years. The lying Colchian soon won them over by a skilful show of friendship, and when she told them of one of her greatest gifts, the removal of Aeson’s many years, and lingered over it, hope was aroused in Pelias’s daughters that similar magic arts might rejuvenate their father.

They begged her, and told her to set a price however great. She was silent for a moment, and appeared to hesitate, keeping the minds of her petitioners in suspense by a show of solemn pretence. When, eventually, she promised to do it, she said ‘To give you greater confidence in my gift, your oldest ram, the leader of your flocks, will by turned into a young lamb again, by my magic drugs.’ Straight away the woolly creature, worn out by innumerable years, was dragged forward, his horns curving round his hollow temples. When the witch had cut his wizened throat with her Thessalian knife, hardly staining the blade with blood, she immersed the sheep’s carcass in the bronze cauldron, along with her powerful magic herbs. These shrank its limbs, melted away its horns, and, with its horns, the years. A high-pitched bleating came from inside the vessel, and while they were wondering at the bleating, a lamb leapt out, and frisked away, seeking the udder and milk.

Pelias’s daughters were stunned, and now the truth of her promise had been displayed, they insisted even more eagerly. Three times Phoebus had unyoked his horses, after their plunge into the western ocean, and on the fourth night the stars were glittering in all their radiance, when the deceitful daughter of Aeetes set clear water, and herbs, but ineffectual ones, over a blazing fire. And now the king and his guards also were deep in death-like sleep, achieved by her incantations and the power of her magic spells. The king’s daughters, at her command, crossed the threshold, with the Colchian witch, and stood around his bed. ‘Why do you hesitate, so timidly?’ she said. ‘Un-sheath your blades, and let out the old blood, so that I can fill the empty veins with new! You father’s life and youth are in your hands. If you have any filial affection, if those are not vain hopes that stir you, render your father this service, banish old age with your weapons, and drive out his poisoned blood with a stroke of the iron blade!’

Urged on by these words, the more love each had for him, the quicker she was to act without love, and did evil, to avoid greater evil. Nevertheless they could not bear to see their own blows, and turned their eyes away, and with averted faces, wounded him blindly with cruel hands. Streaming blood, the old man still raised himself on his elbow, and, though mutilated, tried to rise from his bed. Stretching his pallid hands out among the many weapons, he cried ‘Daughters, why are you doing this? What has made you take up weapons against your father’s life?’ Their strength and courage vanished. But as he was about to utter more words, the Colchian witch cut his throat, and plunged his torn body into the seething water.

Bk 7:350-403 Medea flees and reaches Athens

She would not have escaped punishment had she not taken to the air, with her winged dragons. Through the high sky, clockwise, she fled, over the shadowy slopes of Pelion, Chiron’s home; over Othrys and the places made famous by the ancient fate of Cerambus, who, aided by the nymphs and changed to a winged scarab beetle, lifted into the air, when the all-powerful sea drowned the solid earth, and so escaped un-drowned from Deucalion’s flood. She passed Aeolian Pitane on the left, with its huge stone serpent image, and Ida’s grove where Liber concealed, in the deceptive shape of a stag, the bullock stolen by his son. She passed the place where the father of Corythus, Paris, lay, buried under a little sand; and where Hecuba, changed to a black bitch of Hecate, Maera, spread terror through the fields with her strange barking.

She flew over Astypalaea, the city of Eurypylus, where the women of the island, of Cos, acquired horns when they abused Hercules, as he and his company departed: over Rhodes, beloved of Phoebus: and the Telchines of the city of Ialysos on Rhodes, whose eyes corrupted everything they looked on, so that Jupiter, disgusted with them, sank them under his brother’s ocean waves. She passed the walls of ancient Carthaea, on the island of Ceos, where Alcidamas, as a father, would marvel, one day, that a peace-loving dove could spring from the body of his daughter, Ctesylla.

Then she saw Lake Hyrie, and Cycnean Tempe, made famous suddenly by a swan. There Phylius, at the boy Cycnus’s command, brought him birds and a fierce lion he had tamed. Ordered to overcome a wild bull as well, he did overcome him, but angry that his love was rejected so often, he refused to grant this last gift of a bull, when asked. Cycnus, angered, said ‘You will wish you had’ and leapt from a high cliff. All thought he had fallen, but changed to a swan he beat through the air on white wings, though his mother, Hyrie, not knowing he was safe, pined away with weeping, and became the lake that carries her name.

Near there was the city of Pleuron, where Combe the daughter of Ophius, on flickering wings, escaped death at the hands of her sons, the Aetolian Curetes. And then Medea looked down at the fields of Calaurea’s isle, sacred to Leto, whose king and queen were also changed to birds. On her right was Cyllene, where Menephron lay with his mother, as though he were a wild beast. Further on she sees the Cephisus, the river-god lamenting his grandson’s fate, changed by Apollo into a lumbering seal, and the home of Eumelus, mourning his son Botres, reborn as a bird, the bee-eater, in the air.

At last, the dragon’s wings brought her to Corinth, the ancient Ephyre, and its Pirenian spring. Here, tradition says, that in earliest times, human bodies sprang from fungi, swollen by rain. After Jason’s new bride Glauce had been consumed by the fires of vengeful Colchian witchcraft and both the Isthmus’s gulfs had witnessed flame consuming the king’s palace, Medea impiously bathed her sword in the blood of their sons. Then, after performing this evil act, she fled from Jason’s wrath. Carried by her dragons that are born of the Titans, she reached Pallas’s citadel of Athens. This once knew you Phene, the most righteous, and you old Periphas, both flying in the air, as birds, the eagle and the osprey: and Alcyone, granddaughter of Polypemon, resting on strange new wings. It was Aegeus who gave Medea sanctuary there, damned thereafter by that one action: and not content with taking her in, he even entered into a contract of marriage with her.

Bk 7:404-424 Medea attempts Theseus’s life, then vanishes

Now Theseus came to Athens, Aegeus’s son, but as yet unknown to him. He, by his courage, had brought peace to the Isthmus between the two gulfs. Medea, seeking his destruction, prepared a mixture of poisonous aconite, she had brought with her from the coast of Scythia. This poison is said to have dripped from the teeth of Cerberus, the Echidnean dog. There is a dark cavern with a gaping mouth, and a path into the depths, up which Hercules, hero of Tiryns, dragged the dog, tied with steel chains, resisting and twisting its eyes away from the daylight and the shining rays. Cerberus, provoked to a rabid frenzy, filled all the air with his simultaneous three-headed howling, and spattered the green fields with white flecks of foam. These are supposed to have congealed and found food to multiply, gaining harmful strength from the rich soil. Because they are long-lived, springing from the hard rock, the country people call these shoots, of wolf-bane, ‘soil-less’ aconites. Through his wife’s cunning Aegeus, the father, himself offered the poison to his son, as if he were a stranger. Theseus, unwittingly, had taken the cup he was given in his right hand, when his father recognised the emblems of his own house, on the ivory hilt of his son’s sword, and knocked the evil drink away from his mouth. But she escaped death, in a dark mist, raised by her incantations.

Bk 7:425-452 The praise for Theseus

Though the father was overjoyed that his son was unharmed, he was still horrified that so great a crime could have come so close to success. He lit fires on the altars, and heaped gifts for the gods. His axes struck the mountainous necks of oxen, their horns tied with the sacrificial ribbons. They say that was the happiest day that dawned in the city of Erectheus. The statesmen celebrated among the people, and they sang verses, made even more inspired by the wine.

‘Great Theseus, admired in Marathon,
for the blood of the Cretan bull,
your act and gift made Cromyon’s fields
safe for the farmers plough.
Epidaurus’s land saw you defeat
Vulcan’s club-wielding son,
and the banks of the River Cephisus
saw evil Procrustes brought down.
Eleusis, sacred to Ceres the Mother,
witnessed Cercyon’s fall:
Sinis, you killed, a man of great strength
twisted to evil art,
who could bend pine-tree trunks to the earth,
and tear men’s bodies apart:
and Sciron is done for, and safe paths reach
Megara’s Lelegeïan wall:
though the ocean denied his bones a grave,
and the land denied the same,
till, long-time hurled, they hardened to cliffs,
and the cliffs bear Sciron’s name.
If we wanted to count your years and your honours,
the deeds would exceed the years:
to you, the bravest, we empty our wine-cups,
and offer our public prayers.’

The palace echoed to the people’s applause and the prayers of friends, and there was no sad place in the whole city.

Bk 7:453-500 Minos threatens war

Nevertheless Aegeus’s pleasure in receiving his son was not carefree (indeed, joy is never complete, and some trouble always comes to spoil our delight). Minos, of Crete, was preparing for war. Powerful in men and ships, his anger as a father was more powerful still, and by right of arms he was seeking to avenge the death of Androgeos, his son. But first he acquired allies for his war, crossing the sea in the swift fleet that was his strength. The island of Anaphe joined with him, and that of Astypalaea (Anaphe by promises, Astypalaea by Cretan supremacy in war); low-lying Myconos, and chalky-soiled Cimolos; Syros flowering with thyme, flat Seriphos, marble-cliffed Paros, and Siphnos, betrayed to him by that disloyal princess, Arne, whom, when she had taken the gold her greed demanded, the gods changed into a bird, the black-footed, black-winged jackdaw, that still delights in gold.

But Oliaros gave no aid to the Cretan ships; nor Didyme, Tenos, Andros, Gyaros; nor Peparethos rich in bright olives. Sailing northwest Minos sought Oenopia, the kingdom of the Aeacidae. They called it Oenopia in ancient times, but Aeacus himself named it Aegina after his mother. The crowd rushed down, to meet Minos, wanting to see so famous a man. Telamon went to him, and Peleus, junior to Telamon, and Phocus, the third child, their half-brother. Aeacus himself came, also, slow with the burden of years, and asked the cause of his visit. The ruler of a hundred cities sighed, reminded of his grief for his son, and replied ‘I beg your aid in a war, waged for my son’s sake; to be part of a just fight: I ask the comfort of marking out his tomb.’ The grandson of Asopus said ‘You ask in vain what my city cannot give. No city is more closely linked to Athens, city of Cecrops, than this; we and they are bound by treaty.’

Minos turned away, sadly, saying ‘Your treaty will cost you dear’, since he thought it more useful to threaten war than to fight, and consume his strength too soon. The Cretan fleet could still be seen from Aegina’s walls, when a ship from Athens arrived, under full sail, and entered the allied port, bearing Cephalus, and likewise greetings from his country. Though they had not seen him for a long time, the sons of Aeacus still knew him, and clasped his right hand, and led him to their father’s house. The hero went forward, observed on all sides, even now retaining traces of his former beauty, carrying a branch of his country’s olive. And to right and left, he, the elder, had two younger men, Clytos and Butes, the sons of Pallas.

Bk 7:501-613 Aeacus tells of the plague at Aegina

After meeting and exchanging a few words, Cephalus described his mandate from Athens, asking for help and quoting the treaty sworn to by their ancestors, adding that Minos was out to control all Achaia. When he had invoked the treaty, in this way, to aid his cause, Aeacus, resting his left hand on the handle of his sceptre, replied ‘Don’t ask for our help, assume it. Don’t hesitate to reckon the forces of this island your own, and (let this state of my fortunes last!) energy is not lacking. I have men enough, and thank the gods, the moment is auspicious and there will be no excuses.’ ‘I wish it may always be so,’ Cephalus said, ‘and may your city swell its numbers. Indeed, as I came I felt happy: so many equally youthful, handsome people, meeting me on the way. Yet there were many I missed, that I saw before, when I visited the city.’ Aeacus sighed, and spoke sadly. ‘From a bad beginning, better fortune follows. I wish I could recall the one for you without the other! I’ll take them in order, now, and not stall you with irrelevances. Those your mind, remembering, misses are only bones and ashes, and how great a part of my wealth perished with them!

‘A terrible plague afflicted the people through the unjust anger of Juno, detesting us because our island had been named after my mother, her rival. While it looked like a human disease, and the cause of the disastrous epidemic was hidden, we fought it with medical skill. But the destruction cancelled out our efforts, which waned as we were conquered. At the outset the sky shrouded the earth in a thick fog, and held the sultry heat under clouds. While Luna filled her horns four times to make her disc complete, and four times thinned her full disc away, hot southerly winds breathed their deadly air on us. We know the pestilence reached our lakes and streams. Thousands of snakes slithered through the empty fields, and fouled the waters with their slime. The unexpected power of the disease surprised us, at the first, with its destruction of dogs, sheep and cattle, wild animals and birds. The wretched ploughman watches in dismay as sturdy oxen stumble in their task, and sink down onto the furrows. The flocks of sheep give out a sickly bleating, while the wool falls away of itself, and their bodies waste. The spirited horse, once famous on the track, loses his glory, and forgetting past honour, whinnies in his stall, dying a slow death. The wild boar no longer remembers his fury; the deer cannot trust to speed; the bears cannot match the strength of the herds. Lethargy grips them all. Decaying carcasses lie in the roadways, fields and woods, and the air is fouled with the stench. Strangely, dogs, carrion birds, and grey wolves, will not touch them. They rot on the ground, pollute the air with their dying breath, and spread contagion far and wide.

‘Increasing in virulence the pestilence spreads to the luckless farmers themselves, and takes lordship inside the city walls. Firstly the inner organs grow hot, and a flushed skin and feverish breath are symptoms of hidden warmth. The tongue is rough and swollen with heat: the lips are parted, parched with dry breath, and gasping suck in the heavy air. The sick cannot tolerate a bed or any kind of covering, but lie face down on the bare ground, though the earth does not cool their bodies, their bodies heat the earth.

‘No one can control it, and it breaks out fiercely among the doctors themselves, and the practice of their skill condemns the practitioners. The nearer people are to the sick, and the more selflessly they attend them, the more swiftly they meet their fate, and as the hope of recovery deserts them, and they see the end of their illness only in death, they give way to their desires, and ignore what is good for them, since nothing is any good. Everywhere they cling to the fountains and runnels and deep wells, and drinking, thirst is not quenched sooner than life. Many of them are too weak to stand, and even die in the water, yet others still draw it. Others loathe their hateful beds so much they leave them, and if they lack the strength to stand, they roll out onto the ground. They quit their household gods since their house seems fatal to them, and, because the cause is unknown, the building itself is blamed. You see them, half-dead, wandering the streets, while they can still stay on their feet, others lying on the ground weeping, turning their exhausted gaze upwards in their dying efforts, and stretching their arms out to the stars in the overhanging sky, breathing their last, here or there, wherever death has overtaken them.

‘What were my feelings then? What could they be, but to hate life, and to wish to be with my people? Wherever I looked as I turned my gaze, there were layers of dead, like rotten apples fallen from shaken branches, or acorns from a windblown ilex. See that temple opposite on the hill with a flight of steps up to it? It is Jupiter’s. Who among us did not bring useless offerings to those shrines? How often a husband while still praying for his wife, or a father still praying for his son, ended his life in front of those implacable altars, part of the unused incense found in their hands! How often the sacrificial bulls fell down, without waiting for the blow, while the priest was praying and pouring unmixed wine between the horns. Even when I was sacrificing to Jove, for myself my country and my three sons, the victim let out a dreadful moan, and suddenly collapsed without a stroke from my blade, barely staining the knives below with its blood. The diseased entrails showed no marks, from which to read the prophetic truths, and warnings, of the gods. That offensive morbidity penetrated to their vital organs. I have seen corpses thrown down in front of the temple doors, in front of the altars, to make their deaths even more of a reproach. Some cut off their breath with a noose, and banished, by death, their fear of death, summoning their approaching fate from the beyond.

‘The bodies of the dead were not given the usual rites (the exit gates from the city could not cope with so many funerals). They either lay on the ground unburied, or were given to the heaped pyres without ceremony. And now there was no reverence left: the people struggled to the pyres, and were consumed by others’ flames. There was no one left to mourn, and the spirits of parents and children, of young and old were left to wander, unwept. There was no space in the burial mounds, and not enough wood for the fires.

Bk 7:614-660 The creation of the Myrmidons

‘Stunned by such a storm of dark events, I said “O Jupiter, if they do not lie when they say that you were held in Aegina’s embrace, she, the daughter of Asopus, and if you are not ashamed, mighty father, to have fathered me, give me back my people or bury me too in their tomb.” He gave me a flash of lightning as a sign, and thunder followed. I said “I interpret this to be an omen, and that you give me it as a pledge, and may these accordingly be auspicious tokens of your purpose.”

‘There happened to be an oak-tree nearby, with open spreading branches, seeded from Dodona, and sacred to Jove. I noticed a long train of food-gathering ants, carrying vast loads in their tiny mouths, and forging their own way over its corrugated bark. Admiring their numbers, I said “Best of fathers, give me as many citizens as this and fill the city’s empty walls.” The tall oak-tree quivered, and its branches filled with sound, without a wind. I shivered, my limbs quaking with fear, and my hair stood on end. Though I kissed the oak-tree and the earth, not acknowledging my hopes, yet I did hope, and cherished my longings in my heart. Night fell, and sleep claimed my care-worn body.

‘The same oak-tree was there before my eyes, with the same branches, and the same insects on its branches, and it shook with a similar motion, and seemed to scatter its column of grain-bearers onto the ground below. Suddenly they seemed to grow larger and larger, and raise themselves from the soil, and stand erect, they lost their leanness, many feet, and their black coloration, and their limbs took on human form. Sleep vanished. Awake again, I dismissed my dream, bemoaning the lack of help from the gods. But there was a great murmuring in the palace, and I thought I heard human voices, those I was now unaccustomed to. While I suspected that it was an effect of sleep, Telamon came running and throwing open the door, shouted “Father, come out and see, something greater than you could hope or believe. Come now!”

‘I went, and saw such men as I had seen in sleep’s imagining, in ranks such as I recognised and knew. They approached and saluted me as king. I fulfilled my prayer to Jove, and divided the city amongst this new people, along with the lost farmers’ empty fields. I called them Myrmidons, a name that did not belie each one’s origin as an ant, μύρμηξ. You have seen their bodies: they still retain the habits they had before, a thrifty, hard-working people, tenacious of achievement, and keeping what they achieve. These men fresh in years and spirit, will follow you to war, as soon as that favourable east wind that brought you here’ (it was indeed an easterly that had brought him) ‘has swung round to the south.’

Bk 7:661-758 The infidelities of Cephalus and Procris

They filled a long day with this and other talk: the last of the light was given over to feasting, and night to sleep. The sun shone gold again, but an east wind was still blowing, and kept the sails from the homeward voyage. The sons of Pallas joined Cephalus, their senior, and Cephalus and the princes then went to the king: but the king was still in a deep sleep. Phocus, Aeacus’s son, received them at the threshold, since Telamon and his brother were selecting men for the war. Phocus led the Athenians into an inner walk, beautiful and secluded, where they sat down together, and noticed that the grandson of Aeolus carried a spear in his hand, tipped with gold, and made of an unknown wood. In the midst of their first short conversation, he said ‘I am knowledgeable about woodland, and hunting wild animals, but I have been wondering for a while what tree that shaft was cut from. If it were ash it would be deep yellow, and if it were cornelian cherry it would be knotted. What it is I am ignorant of, but my eyes have never seen one more beautifully formed for throwing.’ One of the Athenian brothers replied ‘You will marvel at its usefulness more than at its looks. It hits whatever it is aimed at: there is no chance involved, and then it flies back, bloodied, without needing to be retrieved.’ Then truly the son of the Nereid wanted to know everything: why this was so, where it came from, and who gave such a wondrous gift. What he wanted to know, Cephalus told him, but was still ashamed to say what a high price it had cost him. He was silent, and touched with sadness for his lost wife, tears welling in his eyes, he uttered these words.

‘Son of the goddess, this weapon makes me weep (who would believe that?) and it will for many years if the fates grant me them. This weapon did for my dear wife and me. I wish that I had always been without it! She was Procris, or if Orithyia’s name has chanced to fill your ears more loudly, the sister of that Orithyia whom Boreas stole, though if you were to compare the two in looks and manner, Procris was more worth stealing! Her father Erechtheus brought us together in marriage, and love brought us together too. I was called happy, and I was. But the gods’ vision of the future was otherwise, or perhaps things would still be so.

‘The second month after our marriage, I was setting out nets to trap antlered deer, when golden Aurora, chasing away the shadows, saw me from the summit of Mount Hymettus, that is always bright with flowers, and took me away against my will. By the grace of the goddess I can repeat the truth: though her face has the blush of roses, though she keeps the borderland of light and night, though she drinks the dewy nectar, I was in love with Procris. Procris was in my heart: Procris was always on my lips. I kept talking about the sacred marriage bed, and the newness of our union, the recent wedding, and the prior claim of our deserted couch. The goddess was angered and said “Stop complaining, ungrateful man: have your Procris! But if my vision is far-sighted, you will wish you had never had her.” In a fury, she sent me back to her.

‘As I was returning, reconsidering the goddess’s words, I began to fear lest my wife had not been faithful to our marriage vows. Her youth and beauty prompted thoughts of adultery, but her character forbade those thoughts. But I had been away a while, and she from whom I was returning was herself an example of the fault, and lovers fear the worst. I decided to try what might grieve me, testing her chaste loyalty with gifts. Aurora supported my fears, and she changed my appearance (I felt it happening).

‘Unrecognisable, I went back to Athens, city of Pallas, and entered my house. The house itself was irreproachable, gave every sign of innocence, and was only anxious for its vanished master. With difficulty, by a thousand stratagems, I gained access to Erechtheus’s daughter. When I saw her I was rooted to the spot, and almost relinquished my thoughts of testing her loyalty. Indeed I could hardly keep from confessing the truth, and hardly keep from kissing her, as I ought. She was sad (but no one could be more lovely than her in her sadness). She grieved with longing for the husband who had been snatched away. Phocus, she was Beauty, whom Grief itself so befits! Why should I tell how many times her chaste nature repelled my advances? All those many times she said “I hold myself, in trust, for one man only: wherever he is, I keep what I can give, in trust, for that one man.” For whom, in his senses, was that not a great enough trial of loyalty? But I was not satisfied, and struggled on, wounding myself, until by promising to give a fortune for just one night with her, and then increasing the offer, I forced her to hesitate. Wrongly victorious, I cried out “I am no adulterer, wicked one! I am your true husband! You have me for a witness, you traitress!”

‘She said not a word. Silent with overwhelming shame, she fled from the treacherous threshold, and her evil husband. Deeply hurt by me, and hating the whole race of men, she wandered the mountains, following the ways of Diana. Then, deserted, a more violent flame burned in my bones. I begged her forgiveness, and confessed I had sinned, and that I too might have succumbed to the same fault, given the offer, if such gifts were offered to me. When I had owned to this, and after she had first taken revenge for her wounded honour, she returned to me, and we lived out sweet years in harmony. Moreover, as though she in yielding herself gave only a small prize, she gave me a hound as a gift, that her own goddess Cynthia had entrusted to her, saying, “He will surpass all other dogs for speed.” She gave me a spear, likewise, the one, you see, I have in my hands. Do you want to know the fate of the other gift? Listen to something marvellous: you will be stirred by the strangeness of the thing!

Bk 7:759-795 The transformation of Cephalus’s dog Laelaps

‘Oedipus, son of Laïus, had solved with his genius the riddles whose meaning was previously not understood, and the Sphinx, dark prophetess, had hurtled headlong from the cliff, her enigmatic words forgotten. Immediately Aonian Thebes was plagued again (since righteous Themis does not leave such things unpunished!) and many country people feared that the Teumessian vixen would destroy their flocks and themselves. The young men of the neighbourhood came, and we beat over the wide fields. That swift creature leapt lightly over the nets, and cleared the tops of the traps we had set. Then we slipped our hounds from the tether, but she escaped their pursuit, and, travelling no slower than a bird flies, mocked the pack. With one great shout the hunters called on me to loose Laelaps, “Hurricane” (the name of my wife’s gift). He had long been struggling to free himself from his leash, and straining his neck against the restraint. He had scarcely been released properly before we lost sight of him.

‘The hot dust showed the print of his paws, but he had vanished from sight. No javelin was quicker than him, no lead shot from a whirled sling, no light arrow shot from a Cretan bow. There was an intervening hill whose summit overlooked the surrounding fields. I climbed it, and watched the spectacle of this strange race, where the quarry seemed to be caught, and then to escape its fate. Nor does the cunning animal run in a straight course in the open, but it eludes the pursuing muzzle and swings back in a circle, so its enemy cannot charge. The hound presses hard, and matches its pace, seems to grip it, and does not grip it, and worries at the air with its empty snapping.

‘I turned to my spear for help. While I was balancing it in my right hand, while I was trying to fit my fingers into the throwing strap, I turned my eyes away. When I turned them back to the same place, I saw (a marvel) two shapes of marble in the middle of the plain. One you would think to be fleeing, the other pursuing. Assuredly, if a god was with them, that god must have willed that both should be unconquered in the race,’ He got so far in his story, and was silent. ‘What crime has the spear committed?’ said Phocus. And Cephalus recounted its crime.

Bk 7:796-865 The death of Procris

‘Phocus, my happiness was the beginning of my sorrow, and I will speak of happiness first. Son of Aeacus, what a joy it is to remember that blessed time, when, in those early years, I was delighted, and rightly so, with my wife, and she was delighted with her husband. We two had mutual cares, and a shared love. She would not have preferred Jupiter’s bed to my love, and no woman could have captured me, not if Venus herself had come there. An equal flame burnt in our hearts.

‘Just after dawn, when the first rays struck the hilltops, full of youthfulness, I used to go hunting in the woods. I used to take no servants, or horses, or keen-scented hounds, or knotted snares. I trusted in my spear. But when my right hand was sated with the slaughter of wild creatures, I would return to the cool of the shade, and the breeze, aura, out of the chill valleys. I courted the breeze, gentle to me, in the midst of the heat: I waited for aura: she was rest for my labour. “Aura” (Indeed, I remember) I used to call “Come to me, delight me, enter my breast, most pleasing one, and, as you do, be willing to ease this heat I burn with!” Perhaps I did add more endearments (so my fate led me on). “You are my greatest pleasure” I used to say. “You revive me, and cherish me. You make me love the woods and lonely places. It is always your breath I try to catch with my lips.”

‘Someone, I don’t know who, hearing the ambiguous words, represented my speech as a betrayal, and thought the word aura I called so often, was the name of a nymph, a nymph he believed I loved. Immediately the unthinking witness went to Procris with the tale of my imagined disloyalty, and whispered what he had heard. Love is a credulous thing. Overcome with sudden pain, they tell me that she fainted. After a long time she revived, weeping for herself, calling her fate evil. She complained of my faithlessness, and troubled by an imaginary crime, she feared what was nothing, feared a name without substance, and grieved, the unhappy woman, as though aura were a real rival.

‘Yet she often doubted, and hoped, in her misery, that she was wrong, declaring she would not believe it, and unless she witnessed it herself, would not condemn her husband as guilty of any crime. Next morning, when Dawn’s light had dispelled the night I left to seek the woods, and, victorious from the hunt, lying on the grass, I said “Aura, come and relieve my suffering!” and suddenly, amongst my words, I thought I heard someone’s moan. “Come, dearest!” I still said, and as the fallen leaves made a rustling sound in reply, I thought it was a wild creature, and threw my spear quickly. It was Procris. Clasping the wound in her breast she cried out “Ah, me!”

‘Recognising it as the voice of my faithful wife, I ran headlong and frantic towards that voice. I found her half-alive, her clothes sprinkled with drops of blood, and (what misery!) trying to pull this spear, her gift to me, from the wound. I lifted her body, dearer to me than my own, with gentle arms, tore the fabric from her breast, and bound up the cruel wound, trying to stem the blood, begging her not to leave me, guilty of her death. Though her strength was failing, and even though she was dying, she forced herself to speak a little. “By the bed we swore to share, by the gods that I entreat, those that are above, and those that are of my house, by any good I have deserved of you, and by the abiding love, that still, while I die, remains, that is itself the cause of my death, do not allow this Aura to marry you in my place!” She spoke, and then I knew at last the error of the name, and told her. But what was the use of telling? She wavered, and the little strength she had ebbed away with her blood. While she could still gaze at anything, she gazed at me; and to me, and on my lips, breathed out her unfortunate spirit. And her look seemed easier then, untroubled by death.’

The hero, weeping, had told this sorrowful tale, when, behold, Aeacus entered with his two sons, and their newly enlisted men, whom Cephalus then accepted, with all their heavy armour.

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Book 8

• Bk 8:1-80 Scylla decides to betray her city of Megara.
• Bk 8:81-151 Scylla, deserted, is changed to a bird.
• Bk 8:152-182 The Minotaur, Theseus, and Ariadne.
• Bk 8:183-235 Daedalus and Icarus.
• Bk 8:236-259 The death of Talos.
• Bk 8:260-328 The Calydonian Boar Hunt – the cause.
• Bk 8:329-375 The Calydonian Boar Hunt – the boar is roused.
• Bk 8:376-424 The Calydonian Boar Hunt – the kill
• Bk 8:425-450 The Calydonian Boar Hunt – the spoils.
• Bk 8:451-514 Althaea and the burning brand.
• Bk 8:515-546 The death of Meleager
• Bk 8:547-610 Acheloüs tells Theseus and his friends of Perimele.
• Bk 8:611-678 Lelex tells of Philemon and Baucis.
• Bk 8:679-724 The transformation of Philemon and Baucis.
• Bk 8:725-776 Erysichthon fells Ceres’s sacred oak tree.
• Bk 8:777-842 Ceres sends Famine to Erysichthon.
• Bk 8:843-884 The fate of Erysichthon and his daughter Mestra.

Bk 8:1-80 Scylla decides to betray her city of Megara

Now Lucifer dispelling night, and unveiling shining day, the east wind dropped, and rain clouds gathered. The mild south wind, gave Cephalus and the Aeacides safe return, bringing them, more quickly than they expected, to the harbour they steered for, by its favourable action. Meanwhile Minos was laying waste the coast of Megara, and testing his military strength against the city of Alcathoüs, where Nisus ruled, who had a bright lock of purple hair, on the crown of his head, amongst his distinguished grey tresses, that guaranteed the safety of his kingdom.

The horns of a new moon had risen six times and the fortunes of war still hung in the balance, so protractedly did Victory hover between the two, on hesitant wings. There was a tower of the king, added to walls of singing stone, where Apollo, Latona’s son, once rested his golden lyre, and the sound resonated in the rock. In days of peace, Scylla, the daughter of King Nisus, often used to climb up there, and make the stones ring using small pebbles. In wartime also she would often watch the unyielding armed conflicts from there, and now, as the war dragged on, she had come to know the names of the hostile princes, their weapons, horses, armour and Cretan quivers. Above all she came to know the face of their leader, Europa’s son, more than was fitting.

If he covered his head with a plumed helmet, she thought him handsome in a helmet. If he carried his shining bronze shield, a shield became him well. When he hurled his heavy spear, with taut limbs, the girl admired his strength combined with skill. When he bent the broad arc of his bow, with a flight notched in it, she swore that it was Phoebus Apollo, standing there, with his arrow ready. But when he exposed his face, free of the bronze, and when, clothed in purple, he took to horseback, his white horse conspicuous with its embroidered trappings, and he controlled its foaming bit, Nisus’s daughter was scarcely in control of herself, scarcely in a rational frame of mind. Happy the spear he held, she said, and happy the reins he lifted in his hand. Her impulse was to run, though only a girl, and if it had been allowed, through the enemy lines; her impulse was to throw herself from the top of the tower into the Cretan camp, to open the bronze gates to their army, or anything else Minos might wish.

As she sat gazing at the white tents of the Dictaean king, she said ‘I am not sure whether I should show joy or grief at this miserable war. I grieve because Minos is the enemy of one who loves him, but if there had been no war, he would never have been known to me! If he accepted me as a hostage he could abandon the war: he would have me as his companion, me as a pledge of peace. If she, who gave birth to you, most handsome of kings, was as beautiful as you are, no wonder the god was on fire for her. O I would be three times happy if I could take wing, through the air, and stand in the camp of the Cretan king, and reveal myself, and my love, and ask what dowry he would need to win me: so long as he does not demand my country’s stronghold! Rather let my hopes of marriage die, than that I be capable of betrayal! - Though often many have found it better to be defeated, if a peace-loving conqueror showed clemency. Indeed he wages a just war because of his murdered son: his cause is powerful, and the arms that support his cause. Then, I think we will be conquered. And if that is the end that awaits the city, why should his strength breach these walls of mine, rather than my love?

It would be better for him to win, without slaughter, or delay, and without the shedding of his own blood. At least I would not be afraid lest someone inadvertently wound your breast, Minos: for who would be so cruel as to venture to aim his throw at you, unless he was careless? The idea pleases me, and I am firm in my decision to deliver myself to you, with my country as my dowry, and so put an end to war. But, it is not enough merely to want it! There is a guard watching the entrance, and my father holds the keys of the gate. I only fear through him I might be unlucky: only he hinders my wishes. Would that the gods had devised things so that I had no father! Surely everyone is their own god: Fortune rejects idle wishes. Another girl, fired with as great a passion as mine, would, long ago, have destroyed anything that stood in the way of her love. And why should another be braver than I am? I would dare to go through fire and sword: but there is no need here to brave fire or sword: I need one lock of my father’s hair. That is more precious than gold to me, that purple lock of hair will bless me, and let me achieve my desire.

Bk 8:81-151 Scylla, deserted, is changed to a bird

As she was speaking, Night, most powerful healer of our cares, darkened, and, with the shadows, her boldness grew. The first hours of quiet had come, when sleep soothes hearts that the day’s anxieties have wearied: the daughter steals silently into her father’s room, and (alas, the evil!) robs him of the fateful lock of hair. Through the middle of the enemy camp she goes (so certain of her worth to them) with the impious prize she has gained, straight to the king: who is startled by her speech to him. ‘Love drove me to crime! I, Scylla, daughter of King Nisus, deliver, to you, the gods of my house, and my country. I ask no gift but yourself. Take this purple lock of hair as the pledge of my love, and know that I do not deliver merely a lock of his hair to you, but his head!’ And she held out her gift in her sinful hand. Minos recoiled from what she offered him, and shaken by the thought of this unnatural act, answered ‘May the gods banish you from their world, O you who disgrace this age, and may land and sea be denied you! Be certain I will never allow Crete, which is my world, and the cradle of Jove, to give sanctuary to such a monstrous child.’

He spoke: and after establishing laws for his defeated enemies, this most just of legislators, ordered the cables to be loosed from his fleet, and the oars of the bronze-beaked ships to be set in motion. When Scylla saw that the ships were drawing away over the sea, and that their master had refused her the reward for her wickedness, exhausting prayer, she succumbed to violent anger, and, her hair streaming, shouted in her fury, stretching our her hands. ‘Where are you running to, deserting the creator of your success, O you whom I have set above my father, set above my country? Where are you running to, cruel one, whose victory was my crime, and my kindness? Does neither the gift I gave, nor my love, move you, nor the knowledge that all my hopes are contained in you alone? Where shall I go, deserted like this? To my country? It is defeated! Even if it were not, it is closed to me through my treachery! To my father’s presence? Whom I betrayed to you? The citizens hate me, with reason, and their neighbours fear my example. I am exposed to the world, so that Crete alone might be open to me. If you deny me Crete, also, and leave me here, in your ingratitude, your mother was not Europa, but the sandbanks of hostile Syrtis, or the Armenian tigress, or Charybdis’s whirlpool, stirred by the south wind. Nor are you Jupiter’s son, nor was your mother deceived by the image of a bull. That tale of your birth is a lie! Truly a bull begot you: a wild one, never captive of a heifer’s love.

Nisus, father, punish me! Joy in my pain, walls, that I have betrayed! Now, I confess it, I deserve to be hated, and to die. But let one of those whom I have impiously wounded destroy me! Why should you attack me for my crime, who gained victory through that crime? My sin against my father, and my country, was a kindness to you! Pasiphaë is truly a fit mate for you: that adulteress who fooled the fierce bull with that wooden frame, and carried a hybrid foetus in her womb. Does my speech penetrate your ears, monster of ingratitude, or do the same winds that blow your ships on, blow my words away to nothingness? Now, Now, it is no wonder to me, that Pasiphaë preferred that bull to you, you have more savagery in you than he had. Oh, he is ordering them to run! And the waves resound to the beat of the oars, and I and my land recede. No matter. Oh, in vain, you forget my kindnesses: I shall follow you against your will, clinging to the curved sternpost, dragged over the wide ocean.’

She had scarcely finished speaking when she leapt into the sea, and swam after the fleet, her passion lending her strength, and clung to the Cretan boat. Her father, who had been newly changed into a sea eagle, soaring through the air on tawny wings, saw her, and dived towards her, as she clung there, to tear at her with his hooked beak. In fear she let go of the sternpost, but as she fell the light breeze seemed to hold her, not letting her touch the water. Feathers spring from her arms: changed into a bird, the rock dove, with its red legs and purple throat, she is called Ciris, ‘Cutter’, and acquired that name from her cutting of the lock of hair.

Bk 8:152-182 The Minotaur, Theseus, and Ariadne

When Minos reached Cretan soil he paid his dues to Jove, with the sacrifice of a hundred bulls, and hung up his war trophies to adorn the palace. The scandal concerning his family grew, and the queen’s unnatural adultery was evident from the birth of a strange hybrid monster. Minos resolved to remove this shame, the Minotaur, from his house, and hide it away in a labyrinth with blind passageways. Daedalus, celebrated for his skill in architecture, laid out the design, and confused the clues to direction, and led the eye into a tortuous maze, by the windings of alternating paths. No differently from the way in which the watery Maeander deludes the sight, flowing backwards and forwards in its changeable course, through the meadows of Phrygia, facing the running waves advancing to meet it, now directing its uncertain waters towards its source, now towards the open sea: so Daedalus made the endless pathways of the maze, and was scarcely able to recover the entrance himself: the building was as deceptive as that.

In there, Minos walled up the twin form of bull and man, and twice nourished it on Athenian blood, but the third repetition of the nine-year tribute by lot, caused the monster’s downfall. When, through the help of the virgin princess, Ariadne, by rewinding the thread, Theseus, son of Aegeus, won his way back to the elusive threshold, that no one had previously regained, he immediately set sail for Dia, stealing the daughter of Minos away with him, then cruelly abandoned his companion on that shore. Deserted and weeping bitterly, as she was, Bacchus-Liber brought her help and comfort. So that she might shine among the eternal stars, he took the crown from her forehead, and set it in the sky. It soared through the rarified air, and as it soared its jewels changed to bright fires, and took their place, retaining the appearance of a crown, as the Corona Borealis, between the kneeling Hercules and the head of the serpent that Ophiuchus holds.

Bk 8:183-235 Daedalus and Icarus

Meanwhile Daedalus, hating Crete, and his long exile, and filled with a desire to stand on his native soil, was imprisoned by the waves. ‘He may thwart our escape by land or sea’ he said ‘but the sky is surely open to us: we will go that way: Minos rules everything but he does not rule the heavens’. So saying he applied his thought to new invention and altered the natural order of things. He laid down lines of feathers, beginning with the smallest, following the shorter with longer ones, so that you might think they had grown like that, on a slant. In that way, long ago, the rustic pan-pipes were graduated, with lengthening reeds. Then he fastened them together with thread at the middle, and bees’-wax at the base, and, when he had arranged them, he flexed each one into a gentle curve, so that they imitated real bird’s wings. His son, Icarus, stood next to him, and, not realising that he was handling things that would endanger him, caught laughingly at the down that blew in the passing breeze, and softened the yellow bees’-wax with his thumb, and, in his play, hindered his father’s marvellous work.

When he had put the last touches to what he had begun, the artificer balanced his own body between the two wings and hovered in the moving air. He instructed the boy as well, saying ‘Let me warn you, Icarus, to take the middle way, in case the moisture weighs down your wings, if you fly too low, or if you go too high, the sun scorches them. Travel between the extremes. And I order you not to aim towards Bootes, the Herdsman, or Helice, the Great Bear, or towards the drawn sword of Orion: take the course I show you!’ At the same time as he laid down the rules of flight, he fitted the newly created wings on the boy’s shoulders. While he worked and issued his warnings the ageing man’s cheeks were wet with tears: the father’s hands trembled.

He gave a never to be repeated kiss to his son, and lifting upwards on his wings, flew ahead, anxious for his companion, like a bird, leading her fledglings out of a nest above, into the empty air. He urged the boy to follow, and showed him the dangerous art of flying, moving his own wings, and then looking back at his son. Some angler catching fish with a quivering rod, or a shepherd leaning on his crook, or a ploughman resting on the handles of his plough, saw them, perhaps, and stood there amazed, believing them to be gods able to travel the sky.

And now Samos, sacred to Juno, lay ahead to the left (Delos and Paros were behind them), Lebinthos, and Calymne, rich in honey, to the right, when the boy began to delight in his daring flight, and abandoning his guide, drawn by desire for the heavens, soared higher. His nearness to the devouring sun softened the fragrant wax that held the wings: and the wax melted: he flailed with bare arms, but losing his oar-like wings, could not ride the air. Even as his mouth was crying his father’s name, it vanished into the dark blue sea, the Icarian Sea, called after him. The unhappy father, now no longer a father, shouted ‘Icarus, Icarus where are you? Which way should I be looking, to see you?’ ‘Icarus’ he called again. Then he caught sight of the feathers on the waves, and cursed his inventions. He laid the body to rest, in a tomb, and the island was named Icaria after his buried child.

Bk 8:236-259 The death of Talos

As he was consigning his unfortunate son to the grave, a noisy partridge poked its head out from a muddy ditch, and, called, cackling joyfully, with whirring wings. It was the only one of its kind, not seen in previous years, and only recently made a bird, as a lasting reproach to you, Daedalus. Your sister, Perdix, oblivious to the fates, sent you her son, Talus, to be taught: twelve years old, his mind ready for knowledge. Indeed, the child, studying the spine of a fish, took it as a model, and cut continuous teeth out of sharp metal, inventing the use of the saw. He was also the first to pivot two iron arms on a pin, so that, with the arms at a set distance, one part could be fixed, and the other sweep out a circle. Daedalus was jealous, and hurled the boy headlong from Minerva’s sacred citadel, claiming that he had fallen. But Pallas Minerva, who favours those with quick minds, caught him, and turned him into the partridge, masking him with feathers in mid-air. His inborn energy was transferred to swift wings and feet, and he kept his mother’s name, Perdix, from before. But the bird does not perch above the ground, and does not make its nest on branches or on high points, but flies low on whirring wings over the soil, and lays its eggs in a sheltered place.

Bk 8:260-328 The Calydonian Boar Hunt – the cause

Now Sicily, the land of Mount Etna, held the weary Daedalus, and King Cocalus, regarded as peacable, had taken up arms, against Minos, in defence of the suppliant: and thanks to Theseus, Athens now had ceased to pay Crete the sorrowful levy. The temple was wreathed with flowers, and the Athenians called out to warlike Minerva, to Jupiter and to the other gods, honouring them with gifts, and the blood of sacrificial offerings, and the contents of their incense-boxes. Far-wandering fame had spread the name of Theseus through all the cities of the Argolis, and the peoples inhabiting wealthy Achaia begged for his help in their great trouble, and Calydon, as a suppliant, despite having Meleager, asked his help, with anxious prayers.

The reason for their asking was a wild boar, servant and avenging power of Diana’s aggression. King Oeneus of Calydon, they say, made offerings, from the successful harvests of a full year, of the first fruits of the crops to Ceres, of wine to Bacchus, ‘the deliverer from care’, of libations of flowing oil, from the olives, to golden Minerva. The honour they desire was paid to all the gods, beginning with the rural deities: only the daughter of Latona’s altar was passed by: neglected, it is said, and left without its incense. Anger even touches the gods. ‘I shall not suffer this without exacting punishment’ she cried ‘and, though not honoured, it will not be said that I was unavenged.’ And the goddess, spurned, sent an avenging wild boar, over the Aetolian fields: grassy Epirus had none greater than it, and those of the island of Sicily were smaller. Its eyes glowed with bloodshot fire: its neck was stiff with bristles, and the hairs, on its hide, bristled stiffly like spear-shafts: just as a palisade stands, so the hairs stood like tall spears. Hot foam flecked the broad shoulders, from its hoarse grunting. Its tusks were the size of an Indian elephant’s: lightning came from its mouth: and the leaves were scorched, by its breath. Now it trampled the young shoots of the growing crops, now cut short the ripeness, longed-for by the mournful farmer, and scythed down the corn in ear. The granaries and threshing floors waited for the promised harvest in vain. Heavy clusters of grapes were brought down along with the trailing vines, and fruit and branch of the evergreen olives. It rages among the cattle too. Neither the herdsmen and dogs, nor their own fierce bulls can defend the herds. The people scatter, and only count themselves safe behind city walls.

At last Meleager and a handpicked group of men gather, longing for glory: Castor and Polydeuces, the Dioscuri, twin sons of Tyndareus and Leda, one son famous for boxing, the other for horsemanship: Jason who built the first ship: Theseus and Pirithoüs, fortunate in friendship: Plexippus and Toxeus, the two sons of Thestius, uncles of Meleager: Lynceus and swift Idas, sons of Aphareus: Caeneus, once a woman: warlike Leucippus: Acastus, famed for his javelin: Hippothoüs: Dryas: Phoenix, Amyntor’s son: Eurytus and Cleatus, the sons of Actor: and Phyleus, sent by Elis.

Telamon was there, and Peleus, father of the great Achilles: with Admetus, the son of Pheres, and Iolaüs from Boeotia were Eurytion, energetic in action, and Echion unbeaten at running: and Lelex from Locria, Panopeus, Hyleus, and daring Hippasus: Nestor, still in the prime of life: and those that Hippocoön sent, with Enaesimus, from ancient Amyclae: Laërtes, Penelope’s father-in-law with Ancaeus of Arcady: Mopsus, the shrewd son of Ampyx: and Amphiaraüs, son of Oecleus, not yet betrayed by his wife, Eriphyle.

And Atalanta, the warrior girl of Tegea, the glory of Arcadia’s woods, with a polished brooch clasping the neck of her garment, and her hair simply done, caught in a single knot. An ivory quiver, holding her arrows, that rattled as she moved, hung from her left shoulder, and her left hand held the bow. So she was dressed: as for her face, you might truly say, the virgin was there, in a boy, and a boy, in the girl. The moment he saw her, that moment, Meleager, the hero of Calydon, desired her, though the gods might refuse it, devoured by secret fires. ‘O, happy the man, whom she might think worthy!’ he said. Neither time nor honour allowed him further words: the greater task of the greater conflict urged him on.

Bk 8:329-375 The Calydonian Boar Hunt – the boar is roused

A forest thick with trees, that had never been cut, at any time, began above the plain, and overlooked the sloping fields. When the heroes reached it, some spread out hunting nets, others loosed the dogs from their leashes, while others again followed the deeply-marked trail, keen to discover their quarry. There was a deep valley that collected streams of rainwater, falling near it: and it held, in its depths, pliant willows, smooth sedges, and marsh grasses, and osiers and tall bulrushes, above the lowly reeds. The boar was roused from there, and made a violent charge into the midst of its enemies, like lightning forced from colliding clouds. Trees were flattened by its impact, and the woods crashed as it drove into them. The warriors shouted, and held their spears spread outward, with firm hands, waving their broad blades. The boar rushed them, scattering the dogs, as they obstructed it in its fury, putting the baying pack to flight with sidelong swipes of its tusks. The first spear, delivered by Echion’s arm, was ineffectual, and gave the trunk of a maple a glancing blow. The next, if it had not been thrown with too great a force, aimed at the creature’s back, seemed certain to stick there, but the throw was too long. Jason of Pagasae hurled the spear.

Then Mopsus, son of Ampyx, cried out ‘Phoebus, if I have worshipped you, and do so now, grant what I ask, that my spear strikes surely!’ The god did what he could, to fulfil the prayer: the boar was hit, but without being wounded. Diana had stolen the iron point of the javelin, in flight: what arrived was the wooden shaft without its tip. The wild beast’s anger was aroused, and blazed out no more gently than lightning. Flame burned in its eyes, and was breathed from its chest. With dangerous and unerring momentum, the boar hurtled towards the young men, as a stone flies from a taut catapult, aimed at walls or battlements full of soldiers. Hippalmus and Pelagon, holding the right flank, were knocked to the ground: their friends caught them up as they lay there. But Enaesimus, son of Hippocoön, did not escape the fatal blow: about to turn his back, in alarm, he sank down, as the sinews of his knee gave way. And King Nestor of Pylos, might perhaps have perished before his time at Troy, but, using the leverage of his firmly planted spear, he vaulted into a tree, that stood close by, and looked down, from a place of safety, on the quarry he had escaped.

The fierce creature, sharpening its tusks on the trunk of an oak, threatened them with destruction, and confident in its freshly renewed weapons, ripped open mighty Hippasus’s thigh, with one curving edge. But now the Gemini, Castor and Pollux, not yet changed into stars in the sky, twin brothers, conspicuous among the rest, both rode up, on horses whiter than snow, and brandishing their javelins in the air as one, hurled them, the points quivering with the motion.

Bk 8:376-424 The Calydonian Boar Hunt – the kill

They would have wounded the beast, had not the bristling creature retreated into the dense woods where no horse or spear could penetrate. Telamon did follow, and careless where he was placing his feet, in his enthusiasm, fell flat on the ground, tripping over the root of a tree. While Peleus was lifting him, the girl from Tegea strung a swift arrow, and sent it speeding from the curved bow. The shaft just grazed the top of the boar’s back, and fixing itself below one ear, reddened the bristles with a thin stream of blood. Nor did she praise her own successful shot more than Meleager did. He was supposed to have been the first to see the blood, and first, having seen it, to point it out to his friends, saying: ‘You will be honoured for the value of this service.’ The warriors flushed with their shame, urged each other on, gaining courage from their clamour, hurling their spears without sense of order. The jostling spoilt their throw, and prevented the strike they intended. Then Ancaeus of Arcady, with his twin-headed axe, rushing to meet his fate, cried: ‘O warriors, learn how much better a man’s weapons are than a girl’s, and leave the work to me! Though Latona’s daughter herself protects this creature, in her own way, in spite of Diana, my right arm will destroy it.’ Swollen with pride, like this, with boastful words, he spoke, and, lifting the double axe in both hands, he stood on tiptoe, poised for the downward blow. The boar anticipated this daring enemy, and struck at the upper groin, the quickest way to kill, with his twin tusks. Ancaeus collapsed, and the slippery mass of his inner organs fell away in a pool of blood: the ground was soaked with the red fluid.

Then Pirithoüs, son of Ixion, went against the quarry, brandishing his hunting-spear in his strong right-hand. Theseus, Aegeus’s son, called out ‘Stay, farther away, my soul’s other half, O dearer to me than myself! It is fine to be brave at a distance, also: Ancaeus’s rash courage only did him harm.’ He spoke, and threw his heavy spear, of cornelian cherry-wood, with its bronze blade. Though well aimed and capable of reaching its mark, it was deflected by the leafy branch of an oak. Jason, Aeson’s son, hurled his javelin, which swerved by accident, and the fatal throw transfixing the flanks of an innocent hound, pinned it to the ground.

But Meleager’s hand made the difference, and of the two spears he threw, though one stuck in the earth, the other fixed itself in the boar’s back. Now, while it raged, and twisted its body round, and spouted out hissing foam and fresh blood, the author of its wound came at it, pricked his quarry to fury, and buried his shining hunting-spear in his enemy’s shoulder. Then the companions give proof of their joy, shouting, and crowding around him to grasp his hand in theirs. They gaze, wonderingly, at the huge creature covering so much of the earth it lies on, and still think it unsafe to touch the beast, but nevertheless each wets his spear in its blood.

Bk 8:425-450 The Calydonian Boar Hunt – the spoils

Meleager, himself, pressed his foot down on the head of the deadly creature, and said to Atalanta ‘Girl from Nonacria, take the prize that is mine by right, and let my glory be shared with you.’ Then he gave her the spoils, the hide bristling with hair, and the head remarkable for its magnificent tusks. She delighted in the giver no less than the gift, but the others were envious, and a murmur ran through the whole company. Of these, Plexippus, and Toxeus, the sons of Thestius, Meleager’s uncles, stretching their arms out, shouted loudly: ‘Come on, girl, leave them alone: do not steal our titles to honour, and do not let too much faith in your beauty deceive you, lest your love-sick friend turns out to be no help to you.’ And they took the gifts away from her, and denied him the right to give them. The descendant of Mars could not bear this, and bursting with anger, gnashing his teeth, he said: ‘Learn, you thieves of other men’s rights, the difference between threats and actions’, and plunged his iron point into Plexippus’s chest, he expecting nothing of that kind. Meleager gave Toxeus, who stood in doubt, wanting to avenge his brother, but fearing his brother’s fate, scant time for doubt, and while his spear was still warm from the first brother’s murder, he warmed it again with the second brother’s blood.

Althaea was carrying thanksgiving offerings, for her son’s victory, to the temple of the gods, when she saw them bringing back her dead brothers. She filled the city with the clamour of wailing, beat her breasts, and replaced her golden robes with black. But when she heard who the murderer was, she forgot her mourning, and her longing changed from tears to revenge.

Bk 8:451-514 Althaea and the burning brand

There was a piece of wood that the Three Sisters placed in the fire, when Althaea, the daughter of Thestius, was in the throes of childbirth. As they spun the threads of fate firmly under their thumbs, they said: ‘We assign an equal span of time to you, O new born child, and to this brand.’ When the goddesses vanished, after speaking the prophecy, the mother snatched the burning branch from the fire, and doused it with water. It had long been hidden away in the depths of the inner rooms, and preserved, had preserved your years, youth. Your mother now brought it out, and called for pinewood and kindling: and, once that was in position, she lit the hostile flames. Then she tried, four times, to throw the brand in the fire, and four times, held back. The mother fought the sister in her, and the two tugged at the one heart. Often her cheeks grew pale at imminent wickedness. Often fierce anger filled her eyes with blood. One moment she seemed like someone threatening some cruelty: the next you would think her full of compassion. When her heart’s fierce passion dried up her tears, the tears welled up again. As a ship, that the wind, and the tide opposing the wind, both seize, feels the twin forces and obeys the two, uncertainly, so the daughter of Thestius, was swayed by her emotions, and her anger alternately calmed, and then flared again.

However, the sister in her begins to outweigh the mother, and to appease the shades of her own blood, with blood, she escapes guilt by incurring it. Now, as the baleful fire strengthens, she cries ‘Let this be the funeral pyre that cremates my child.’ As she held the fatal brand in her deadly hand, and stood, wretched woman, in front of the funeral altars, she said ‘Eumenides, Triple Goddesses of Retribution, turn your faces towards these fearful rites! I take revenge, and I do a wicked thing: death must be atoned for by death: crime must be heaped on crime, ruin on ruin. Let this impious house end in a flood of mourning! Shall, Oeneus, fortunate, rejoice in his victorious child, while Thestius is bereaved of his sons? Better for both to grieve. Only, my brother’s spirits, new-made ghosts, recognise my sense of duty to you, and accept the sacrifice I prepare, so great its cost to me, the evil child of my womb! Ah me! What conclusion do I rush towards? My brothers, forgive a mother! The hand is unequal to what it began: I acknowledge he deserves to die, but I do not desire to be the cause of his death. Shall he go unpunished? Shall he live, victorious, proud of his success, and be king in Calydon, while you lie there, the scant ashes of chill shadows? For my part I cannot suffer that to be: let the wicked die, and pull down his father’s hopes, his kingship, and the ruins of his country! Where are my maternal feelings? Where are the sacred allegiances of a parent? Where are the anxieties I suffered over those ten months? O, I wish, when you were an infant burning in those first flames, I had allowed it to be! By my gift, you lived: now for your own fault, you die! Suffer the consequences of what you have done, and give me back the life I twice gave you, once at your birth, once when I snatched at the brand, or let me join my brothers in the tomb!

I yearn to do it, and I cannot do it. What shall I do? Now my brothers’ wounds are before my eyes and the image of all that blood: and now heart’s love, and the word mother move me. Woe to me! Evil is in your victory, my brothers: but victory you shall have: only let me follow you, and the comfort I bring you!’ She spoke, and turning her face away, with trembling hands, threw the fatal brand, into the midst of the fire. The piece of wood itself gave, or seemed to give, a sigh, as it was attacked, and burned, by the reluctant flames.

Bk 8:515-546 The death of Meleager

Far off, and unaware, Meleager is alight with that fire, and feels his inner organs invisibly seared. He controls the fierce agonies, with courage. Nevertheless he is sad that he must die a bloodless, cowardly death, and calls Ancaeus fortunate in his wounds. At the last, groaning with pain, he names his aged father, his brothers, his loving sisters, the companion of his bed, and, it may be, his mother. The fire and the suffering flare up, and die away, again, and both are extinguished together. Gradually his breath vanishes into the light breeze: gradually white ashes veil the glowing embers.

Noble Calydon lies dead. Young men and old lament, people and princes moan, and the women of Calydon, by the River Euenus, tear at their hair, and beat their breasts. His father, prone on the ground, mars his aged features and white hair with dust, and rebukes himself for his long years. As for his mother, conscious of her dreadful action, she has exacted punishment on herself, with her own hand driving the weapon into her body. Not though the god had given me a hundred mouths speaking with tongues, the necessary genius, and all Helicon as my domain, could I describe the sad fate of his poor sisters. Forgetting what is seemly, they strike their bruised chests, and while there is something left of the body, the body is caressed again and again, as they kiss it and kiss the bier on which it lies.

Once he is ashes; the ashes are gathered, and they press them to their breasts, throw themselves down on his tomb, and clasping the stone carved with his name, they drown the name with tears. At last, Diana, satiated with her destruction of the house of Parthaon, lifted them up, all except Gorge, and Deianira, the daughter-in-law of noble Alcmena, and, making feathers spring from their bodies, and stretching long wings over their arms, she gave them beaks, and, changed to guinea-hens, the Meleagrides, launched them into the air.

Bk 8:547-610 Acheloüs tells Theseus and his friends of Perimele

Meanwhile, Theseus, having played his part in the united effort, turned back towards Athens, Tritonia’s city, where Erectheus once ruled. But the River Acheloüs, swollen with rain, blocked his immediate path, and stalled his journey. ‘Come under my roof, famous scion of Cecrops,’ the river-god said, ‘and do not commit yourself to my devouring waters. They are liable to carry solid tree-trunks along, in their roaring, and roll great boulders over on their sides. I have seen whole byres, near the bank, swept away, with all their livestock: and neither the cattle’s strength nor the horses’ speed was of any use. Many a strong man has been lost in the whirling vortices, when the torrent was loosed, after mountain snows. You will be safer to stay till my river runs in its normal channel, when its bed holds only a slender stream.’

Aegeus’s son nodded, and replied: ‘I will make use of your house, and your counsel, Acheloüs.’ And so he did. He entered the dark building, made of spongy pumice, and rough tufa. The floor was moist with soft moss, and the ceiling banded with freshwater mussel and oyster shells.

Now Hyperion, the sun, had measured out two thirds of his path of light, when Theseus and his companions of the hunt seated themselves on couches. Here was Pirithoüs, Ixion’s son, and there, Lelex, Troezen’s hero, his temples already streaked with thinning grey hair, and there were others whom the Acarnanian river-god, greatly delighted to have such a guest, judged worthy of equal honour. Quickly the barefoot nymphs set out dishes of food on the nearby tables, and when they had been cleared again, poured wine in jewelled cups. Then the greatest of heroes looking out over the waters below, asked: ‘What is that place?’ (He pointed with his finger.) ‘Tell me what name the island has, though it seems more than an island!’

The river-god replied ‘What you see is not one island: five pieces of land lie together, but the distance conceals their distinctiveness. This will make you less astonished at what Diana did to Calydon when she was slighted. Those islands were once nymphs, who, though they had slaughtered ten bullocks and invited the rural gods to the festival, forgot me as they led the festal dance. I swelled with anger, as fierce as when my flood is at its fullest, and terrible in wind and wave, I tore forest from forest and field from field, and swept the nymphs, who then, at last, remembered me, along with the place they trod, into the sea. There the ocean and my waters separated what had been continuous ground, and split it into as many parts as you see islands, the Echinades, there in the midst of the waves.

But as you can see for yourself, far off, far off one island vanishes, dear to me: the sailors call it Perimele. I loved her and stole her virginity. At which her father, unable to accept it, threw his daughter from the cliffs into the deep, intending to destroy her. I caught her, and holding her as she swam, I cried: ‘O God of the Trident, to whom rule over the restless waves, closest to earth, fell by lot, give your aid I beg, and grant a place to one whom a father’s anger drowns, or allow her to be that place herself!’ While I spoke, new earth clasped her body, as she swam, and a solid island rose, round her changed limbs.

Bk 8:611-678 Lelex tells of Philemon and Baucis

At this, the river-god fell silent. The wonder of the thing had gripped them all. But that daring spirit, Pirithoüs, son of Ixion, scornful of the gods, laughed at their credulity. ‘These are fictions you tell of, Acheloüs, and you credit the gods with too much power, if you think they can give and take away the forms of things.’ The others were startled, and disapproved of his words, Lelex above all, experienced in mind and years, who said: ‘The power of the gods is great and knows no limit, and whatever heaven decrees comes to pass. To help convince you, in the hills of Phrygia, an oak and a lime tree stand side by side, surrounded by a low wall. I have seen the place, since Pittheus, king of Troezen, sent me into that country, where his father Pelops once ruled.

There is a swamp not far from there, once habitable land but now the haunt of diving-birds and marsh-loving coots. Jupiter went there, disguised as a mortal, and Mercury, the descendant of Atlas, setting aside his wings, went with his father, carrying the caduceus. A thousand houses they approached, looking for a place to rest: a thousand houses were locked and bolted. But one received them: it was humble it is true, roofed with reeds and stems from the marsh, but godly Baucis and the equally aged Philemon, had been wedded in that cottage in their younger years, and there had grown old together. They made light of poverty by acknowledging it, and bearing it without discontent of mind. It was no matter if you asked for owner or servant there: those two were the whole household: they gave orders and carried them out equally.

So when the gods from heaven met the humble household gods, and stooping down, passed the low doorway, the old man pulled out a bench, and requested them to rest their limbs, while over the bench Baucis threw a rough blanket. Then she raked over the warm ashes in the hearth, and brought yesterday’s fire to life, feeding it with leaves and dried bark, nursing the flames with her aged breath. She pulled down finely divided twigs and dry stems from the roof, and, breaking them further, pushed them under a small bronze pot. Next she stripped the leaves from vegetables that her husband had gathered from his well-watered garden. He used a two-pronged stick to lift down a wretched-looking chine of meat, hanging from a blackened beam, and, cutting a meagre piece from the carefully saved chine, put what had been cut, to seethe, in boiling water.

In the meantime they made conversation to pass the time, and prevent their guests being conscious of the delay. There was a beech wood tub, suspended by its handle from a crude peg: this had been filled with warm water, and allowed their visitors to refresh their limbs. In the middle of the floor there was a mattress of soft sedges. Placed on a frame and legs of willow it made a couch. They covered it with cloths, that they only used to bring out for the times of sacred festivals, but even these were old and worn, not unworthy of the couch. The gods were seated.

The old woman, her skirts tucked up, her hands trembling, placed a table there, but a table with one of the three legs unequal: a piece of broken pot made them equal. Pushed underneath, it countered the slope, and she wiped the level surface with fresh mint. On it she put the black and green olives that belong to pure Minerva, and the cornelian cherries of autumn, preserved in wine lees; radishes and endives; a lump of cheese; and lightly roasted eggs, untouched by the hot ashes; all in clay dishes. After this she set out a carved mixing bowl for wine, just as costly, with cups made of beech wood, hollowed out, and lined with yellow bees’ wax. There was little delay, before the fire provided its hot food, and the wine, of no great age, circulated, and then, removed again, made a little room for the second course. There were nuts, and a mix of dried figs and wrinkled dates; plums, and sweet-smelling apples in open wicker baskets; and grapes gathered from the purple vines. In the centre was a gleaming honeycomb. Above all, there was the additional presence of well-meaning faces, and no unwillingness, or poverty of spirit.’

Bk 8:679-724 The transformation of Philemon and Baucis.

‘Meanwhile the old couple noticed that, as soon as the mixing bowl was empty, it refilled itself, unaided, and the wine appeared of its own accord. They were fearful at this strange and astonishing sight, and timidly Baucis and Philemon murmured a prayer, their palms upwards, and begged the gods’ forgiveness for the meal, and their unpreparedness. They had a goose, the guard for their tiny cottage: as hosts they prepared to sacrifice it for their divine guests. But, quick-winged, it wore the old people out and, for a long time, escaped them, at last appearing to take refuge with the gods themselves. Then the heaven-born ones told them not to kill it. “We are gods,” they said, “and this neighbourhood will receive just punishment for its impiety, but to you we grant exemption from that evil. Just leave your house, and accompany our steps, as we climb that steep mountainside together.”

They both obeyed, and leaning on their sticks to ease their climb, they set foot on the long slope. When they were as far from the summit as a bowshot might carry, they looked back, and saw everywhere else vanished in the swamp: only their own roof was visible. And while they stood amazed at this, mourning their neighbours’ fate, their old cottage, tiny even for the two of them, turned into a temple. Wooden poles became pillars, and the reed thatch grew yellow, until a golden roof appeared, richly carved doors, and a marble pavement covering the ground. Then the son of Saturn spoke, calmly, to them: “Ask of us, virtuous old man, and you, wife, worthy of a virtuous husband, what you wish.”

When he had spoken briefly with Baucis, Philemon revealed their joint request to the gods. “We ask to be priests and watch over your temple, and, since we have lived out harmonious years together, let the same hour take the two of us, so that I never have to see my wife’s grave, nor she have to bury me.” The gods’ assurance followed the prayer. They had charge of the temple while they lived: and when they were released by old age, and by the years, as they chanced to be standing by the sacred steps, discussing the subject of their deaths, Baucis saw Philomen put out leaves, and old Philemon saw Baucis put out leaves, and as the tops of the trees grew over their two faces, they exchanged words, while they still could, saying, in the same breath: “Farewell, O dear companion”, as, in the same breath, the bark covered them, concealing their mouths.

The people of Bithynia still show the neighbouring trees, there, that sprang from their two bodies. Trustworthy old men related these things to me (there was no reason why they should wish to lie). For my part, I saw garlands hanging from the branches, and placing fresh ones there said: “Let those who love the gods become gods: let those who have honoured them, be honoured.” ’

Bk 8:725-776 Erysichthon fells Ceres’s sacred oak tree

Lelex finished, and the tale and the teller of it had moved them all, Theseus particularly. He wished to hear more of the marvellous acts of the gods. Acheloüs, the river-god of Calydon, leaning on his elbow, said: ‘Hero, there are those who, once changed in form, retain that transformation: there are others who are allowed to transmute into many shapes: you, for instance, Proteus, inhabitant of the earth-encircling sea. A moment ago they saw you as a young man, then as a lion: now as a raging boar, then as a serpent, they fear to touch: and, in a moment, horns revealed you as a bull. Often you might have appeared as a stone, often, also, as a tree: sometimes, you formed the likeness of running water, and became a river: sometimes fire, water’s opposite.

Mestra, Erysichthon’s daughter, the wife of Autolycus, had no less power. Her father was a man scornful of the gods, who burnt no incense on their altars. Erysichthon, it is said, once violated the grove of Ceres with an axe, and desecrated the ancient woods with iron. Within them stood a great oak, massive with the years, a sacred grove in itself: strands of wool, wreaths of flowers and votive tablets surrounded it, evidence of prayers granted. Often beneath it the Dryads held their festive dances: often, also, linking hands, in line, they circled its trunk’s circumference, its massive girth measuring fifteen arm’s-lengths round. The other trees were not less far below it than the grass was far below all of them. Triopas’s son would not hold back the blade, even for those reasons, commanding his servants to fell the sacred oak.

When he saw them hesitating at the order, the wretched man snatched the axe from one of them, saying: “Though this be, itself, the goddess, not just what the goddess loves, now its leafy crown will meet the earth.” As he spoke, while he balanced the blade, for the slanting stroke, Ceres’s oak-tree trembled all over and gave a sigh, and at the same time its acorns and its leaves began to whiten, and its long branches grew pale. And, when his impious hand made a gash in the trunk, blood poured out of its damaged bark, like the crimson tide from its severed neck, when the mighty bull falls, in sacrifice, before the altar.

All stood astonished, and one of them tried bravely to prevent the evil, and hinder the barbarous double-edged weapon. But the Thessalian glared at him, saying: “Here’s the prize for your pious thought!” and swinging his blade at the man not the tree, struck his head from his trunk. He was hewing at the oak-tree repeatedly, when the sound of a voice came from inside the oak, chanting these words:

“I am a nymph, most dear to Ceres,
under the surface of this wood,
who prophesy to you, as I die,
that punishment will follow blood:
out of my ruin, the only good.”

But he pursued his course of evil, and at last, weakened by innumerable blows, and dragged down by ropes, the tree fell, its weight cutting a swathe through the wood.’

Bk 8:777-842 Ceres sends Famine to Erysichthon

‘All her sister Dryads, mourning and dressed in black, horrified at the forest’s loss and their own, went to Ceres, and begged her to punish Erysichthon. She assented, and, with a motion of her head, that most beautiful of goddesses stirred the fields, heavy with ripened grain. She devised a punishment to rouse men’s pity, if his actions had deserved any pity: to torment him with baleful Hunger. But since the goddess herself could not approach her (for fate does not allow Famine and Ceres to meet) she called for one of the mountain spirits, an Oread of wild places, and said to her: “There is a place at the furthest bounds of icy Scythia, with sombre, sterile ground, a land without crops or trees. Torpid Cold inhabits it, Fear and Trembling and barren Hunger. Order Famine to immure herself in the belly of that sacrilegious wretch, and let no plenty oust her, and let her overcome me in any trial of strength. So that the length of the journey does not worry you, take my chariot, take my winged dragons, and govern their bridles on high.” And she gave her the reins. The nymph came to Scythia, carried through the air, in the chariot she was given. On the summit of a frozen mountain chain (they call the Caucasus) she loosed the dragons’ necks, and, searching for Famine, saw her in a field of stones, picking at the sparse grass with her nails and teeth. Her hair was matted, her eyes sunken, her face pallid: her lips were grey with mould, her throat with scabrous sores: through the hardened skin, her inner organs could be seen: dry bones stuck out beneath her hollow loins: her belly was only the excuse for a belly: her breastbone seemed to hang loosely, only held by the frame of her spine. Emaciation made the joints look large: the curve of her knees seemed swollen: and the ankles appeared as extravagant lumps.

When the Oread saw her, she relayed the goddess’s command, from a distance (since she did not dare to approach her), and though she only delayed an instant, and stayed far off, though she had only arrived there a moment before, she still seemed to feel the hunger. Changing course, high in the air, she directed the dragons towards Haemonia.

Famine carried out Ceres’s orders, though their tasks are ever opposed, and flew down through the eye of the wind to the appointed house. Straight away she entered the bedroom of the sacrilegious man, who was sunk in profound sleep (since it was night), and breathed herself into him, covering his throat, and chest, and lips, with her exhalations, and causing a lack of nourishment in his hollow veins. Completing her mission, she left the fertile lands, returning to the houses of poverty, and her customary caves.

Gentle Sleep still lulls Erysichthon, with his peaceful wings. He, in sleep, in imagination, dreams of feasts, closes his mouth on vacancy, grinds tooth on tooth, exercises his gluttony on insubstantial food, and, instead of a banquet, fruitlessly eats the empty air. But when indeed peace departs, a desperate desire to eat possesses his famished jaws and burning belly. Without a moment’s delay he calls out for whatever earth, air and sea produce, and at table complains of hunger, and in the midst of eating demands to eat. What would feed a city, or satisfy a people, is not enough for one. The more he puts away inside, the greater his desire. As the ocean receives the rivers of all the earth, and unfilled by the waters, swallows every wandering stream: as the devouring flames never refuse more fuel, burn endless timber, and look for more, the greater the piles they are given, more voracious themselves by being fed: so Erysichthon’s profane lips accept and demand all foods, in the same breath. All nourishment in him is a reason for nourishment, and always by eating he creates an empty void.’

Bk 8:843-884 The fate of Erysichthon and his daughter Mestra

‘Now hunger, and the deep pit of his gut had consumed his wealth, but even so, Famine worked unabated and his burning appetite was unappeased. Eventually, when all he owned was inside him, only his daughter, Mestra, was left, a girl whom the father was not worthy of. Having nothing, he tried to sell her too. The honourable child refused to accept a possessor, and stretching her hands out over the waves of the shore, she cried: “You god, who stole away the prize of my virginity”, for Neptune had stolen it, “save me from slavery.” He did not scorn her prayer. Although the buyer had been following her, and had seen her a moment ago, the god altered her shape, giving her a man’s features, and clothes appropriate to a fisherman.

Her purchaser looked at her, and said: “O, you who control the rod, and hide your bronze hook in a little bait, may you have calm sea, and gullible fish, that feel nothing of the hook until they bite. Tell me where she is, the girl with shabby clothes and straggling hair, who stood here on this beach a moment ago (since I saw her, standing on the beach): there are no footprints further on!” She sensed the god’s gift was working well for her, and delighted that he was asking her for news of herself, replied to his question: “Forgive me, whoever you are: I have had no eyes for anything except this pool: I have been occupied taking pains over my fishing. To convince you, and may the sea god help me in these arts of mine, no man has been on this beach, except myself, for a long time, and no woman either.”

He believed her, and turning round on the sand, having been outplayed, departed. Then her true shape was restored. When her father realised that she could change her shape, he often surrendered Mestra to others, so that she, escaping in the form of a mare, or a bird, or again as a heifer or a hind, repeatedly obtained her price, dishonestly, for her gluttonous father.

In the end when the evil had consumed everything they had, and his grave disease needed ever more food, Erysichthon began to tear at his limbs and gnaw them with his teeth, and the unhappy man fed, little by little, on his own body.’

‘But why do I entertain you with stories of others?’ said Acheloüs, ‘Indeed, young man, I have often changed shape myself, though the number of shapes I can achieve is limited. Sometimes I am seen as I am now: sometimes I become a snake: or, again, the lead bull of the herd, my power in my horns – horns, when I still had two. Now one side of my brow has lost its weapon, as you can see for yourself.’ His words were followed by a sigh.

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Book 9

• Bk 9:1-88 Acheloüs wrestles with Hercules.
• Bk 9:89-158 The shirt of Nessus.
• Bk 9:159-210 The agony of Hercules.
• Bk 9:211-272 The death and transformation of Hercules.
• Bk 9:273-323 Alcmena tells of Hercules’s birth and of Galanthis.
• Bk 9:324-393 Iole tells the story of her half-sister Dryope.
• Bk 9:394-417 The prophecies of Themis.
• Bk 9:418-438 Jupiter acknowledges the power of Fate.
• Bk 9:439-516 Byblis falls in love with her twin brother Caunus.
• Bk 9:517-594 The fatal letter
• Bk 9:595-665 The transformation of Byblis.
• Bk 9:666-713 The birth of Iphis.
• Bk 9:714-763 Iphis and Ianthe.
• Bk 9:764-797 Isis transforms Iphis.

Bk 9:1-88 Acheloüs wrestles with Hercules

Theseus, the hero, reputed son of Neptune, asked Acheloüs why he had sighed, and the reason for his damaged forehead: to which the Calydonian river-god, his uncut hair wreathed with reeds, replied: ‘You ask something painful of me. Who wants to recall the battles he has lost? But, I will tell it as it happened: since the shame of being beaten is no less than the honour of having fought. It is a great consolation to me that the victor was so famous.

If her name has ever come to your notice, Deianira was once the most beautiful girl, and the jealous hope of many suitors. When, with them, I entered Oeneus’s house, her father, and the man I sought as my father-in-law, I said: “Accept me as your son-in-law, son of Parthaon.” Hercules, scion of Alceus, said the same. The others gave way before the two of us. Hercules declared that he could offer Jove as his bride’s father-in-law, spoke of his famous labours, and of how he had survived what his stepmother, Juno, had prescribed for him. On my side I said: “It would be shameful for a god to concede to a mortal” – He was not yet a god – “In me you see the lord of the waters, that flow in winding rivers, through your kingdom. As your son-in-law I would not be a stranger sent from a foreign shore, but a native, and wedded to your own interests. Only don’t let it harm my case that Queen Juno does not hate me, and all the punishment of the labours, she demanded, passed me by!”

“Now, listen, Hercules, you, son of Alcmena: Jupiter, whose child you boast of being, is either wrongly called your father, or is truly a wrongdoer. You seek your father in a mother’s adultery. Choose whether you prefer this fiction of Jove as a father, or to be born the son of shame.” As I spoke, he gazed at me fiercely, all the while, and unable to act like a man and control his blazing anger, he merely replied in these words: “My right hand is more powerful than my tongue. As long as I beat you at wrestling, you can win the talking”, and he came at me ferociously. I was ashamed to retreat, after my words: I took off my green robes; put up my arms; held my hands, fingers curved, in front of my chest in fighting stance; and readied my limbs for the match. He caught up dust in the hollow of his hands and threw it over me, and, in turn, was, himself, gilded by the yellow sand. Now he caught at my neck, or you might think he caught me, now at my legs, now at my loins: and attacked me from every side. My weight protected me, and his attempts were useless. I was like a massive pile that the roaring flood assaults with all its might: it remains, secure in its own bulk.

We pulled away for a moment, returned to the conflict, and stood firm, determined not to concede. Foot was set against foot, and I pushed at him, with my chest full forward, fingers locked with fingers, and head to head. I have seen two strong bulls come together like that, when they try for the sleekest heifer in the pasture as their prize in the contest. The herd watches in fear, not sure to which one victory will grant overriding supremacy. Three times without success Hercules tried to push my gleaming chest away from him. At the fourth attempt, he broke my grip, loosed himself from my constricting arms, and with a blow of his hand – Certainly, I myself confess it is the truth – he turned me about, and clung, with all his weight, to my back.

If you can believe it - I am not seeking to gain false credit by saying it – I seemed to have a mountain pressing on top of me. With difficulty I thrust my arms, pouring with sweat from the great effort it took, under him, and, with difficulty, freed his firm hold on my body. He pressed me hard, as I gasped for breath, prevented me from gathering my strength, and gripped my neck. Then, at last, my knee touched the ground, and my mouth tasted sand. Inferior to him in strength, I turned to my magic arts, and slipped from his grasp in the shape of a long snake. But when I had wound my body in sinuous coils, and, hissing fiercely, darted my forked tongue at him, Tiryns’s hero laughed, and mocking my magic arts, said: “My task in the cradle was to defeat snakes, and, though you are greater than other reptiles, Acheloüs, how big a slice of the Lernean Hydra would your one serpent be? It was made fecund by its wounds, and not one of its hundred heads was safely cut off without its neck generating two more. I overcame it, and having overcome it, disembowelled that monster, with branching snake-heads, that grew from their own destruction, thriving on evil. What do you think will happen to you, who are only a false snake, using unfamiliar weapons, whom a shifting form hides?”

He spoke and knotted his fingers round my throat. I was suffocating, as if my throat was gripped by a vice, and struggled to tear his thumbs away from my windpipe. Overpowered in this form, only my third, fierce, bull-shape remained. So I fought on, my limbs those of a bull. From the left he threw his arms round my bulging neck; and followed me as I charged off; dragging at me, my horns piercing the hard ground as he pulled me down; and toppling me into the deep sand. As if that was not enough, holding the tough horn in his cruel hand, he broke it and tore it away from my mutilated brow. The Naiades took it, filling it with fruit and scented flowers, and made it sacred: the Goddess of Abundance is rich now because of my horn of plenty.”

Bk 9:89-158 The shirt of Nessus

He spoke: and a nymph, one of his attendants, dressed like Diana, her hair streaming over her shoulders, came to them, bringing all of autumn’s harvest in an overflowing horn, and, for an aftertaste, delicious fruits. Light gathered, and as the first rays struck the mountain summits, the warriors left, not waiting for the river to flow calmly and placidly or for the falling waters to subside. Acheloüs hid his wild features and his head, marred by its broken horn, in the depths of the waves.

Nevertheless he only had the loss of that adornment, which had been taken from him, to lament: he was otherwise unhurt. Also he hid his loss with a wreath of willow leaves or reeds. But you, fierce Nessus, the centaur, a passion for that same virgin girl destroyed you, hit in the back by a flying arrow.

Hercules, son of Jupiter, on his way to his native city with Deianira, his new bride, came to the swift waters of the River Euenus. The flood was higher than normal, increased by winter rains, with frequent whirlpools, and impassable. He had no fear of going on himself, but was anxious for his bride, when Nessus approached, strong of limb, and knowing the fords. ‘With my help, Alcides,” he said, “she will be set down on the far bank. Use your strength to swim!” The Theban handed over the Calydonian girl, she, pale with fear, frightened of the river and of the centaur himself.

Straight away, weighed down as he was by his quiver and his lion’s skin - he had thrown his club and his curved bow across to the other bank – the hero said: ‘Let me endure the river since I have started to cross.’ He did not hesitate, and did not search for where the river was calmest, scorning to claim the water’s allegiance. He had gained the bank, and was picking up the bow he had thrown, when he heard his wife’s voice, and shouted to Nessus, who was preparing to betray his trust: ‘Where are you carrying her off to, you rapist, trusting in vain to your swiftness of foot? I am speaking to you, Nessus, the twice-formed. Listen: do not steal what is mine. If you have no respect for me, the thought of your father, Ixion, on his whirling wheel might prevent this illicit union. However much you trust in your horse-craft, you will not escape. With wounds, not feet, I will follow you.’ He made good his last words with his actions, shooting the arrow he fired, across, at the fleeing back. The barbed tip jutted from the centaur’s chest. When the shaft was pulled out, blood, mixed with the deadly arrow-poison of the Lernean Hydra, gushed out simultaneously from the entry and exit wounds. Nessus trapped this, and murmured, to himself of course: ‘I will not die without revenge’ and gave his tunic soaked with warm blood to Deianira, whom he had abducted, presenting it to her as if it were a gift for reviving a waning love.

A long space of intervening time passed by, and the tales of mighty Hercules had filled the world, and overcome his stepmother’s hatred. As the victor at Oechalia, in Euboea (where he had avenged an insult offered him by King Eurytus) he was preparing to sacrifice to Jupiter at Cenaeum, when loquacious Rumour, who loves to add lies to fact, and expands from the tiniest truth by her falsehoods, brought her tale on ahead, to your ears, Deianira. She claimed that Hercules, reputed son of Amphitryon, was filled with passion for Iole, daughter of Eurytus.

The loving wife believes it, and terrified at first by the rumour of this new affair, she indulges in tears, and the poor girl vents her misery in weeping. But she soon says ‘Why do I weep? That adulteress will laugh at my tears. Since she is coming here, I must plan quickly, while I can, while another has not yet taken my place. Should I complain, or keep silent? Return to Calydon or stay? Should I leave my house? Or, if I can do nothing else, should I at least stand in their way? What if, remembering I am your sister, Meleager, I prepare, boldly, to commit a crime, and, by cutting that adulteress’s throat, show what revenge and a woman’s grief can do?’

Her thought traced various courses. Of all of them she preferred that of sending the shirt, imbued with Nessus’s blood, to restore her husband’s waning love. Unwittingly, she entrusted what became her future grief, to the servant, Lichas, he not knowing what he had been entrusted with: and the unfortunate woman, ordered him, with persuasive words, to give the present to her husband. Hercules, the hero, took it, without a thought, and put on the shirt of Nessus, soaked in the poison of the Lernean Hydra.

Bk 9:159-210 The agony of Hercules

He was making offerings of incense and reciting prayers over the first flames, and pouring a libation bowl of wine on to the marble altar. The power of the venom, warmed and released by the flames, dissolved, dispersing widely through the limbs of Hercules. With his usual courage, he repressed his groans while he could. When his strength to endure the venom was exhausted, he overturned the altar, and filled woody Oeta with his shouts.

He tries at once to tear off the fatal clothing: where it is pulled away, it pulls skin away with it, and, revolting to tell, it either sticks to the limbs from which he tries in vain to remove it, or reveals the lacerated limbs and his massive bones. His blood itself hisses and boils, with the virulence of the poison, like incandescent metal, dipped in a cold pool. There is no end to it: the consuming fires suck at the air in his chest: dark sweat pours from his whole body: his scorched sinews crackle. His marrow liquefying with the secret corruption, he raises his hands to the heavens, crying: ‘Juno, Saturnia, feed on my ruin: feed, cruel one: gaze, from the heights, at this destruction, and sate your savage heart! Or if this suffering seems pitiable even to an enemy, even to you, take away this sorrowful and hateful life, with its fearful torments, that was only made for toil. Death would be a gift to me, a fitting offering from a stepmother.

Was it for this I overcame Busiris who defiled the temples with the blood of sacrificed strangers? For this that I lifted fierce Antaeus, robbing him of the strength of his mother Earth? For this, that I was unmoved, by Geryon’s triple form, the herdsman of Spain, or your triple form, Cerberus? For this, you hands of mine, that you dragged down the horns of the strong Cretan bull: that the stables of King Augeas of Elis know of your efforts: the Stymphalian Lake: and the woods of Mount Parthenius, with its golden-antlered stag? For this, that, by your virtue, the gold engraved girdle of Hippolyte of Thermodon was taken, and the apples of the Hesperides, guarded by the sleepless dragon? Was it for this, that the Centaurs could not withstand me, nor the Erymanthian Boar that laid Arcady waste? For this, that it did not help the Hydra to thrive on destruction and gain redoubled strength? What of the time when I saw Thracian Diomede’s horses, fed on human blood, their stalls filled with broken bodies, and, seeing them, overthrew them, and finished off them, and their master? The Nemean Lion lies crushed by these massive arms: and for Atlas these shoulders of mine held up the sky. Jupiter’s cruel consort is tired of giving commands: I am not tired of performing them.

But now a strange disease affects me that I cannot withstand by courage, weapons or strength. Deep in my lungs a devouring fire wanders, feeding on my whole body. But Eurystheus, my enemy is well! Are there those then who can believe that the gods exist?’ So saying he roamed, in his illness, over the heights of Oeta, as a bull carries around a hunting spear embedded in its body, though the hunter who threw it has long gone. Picture him there, in the mountains, in his anger, often groaning, often shouting out, often attempting, again and again, to rid himself of the last of the garment, overturning trees, or stretching his arms out to his native skies.

Bk 9:211-272 The death and transformation of Hercules

Then he caught sight of the terrified Lichas, cowering in a hollow of the cliff, and pain concentrated all his fury. ‘Was it not you, Lichas,’ he said, ‘who gave me this fatal gift? Are you not the agent of my death?’ The man trembled, grew pale with fear, and, timidly, made excuses. While he was speaking, and trying to clasp the hero’s knees, Alcides seized him, and, swinging him round three or four times, hurled him, more violently than a catapult bolt, into the Euboean waters. Hanging in the air, he hardened with the wind. As rain freezes in the icy blasts and becomes snow; whirling snowflakes bind together in a soft mass; and they, in turn, accumulate as a body of solid hailstones: so he, the ancient tradition says, flung by strong arms through the void, bloodless with fright, and devoid of moisture, turned to hard flint. Now, in the Euboean Gulf, a low rock rises out of the depths, and keeps the semblance of a human shape. This sailors are afraid to set foot on, as though it could sense them, and they call it, Lichas.

But you, famous son of Jove, felled the trees that grew on steep Oeta, and made a funeral pyre, and commanded Philoctetes, son of Poeas, who supplied the flame that was plunged into it, to take your bow, your ample quiver, and the arrows, that were fated to see, once more, the kingdom of Troy (as they did when you rescued Hesione.) As the mass caught light from the eager fire, you spread the Nemean Lion’s pelt on the summit of the pile of logs, and lay down, your neck resting on your club, and with an aspect no different from that of a guest, reclining amongst the full wine cups, crowned with garlands.

Now the fierce flames, spreading on every side, were crackling loudly, and licking at his body, he unconcerned and scornful of them. The gods were fearful for earth’s champion. Saturnian Jupiter spoke to them, gladly, since he understood their feelings. ‘O divine beings, your fear for him delights me, and I willingly congratulate myself, with all my heart, that I am called father and ruler of a thoughtful race, and that my offspring is protected by your favour also. Though this tribute is paid to his great deeds, I am obliged to you, also. But do not allow your loyal hearts to feel groundless fears. Forget Oeta’s flames! He, who has defeated all things, will defeat the fires you see, nor will he feel Vulcan’s power, except in the mortal part that he owes to his mother, Alcmene. What he has from me is immortal, deathless and eternal: and that, no flame can destroy. When it is done with the earth, I will accept it into the celestial regions, and I trust my action will please all the gods. But if there is anyone, anyone at all, who is unhappy at Hercules’s deification, and would not wish to grant this gift, he or she should know that it was given for merit, and should approve it, though unwillingly.’ The gods agreed. Juno, also, appeared to accept the rest of his words with compliance, but not the last ones, upset that she was being censored.

Meanwhile, Mulciber had consumed whatever the flames could destroy, and no recognisable form of Hercules remained, no semblance of what came to him from his mother: he only retained his inheritance from Jove. As a snake enjoys its newness, sloughing old age with its skin, gleaming with fresh scales; so, when the Tirynthian hero had shed his mortal body, he became his better part, beginning to appear greater, and more to be revered, in his high majesty. The all-powerful father of the gods carrying him upwards, in his four-horse chariot, through the substanceless clouds, set him among the shining stars.

Bk 9:273-323 Alcmena tells of Hercules’s birth and of Galanthis

Atlas felt the weight of the new constellation. But even now the anger of Eurystheus, son of Sthenelus, was not appeased, and he pursued his unyielding hatred of the father through the children. Argive Alcmena, troubled by endless cares, had Iole, as one to whom she could confide an old woman’s miseries, to whom she could relate her son’s labours, known to all the world, and her own misfortunes. At Hercules request, Hyllus, his son by Deianira, had taken Iole to his marriage-bed, and his heart, and had planted a child of that noble race in her womb. Alcmena said to her: ‘Let the gods at least favour you, and shorten that time when, in childbirth, you call on Ilithyia, that Lucina who watches over frightened women, who, thanks to Juno’s influence, made things hard for me.

When the time for Hercules’s difficult birth came, and Capricorn, the tenth sign, was hidden by the sun, the weight of the child stretched my womb: what I carried was so great, you could tell that Jove was the father of my hidden burden. I could not bear my labour pains much longer. Even now, as I speak, a cold horror grips my body, and part of me remembers it with pain. Tortured for seven nights and as many days, worn out with agony, stretching my arms to heaven, with a great cry, I called out to Lucina, and her companion gods of birth, the Nixi. Indeed, she came, but committed in advance, determined to surrender my life to unjust Juno. She sat on the altar, in front of the door, and listened to my groans. With her right knee crossed over her left, and clasped with interlocking fingers, she held back the birth, She murmured spells, too, in a low voice, and the spells halted the birth once it began. I laboured, and, maddened, made useless outcries against ungrateful Jove. I wanted to die, and my moans would have moved the flinty rocks. The Theban women who were there, took up my prayers, and gave me encouragement in my pain.

Tawny-haired, Galanthis, one of my servant-girls, was there, humbly born but faithful in carrying out orders, loved by me for the services she rendered. She sensed that unjust Juno was up to something, and, as she was often in and out of the house, she saw the goddess, Lucina, squatting on the altar, arms linked by her fingers, clasping her knees, and said ‘Whoever you are, congratulate the mistress. Alcmena of Argolis is eased, and the prayers to aid childbirth have been answered.’

The goddess with power over the womb leapt up in consternation, releasing her clasped hands: by releasing the bonds, herself, easing the birth. They say Galanthis laughed at the duped goddess. As she laughed, the heaven-born one, in her anger, caught her by the hair, and dragged her down, and as she tried to lift her body from the ground, she arched her over, and changed her arms into forelegs. Her old energy remained, and the hair on her back did not lose her hair’s previous colour: but her former shape was changed to that of a weasel. And because her lying mouth helped in childbirth, she gives birth through her mouth, and frequents my house, as before.’

Bk 9:324-393 Iole tells the story of her half-sister Dryope

She finished speaking, and sighed, her feelings stirred by the memory of her former servant. While she grieved, her daughter-in-law, Iole, said: ‘Mother, this is still the altered form of someone not of our blood that affects you. What if I were to relate to you my sister’s strange fate? Though sadness and tears hold me back, and hinder me from talking. Dryope was her mother’s only child – I was my father’s by another wife – and she was known as the most beautiful girl in Oechalia. Suffering the assault of Apollo, that god who holds Delphi and Delos; her virginity lost; Andraemon married her; and was considered fortunate to have her as his wife.

There is a lake, whose sloping shoreline is formed by steep banks, their summits crowned with myrtle. Dryope went there, unaware of any restrictions, and, to make what happened more unacceptable, bringing garlands for the nymphs. At her breast she carried a sweet burden, her son, not yet a year old, whom she was suckling with her warm milk. Not far away, a water-loving lotus tree flowered from the swamp, with the promise of fruits to come, its colours imitating Tyrian purples. Dryope picked some of these blossoms, to offer the child as playthings, and I was looking to do the same - I was with her - when I saw drops of blood fall from the flowers, and the branches move with a shiver of fear. It appears, as the locals now tell us, at last, but too late, that Lotis, a nymph, running from obscene Priapus, turned into the tree, altering her features, keeping her name.

My sister had known nothing of this. When she wished to retreat, in fear, from the place, and escape by praying to the nymphs, her feet clung like roots. She struggled to tear them away, but nothing moved except her torso. Slowly, thick bark grew upward from her feet, hiding all her groin. When she saw this, and tried to tear at her hair, with her hands, her hands filled with leaves: leaves covered her whole head. But the child, Amphissos (so his grandfather, Eurytus, King of Oechalia, had named him) felt his mother’s breast harden, and the milky liquid failed when he sucked. I was there, a spectator of your cruel destiny, sister, and could bring you no help at all. Only, as far as I could, I held back the developing trunk and branches with my embrace, and I bear witness that I longed to be sheathed in that same bark.

Then her husband, Andraemon, and her luckless father, Eurytus, came, asking for Dryope: the Dryope they searched for I revealed as the lotus. They kissed the living wood, and prostrate on the ground clung to the roots of their tree. You, my dear sister, displayed nothing but your face that was not already tree. Your tears rained on the leaves of your poor body, and while your mouth left a path for your voice, while you still could, you poured out your lament like this into the air: “If there is truth in suffering, I swear by the gods I do not deserve this wrong. I am being punished without guilt. I lived in innocence. If I lie, let me lose the leaves I have through drought, be levelled with the axe, and burned. Take this child from these maternal branches, and find him a nurse, and have him often drink his milk under this tree of mine, and play under this tree. And when he learns to talk, have him greet his mother and say, sadly, ‘My mother is revealed in this tree.’ Let him still fear lakes, and pick no flowers from the trees, and think all shrubs are the body of the goddess.

Dear husband, farewell, and you, sister; father! If you love me, defend me from the sharp knife, and my leaves from the browsing herd. And since I am not allowed to bend to you, reach up with your arms, and find my lips, while I can still feel, and lift my little son up to me! I can speak no more. Now the soft sapwood spreads slowly over my white neck: I am imprisoned in its highest reaches. Take your hands from my eyes. Without trying to help me, allow the enveloping bark to mask the fading light!” At the moment her mouth ceased speaking, at that moment it ceased to be. For a long time, the freshly created branches glowed with warmth, from her altered body.’

Bk 9:394-417 The prophecies of Themis

While Eurytus’s daughter was relating this marvellous happening, and Alcmena was wiping away Iole’s tears (still weeping herself) a wonderful thing suspended all sadness. There, on the steep threshold, stood Iolaüs, Hercules’s nephew and companion, alive again, with the look of his early years, a hint of down on his cheeks, almost, again, a child. Overwhelmed by the prayers of her husband, Hercules, Juno’s daughter, Hebe, had granted him this gift. When she was about to swear that, after this, she would never allow any further such favour, Themis would not allow it.

She prophesied. ‘Thebes is now moving towards civil war, and, of the Seven against her, Capaneus will not be overcome, except by Jupiter himself. Two brothers, Eteocles and Polynices, will die of mutually inflicted wounds. Amphiaraüs, the seer, swallowed by the earth, still living, will gaze on the ghosts of his own dead. His son, Alcmaeon, shall avenge him, with his mother Eriphyle’s death, filial and sinful in the same act. Terrified at his own evil, exiled from home and sanity, he will be pursued by the faces of the Eumenides, and by his mother’s shade, until his wife, Callirhoë demands the fatal necklace, that Venus gave Harmonia, and until the sword, of his first father-in-law, Phegeus, in the hands of Phegeus’s sons, shall drain his son-in-law’s blood. Then at last, Callirhoë, the daughter of Acheloüs, as a suppliant, will ask of mighty Jupiter, to add years to her infant sons, and not allow the avenger’s murder to be unavenged. In anticipation of being moved by her prayers, Jupiter claims for them this gift that you, his stepdaughter and daughter-in-law, possess, and will make them men, in their childhood years.’

Bk 9:418-438 Jupiter acknowledges the power of Fate

When Themis spoke these words, out of her prophetic mouth, prescient of what was to come, the gods complained in various mutterings, and there was a murmur as to why they were not able to grant the same gift to other mortals. Aurora, daughter of the Titan Pallas, lamented the old age of her husband, Tithonus. Gentle Ceres lamented the greying hair of her former lover Iasion. Mulciber demanded another lifetime for his son, Erichthonius: and Venus, also, touched by fears for the future, wanted to bargain for the renewal of her lover Anchises’s years. Each god had someone whose cause they supported: and the troublesome mutiny, over their favourites, grew, until Jupiter opened his mouth and said: ‘O, if you have any respect for me, where do you think all this talk is heading? Do any of you think you can overcome fate as well? Through fate Iolaüs’s past years were restored. Through fate Callirhoë’s children must prematurely become men, not through ambition or warfare. Even you, and I, too, fate rules, if that also makes you feel better. If I had power to alter fate, these late years would not bow down my pious Aeacus. Just Rhadamanthus would always possess youth’s flower, and my Minos, who is scorned because of the bitter weight of old age, and no longer orders the kingdom in the way he did before.’

Bk 9:439-516 Byblis falls in love with her twin brother Caunus

Jupiter’s words swayed the gods: and no one could sustain their objection when they saw Rhadamanthos, Aeacus and Minos wearied with the years. When he was in his prime, Minos had made great nations tremble at his very name: now he was weak, and feared Miletus, who was proud of his strength and parentage, the son of Phoebus Apollo and the nymph Deione. Though Minos believed Miletus might plot an insurrection, he still did not dare to deny him his home. On your own initiative, Miletus, you left, cutting the waters of the Aegean in your swift ship, and built a city on the soil of Asia, that still carries its founder’s name.

There you knew Cyanee, the daughter of Maeander, whose stream so often curves back on itself, when she was following her father’s winding shores. Twin children were born to her, of outstanding beauty of body, Byblis and her brother Caunus.

Byblis, seized by a passion, for her brother, scion of Apollo; that Byblis serves for a warning to girls, against illicit love. She loved, not as a sister loves a brother, nor as she should. At first, it is true, she did not understand the fires of passion, or think it wrong, to kiss, together, often, or throw her arms round her brother’s neck. For a long time she was deceived by the misleading likeness to sisterly affection. Gradually the nature of her love went astray, and she came looking for her brother carefully dressed, and over-anxious to look beautiful. If anyone seemed more beautiful to him, she was jealous. But her own feelings were not clear to her, and though she had no inner longing for passion, nevertheless it burned. And now she called him her lord, now she hated the name that made them related, now she wrongly wished him to call her Byblis, rather than sister. While she is awake she still dare not allow her mind its illicit hope, but, deep in peaceful dreams, she often sees what she loves, and is also seen, held in her brother’s arms, and she blushes, though lost in sleep.

When sleep has vanished, she lies there for a long time, recalling, to herself, the imagery of her dream, and at last utters these inner doubts: ‘Alas for me! What does it mean, this vision out of the night’s silence? How I would hate it to be true! Why do I see these things in sleep? He is truly handsome, even to unfriendly eyes, and is pleasing, and if he were not my brother I could love him, and he would be worthy of me. Being his sister is the reality that harms me. Let sleep often return with similar visions, as long as I am not tempted to do any such thing while awake! A dream lacks witnesses, but does not lack pleasure’s counterpart. By winged Cupid, and Venus, his tender mother, how great the joy I had! How clearly passion touched me! How my whole heart melted where I lay! What joy in remembrance! Though its pleasure was short-lived, and night rushed onwards, envious of my imaginings.

O if I could have been joined to you, with another’s name, Caunus, how good a daughter-in-law I could have been to your father! O Caunus, how good a son-in-law you could have been to my father! We would have had everything shared between us, except our grandparents: I would have wanted you to be nobler than me! You, most beautiful one, will make someone else the mother of your children, but to me, whom evil luck has given the same parents, you will be nothing but a brother. What separates us: that we will share as one. What does my vision signify to me? What weight indeed do dreams have? Or perhaps - the gods forbid - dreams do have weight? Certainly, the gods have possessed their sisters. So, Saturn led Ops, his blood-kin, to join with him, and Oceanus, Tethys, and the ruler of Olympus, Juno. The gods have their own laws! Why try to relate human affairs to other, divine, behaviour? Either my forbidden passion will be driven from my heart, or if I cannot achieve that, I pray to be loved, before I am laid out on my deathbed, and my brother kisses me there. Yet that needs both our wills! Suppose it pleases me: it may seem a sin to him.

Still, the sons of Aeolus, god of the winds, were not afraid to marry their sisters! Where did I learn that? Why do I have such ready examples? Where is this leading? Vanish, far off, illicit flames, and let my brother not be loved, except as a sister may love him! Yet, if he himself were first captured by love of me, I might perhaps be able to indulge this madness. Then let me woo him, whom I would not reject, if he were wooing! - Can you say it? Can you acknowledge it? - Love compels me: I can! Or if shame closes my lips, a secret letter will confess my hidden passions.’

Bk 9:517-594 The fatal letter

This idea pleases her, and this decision overcomes the doubt in her mind. Turning on one side and leaning on her left elbow, she says to herself: ‘Let him know: let me acknowledge my insane desires! Alas, where am I heading? What fire has my heart conceived?’ And, with a trembling hand, she begins to set down the words she has contemplated. She holds the pen in her right hand, and a blank wax tablet in her left. She begins, then hesitates; writes and condemns the writing; scribbles and smoothes it out; alters, blames and approves; in turn lays down what she has lifted, and lifts what she has laid down. She does not know what to do, displeased with whatever she is about to do. In her expression, shame is mixed with boldness.

She had written ‘sister’, but decided to efface the name of sister, and inscribed these words on the corrected tablet: ‘That wish, for long life, that she will not have, unless you grant it, one who loves you, sends to you. She is ashamed, oh, ashamed to tell her name. And if you ask what I desire, I would have wished to plead my cause, namelessly, and not to have been identified, until the expectation of what I desired was certain, as Byblis.

True, you might have seen signs of my wounded heart in my pallor, thinness, features, eyes full of tears, sighs with no apparent cause, frequent embraces, kisses, which, if you had chanced to notice, might not have felt like a sister’s. Yet, though my soul was deeply stricken, though the mad fire is in me, I have done everything I can (the gods are my witnesses) to become calmer. For a long time I have struggled, unhappily, to escape Cupid’s onslaught, and I have suffered more hardship than you would think a girl could suffer. I am compelled to confess, I have lost, and to beg your help, with humble prayers. You alone can save your lover, you alone destroy her. Choose what you will. It is not your enemy who prays to you, but one who, though closest to you, seeks to be closer still, and bound to you with a tighter bond.

Let old people know what is right, and what is allowed, and what is virtue and what is sin, and preserve the fine balance of the law. At our age Love is what is fitting, that takes no heed. We do not know yet what is permitted, and we consider all things permitted, and follow the example of the great gods. We have no harsh father, no regard for reputation, and no fear to impede us. Even if there were cause for fear, we can hide sweet theft under the names of brother and sister. I am free to speak to you in private, and we can embrace and kiss in front of others. How important is what is still lacking? Pity the one who confesses her love, and would not confess if extreme desire did not force her, and do not you be the reason for the writing on my tomb.’

Her handwriting filled the wax, with these fruitless words, the last line close to the edge. Immediately she put her seal on the sinful message, dampening it with her tears (moisture failed her tongue), stamping it with her signet ring. Shamefacedly, she called one of her servants, and shyly and coaxingly said: ‘You are most faithful. Take these to my..........brother’ she added after a long silence. As she let them go, the tablets slipped and fell from her hand. She still sent the letter, troubled by the omen. Finding a suitable time, the messenger went, and delivered the hidden words. Horrified, Maeander’s grandson, suddenly enraged, hurled away the tablets, he had accepted, and partly read, and, scarcely able to keep his hands from the trembling servant’s throat, cried: ‘Run while you can, you rascally aide to forbidden lust! I would deal you death, as a punishment, if your fate would not also drag our honour down with it.’ The servant fled in fear, and reported Caunus’s fierce words, to Byblis.

She grew pale, hearing that she had been rejected, and her body shook, gripped by an icy chill. But, when consciousness returned, so did the passion, and, she let out these words, her lips scarcely moving: ‘I deserve it! Well, why did I rashly reveal my wound? Why was I in such a hurry to commit things, which were secret, to a hasty letter? I should have tested his mind’s judgment before by ambiguous words. I should have observed how the winds blew; used other lesser sails, in case those breezes were not to be followed; and crossed the sea in safety, not as now, under full canvas, caught by uncertain gusts. So I am carried onto the rocks, swamped, overwhelmed by the whole ocean, and my sails have no means of retreat.’

Bk 9:595-665 The transformation of Byblis

‘Why, as far as that is concerned, everything, unerringly, warned me not to give way to my desire, at the moment when the tablets fell, as I was giving orders for them to be taken to him, meaning that my hopes would also fall away. Should not, perhaps, the day, or my whole intention, more so the day, have been altered? The god himself issued a warning, and gave a clear sign, if I had not been crazed with love. Also I should have told him myself, and revealed my passion to him in person, and not committed myself in writing. He would have seen the tears, and seen a lover’s face. I could have said more than any letter can contain. I could have thrown my arms around his unwilling neck, and if I had been rejected, I could have seemed on the point of dying, embraced his feet, and lying there begged for life. I should have done all those things that, if not singly, all together, might have persuaded his stubborn mind. Maybe the messenger who was sent was at fault: did not approach him properly, I think, or choose a suitable moment, or discover when he and the time were free.

It has all harmed me. Truly, my brother is not born of the tigress. He does not have a heart of unyielding flint, solid iron, or steel. He was not suckled on the milk of a lioness. He will be won! I will try again, and not suffer any weariness in my attempts, while breath is left to me. Since I cannot undo my actions, it would have been best not to begin: but, having begun, the next best is to win through. In fact if I relinquished my longing, he could still not fail to remember what I have dared, and by desisting I will be seen to have been shallow in my desires, or to have been trying to tempt and snare him. He will even believe, I am sure, that I have not been conquered by the god, who, above all, impels and inflames our hearts, but by lust. In short, I cannot but be guilty of impiety, of writing, of wooing: my wishes are revealed. Though I add nothing to them, I cannot be said to be innocent. There is little left to be accused of, but much to long for.’

So she argues, and (so great is the undecided conflict in her mind) while she repented of the attempt, she delights in attempting. Going beyond all moderation, and unsuccessful in what she tries, she is endlessly rejected. Finally, when there seems no end to it, he flees from this wickedness and from his home, and founds a new city in a foreign place: Caunus, in Caria.

Then, indeed, grief made Miletus’s daughter lose her mind completely. Then, indeed, she tore the clothes from her breast, and beat her arms in frenzy. Her madness was now public, and she confessed her hope of illicit union, by leaving the country she hated, and her household gods, and following the footsteps of her fleeing brother. The women of Bubasos saw Byblis, howling in the open fields, as your Thracians, son of Semele, pricked by your thyrsus, keep your triennial festival.

Leaving them behind she wandered through Caria, through the lands of the armed Leleges, and on through Lycia. Now she was beyond Lycian Cragus, and Limyre, and the waters of the Xanthian plain, and the ridge of Mount Chimaera near Phaleris, where the fire-breathing monster lived, joining a lion’s head and chest to a serpent’s tail. Above the woods, when, wearied, you were weak from following, you fell, Byblis, your hair spread on the hard earth, and your face pressing the fallen leaves.

The Lelegeian nymphs often try to lift her in their tender arms, and often they teach her how she might remedy her love, and they offer comfort to her silent heart. She lies there, mute, clutching at the green stems with her fingers, and watering the grass with her flowing tears. They say the naiads created a spring from them, beneath her, which could never run dry. Well, what more could they offer her? There and then, Byblis, Phoebus’s granddaughter, consumed by her own tears, is changed into a fountain: just as drops of resin ooze from a cut pine, or sticky bitumen from heavy soil, or as water, that has been frozen by the cold, melts in the sun, at the coming of the west wind’s gentle breath: and even now in those valleys it retains its mistress’s name, and flows from underneath a dark holm oak.

Bk 9:666-713 The birth of Iphis

Perhaps, the story of this new marvel would have filled Crete’s hundred cities, if Crete had not recently known a miracle nearer home, in the metamorphosis of Iphis. In the Phaestos region, near royal Cnossos, there once lived a man named Ligdus, undistinguished, a native of the place, his wealth no greater than his fame, but living a blameless and honourable life. When his pregnant wife, Telethusa, was near to her time, he spoke these words of warning in her ear: ‘There are two things I wish for: that you are delivered with the least pain, and that you produce a male child. A girl is a heavier burden, and misfortune denies them strength. So, though I hate this, if, by chance, you give birth to a female infant, reluctantly, I order - let my impiety be forgiven! – that it be put to death.’ He spoke, and tears flooded their cheeks, he who commanded, and she to whom the command was given. Nevertheless, Telethusa, urged her husband, with vain prayers, not to confine hope itself. Ligdus remained fixed in his determination.

Now, her pregnant belly could scarcely bear to carry her fully-grown burden, when Io, the daughter of Inachus, at midnight, in sleep’s imagining, stood, or seemed to stand, by her bed: Isis, accompanied by her holy procession. The moon’s crescent horns were on her forehead, and the shining gold of yellow ears of corn, and royal splendour belonged to her. With her were the jackal-headed Anubis, the hallowed cat-headed Bast, the dappled bull Apis, and Harpocrates, the god who holds his tongue, and urges silence, thumb in mouth. The sacred rattle, the sistrum, was there; and Osiris, for whom her search never ends; and the strange serpent she fashioned, swollen with sleep-inducing venom, that poisoned the sun-god Ra. Then, as if Telethusa had shaken off sleep, and was seeing clearly, the goddess spoke to her, saying: ‘O, you who belong to me, forget your heavy cares, and do not obey your husband. When Lucina has eased the birth, whatever sex the child has, do not hesitate to raise it. I am the goddess, who, when prevailed upon, brings help and strength: you will have no cause to complain, that the divinity, you worshipped, lacks gratitude.’ Having given her command, she left the room. Joyfully, the Cretan woman rose, and, lifting her innocent hands to the stars, she prayed, in all humility, that her dream might prove true.

When the pains grew, and her burden pushed its own way into the world, and a girl was born, the mother ordered it to be reared, deceitfully, as a boy, without the father realising. She had all that she needed, and no one but the nurse knew of the fraud. The father made good his vows, and gave it the name of the grandfather: he was Iphis. The mother was delighted with the name, since it was appropriate for either gender, and no one was cheated by it. From that moment, the deception, begun with a sacred lie, went undetected. The child was dressed as a boy, and its features would have been beautiful whether they were given to a girl or a boy.

Bk 9:714-763 Iphis and Ianthe

Thirteen years passed by, meanwhile, and then, Iphis, your father betrothed you to golden-haired Ianthe, whose dowry was her beauty, the girl most praised amongst the women of Phaestos, the daughter of Telestes of Dicte. The two were equal in age, and equal in looks, and had received their first instruction, in the knowledge of life, from the same teachers. From this beginning, love had touched both their innocent hearts, and wounded them equally, but with unequal expectations. Ianthe anticipated her wedding day, and the promised marriage, believing he, whom she thought to be a man, would be her man. Iphis loved one whom she despaired of being able to have, and this itself increased her passion, a girl on fire for a girl.

Hardly restraining her tears, she said ‘What way out is there left, for me, possessed by the pain of a strange and monstrous love, that no one ever knew before? If the gods wanted to spare me they should have spared me, but if they wanted to destroy me, they might at least have visited on me a natural, and normal, misfortune. Mares do not burn with love for mares, or heifers for heifers: the ram inflames the ewe: its hind follows the stag. So, birds mate, and among all animals, not one female is attacked by lust for a female. I wish I were not one! Yet that Crete might not fail to bear every monstrosity, Pasiphaë, Sol’s daughter, loved a bull, though still that was a female and a male. My love, truth be told, is more extreme than that. She at least chased after the hope of fulfilment, though the bull had her because of her deceit, and in the likeness of a cow, and the one who was deceived was a male adulterer. Though all of the world’s cleverness were concentrated here, though Daedalus were to return on waxen wings, what use would it be? Surely even his cunning arts could not make a boy out of a girl? Surely even he could not transform you, Ianthe?

Rather be firm-minded, Iphis, and pull yourself together, and, with wisdom, shake off this foolish, useless passion. Look at what you have been, from birth, if you don’t want to cheat yourself, and seek out what is right for you, and love as a woman should! It is hope that creates love, and hope that nourishes it. Everything robs you of that. No guardian keeps you from her dear arms, no wary husband’s care, no cruel father, nor does she deny your wooing herself. Yet you can never have her, or be happy, whatever is accomplished, whatever men or gods attempt.

Even now, no part of my prayers has been denied. The gods have readily given whatever they were able, and my father, her father, and she herself, want what I want to happen. But Nature does not want it, the only one who harms me, more powerful than them all. See, the longed-for time has come, the wedding torch is at hand, and Ianthe will become mine – yet not be had by me. I will thirst in the midst of the waters. Juno, goddess of brides, and Hymen, why do you come to these marriage rites, where the bridegroom is absent, and both are brides?’

Bk 9:764-797 Isis transforms Iphis

With these words, she stopped speaking. The other girl was no less on fire, and prayed, Hymen, that you would come quickly. Telethusa, afraid of what she sought, merely put off the day: now lengthening the delay through pretended illness, now, frequently, using omens and dreams as an excuse. But eventually every pretext was exhausted, the date for the delayed marriage ceremony was set, and only a day remained. Then Telethusa took the sacred ribbons from her own and her daughter Iphis’s head, so that their hair streamed down, and clinging to the altar, cried: ‘Isis, you who protect Paraetonium, Pharos, the Mareotic fields, and Nile, divided in its seven streams, I pray you, bring help, and relieve our fears! Goddess, I saw you once, you, and those symbols of you, and I knew them all, accompanied by the jingling bronze of the sistrum, and imprinted your commands on my remembering mind. That my daughter looks on the light, that I have not been punished, behold, it was your purpose, and your gift. Gladden us with your aid. Have pity on us both!’

Tears followed words. The goddess seemed to make the altar tremble (it did tremble), and the doors of the temple shook, her horns, shaped like the moon’s crescents, shone, and the sistrum rattled loudly. Not yet reassured, but gladdened by the auspicious omen, the mother left the temple. Iphis, her companion, followed, taking larger paces than before; with no whiteness left in her complexion; with additional strength, and sharper features, and shorter, less elegant hair; showing more vigour than women have. Take your gifts to the temple, Iphis: rejoice, with confidence, not fear! You, who were lately a girl, are now a boy!

They take their gifts to the temple, and add a votive tablet: the tablet has this brief line:

IPHIS PERFORMS AS A BOY, WHAT HE PROMISED, AS A GIRL.

The next day’s sun reveals the wide world in its rays, when Venus, and Juno, joined with Hymen, come, to the marriage torches, and Iphis, the boy, gains possession of his Ianthe.

[admin]

Book 10

• Bk 10:1-85 Orpheus and Eurydice.
• Bk 10:86-105 The gathering of the trees.
• Bk 10:106-142 The death of Cyparissus.
• Bk 10:143-219 Orpheus sings: Ganymede; Hyacinthus.
• Bk 10:220-242 Orpheus sings: The Propoetides.
• Bk 10:243-297 Orpheus sings: Pygmalion and the statue.
• Bk 10:298-355 Orpheus sings: Myrrha’s incestuous love for Cinyras.
• Bk 10:356-430 Orpheus sings: Myrrha and her nurse.
• Bk 10:431-502 Orpheus sings: Myrrha’s crime and punishment
• Bk 10:503-559 Orpheus sings: Venus and Adonis.
• Bk 10:560-637 Venus tells her story: Atalanta and Hippomenes.
• Bk 10:638-680 Venus tells her story: The foot-race.
• Bk 10:681-707 Venus tells her story: The transformation.
• Bk 10:708-739 Orpheus sings: The death of Adonis.

Bk 10:1-85 Orpheus and Eurydice

Hymen, called by the voice of Orpheus, departed, and, dressed in his saffron robes, made his way through the vast skies to the Ciconian coast: but in vain. He was present at Orpheus’s marriage, true, but he did not speak the usual words, display a joyful expression, or bring good luck. The torch, too, that he held, sputtered continually, with tear-provoking fumes, and no amount of shaking contrived to light it properly. The result was worse than any omens. While the newly wedded bride, Eurydice, was walking through the grass, with a crowd of naiads as her companions, she was killed, by a bite on her ankle, from a snake, sheltering there. When Thracian Orpheus, the poet of Rhodope, had mourned for her, greatly, in the upper world, he dared to go down to Styx, through the gate of Taenarus, also, to see if he might not move the dead.

Through the weightless throng, and the ghosts that had received proper burial, he came to Persephone, and the lord of the shadows, he who rules the joyless kingdom. Then striking the lyre-strings to accompany his words, he sang: ‘O gods of this world, placed below the earth, to which, all, who are created mortal, descend; if you allow me, and it is lawful, to set aside the fictions of idle tongues, and speak the truth, I have not come here to see dark Tartarus, nor to bind Cerberus, Medusa’s child, with his three necks, and snaky hair. My wife is the cause of my journey. A viper, she trod on, diffused its venom into her body, and robbed her of her best years. I longed to be able to accept it, and I do not say I have not tried: Love won.

He is a god well known in the world above, though I do not know if that is so here: though I imagine him to be here, as well, and if the story of that rape in ancient times is not a lie, you also were wedded by Amor. I beg you, by these fearful places, by this immense abyss, and the silence of your vast realms, reverse Eurydice’s swift death. All things are destined to be yours, and though we delay a while, sooner or later, we hasten home. Here we are all bound, this is our final abode, and you hold the longest reign over the human race. Eurydice, too, will be yours to command, when she has lived out her fair span of years, to maturity. I ask this benefit as a gift; but, if the fates refuse my wife this kindness, I am determined not to return: you can delight in both our deaths.’

The bloodless spirits wept as he spoke, accompanying his words with the music. Tantalus did not reach for the ever-retreating water: Ixion’s wheel was stilled: the vultures did not pluck at Tityus’s liver: the Belides, the daughters of Danaüs, left their water jars: and you, Sisyphus, perched there, on your rock. Then they say, for the first time, the faces of the Furies were wet with tears, won over by his song: the king of the deep, and his royal bride, could not bear to refuse his prayer, and called for Eurydice.

She was among the recent ghosts, and walked haltingly from her wound. The poet of Rhodope received her, and, at the same time, accepted this condition, that he must not turn his eyes behind him, until he emerged from the vale of Avernus, or the gift would be null and void.

They took the upward path, through the still silence, steep and dark, shadowy with dense fog, drawing near to the threshold of the upper world. Afraid she was no longer there, and eager to see her, the lover turned his eyes. In an instant she dropped back, and he, unhappy man, stretching out his arms to hold her and be held, clutched at nothing but the receding air. Dying a second time, now, there was no complaint to her husband (what, then, could she complain of, except that she had been loved?). She spoke a last ‘farewell’ that, now, scarcely reached his ears, and turned again towards that same place.

Stunned by the double loss of his wife, Orpheus was like that coward who saw Cerberus, the three-headed dog, chained by the central neck, and whose fear vanished with his nature, as stone transformed his body. Or like Olenos, and you, his Lethaea, too proud of your beauty: he wished to be charged with your crime, and seem guilty himself: once wedded hearts, you are now rocks set on moist Mount Ida.

Orpheus wished and prayed, in vain, to cross the Styx again, but the ferryman fended him off. Still, for seven days, he sat there by the shore, neglecting himself and not taking nourishment. Sorrow, troubled thought, and tears were his food. He took himself to lofty Mount Rhodope, and Haemus, swept by the winds, complaining that the gods of Erebus were cruel.

Three times the sun had ended the year, in watery Pisces, and Orpheus had abstained from the love of women, either because things ended badly for him, or because he had sworn to do so. Yet, many felt a desire to be joined with the poet, and many grieved at rejection. Indeed, he was the first of the Thracian people to transfer his love to young boys, and enjoy their brief springtime, and early flowering, this side of manhood.

Bk 10:86-105 The gathering of the trees

There was a hill, and, on the hill, a wide area of level ground, turfed with fresh blades of grass: shade was absent there: but when the poet, born of the god, sounded the strings of his lyre, shade gathered there. Jupiter’s Chaonian oak-tree came; and Phaethon’s sisters, the Heliades, the poplars; the durmast oak with its deep foliage; the soft lime-tree; the beech; the virgin sweet-bay, laurel; the hazel, frail; the ash-tree, used for spears; the sweeping silver-fir: holm-oak, heavy with acorns; pleasant plane-tree; the many-coloured maple; with the river-haunting willow; lotus, water-lover; boxwood ever-verdant; the slender tamarisk; the myrtle, with, over and under its leaves, the two shades of green; and the blue-berried wild-bay, laurus tinus. You came, also, twining ivy, together with shooting vines; the vine-supporting elms; the flowering ‘manna’ ash; the spruce; the strawberry tree, weighed down with its red fruit; the pliant palms, the winner’s prize; and you, the shaggy-topped pine tree, armed with needles, sacred to Cybele, mother of the gods, since Attis exchanged his human form for you, and hardened in your trunk.

Bk 10:106-142 The death of Cyparissus

Among the crowd came the cypress, formed like the cone-shaped meta, that marks the turning point in the race-course: once a boy, but now a tree: loved by the god who tunes the lyre, and strings the bow.

There was a giant stag, sacred to the nymphs that haunt the Carthaean country, which cast deep shadows, around its head, from his wide-branching antlers. The antlers shone with gold, and the gems of a jewelled collar, around his polished neck, hung down onto his shoulders. A bulla, a silver charm, fastened with small strips of leather, quivered on his forehead, and on either side of his hollow temples matching pearls of bronze gleamed from both ears. Free from fear, and forgetting his natural shyness, he used to visit people’s houses, and offer his neck to be stroked by strangers’ hands. Yet, above all others, he was dear to you, Cyparissus, loveliest of the Cean boys. You led the stag to fresh pastures, and the waters of the clear spring. Now you would weave diverse flowers through his horns, and then, astride his back like a horseman, delight in tugging his soft mouth one way or the other by means of a purple muzzle.

It was noon of a summer’s day, when the curving claws of shore-loving Cancer were burning in the hot sun. Tired, the stag had settled its body on the grassy turf and was enjoying the cool of the woodland shade. The boy, without intention, transfixed it with his sharp spear, and when he saw it dying from the cruel wound, he wished to die himself. What was there Phoebus did not say, in solace, advising a moderate grief matching the cause! He only sighed, and begged, as the last gift of the gods, that he might mourn forever. Then, his blood discharged among endless tears, his limbs began to turn to a shade of green, and his hair that a moment ago hung over his pale forehead, became a bristling crown, and he stiffened to a graceful point gazing at the starry heavens. The god sighed for him, and said, sadly: ‘I will mourn for you: you will mourn for others, and enter into sorrows’.

Bk 10:143-219 Orpheus sings: Ganymede; Hyacinthus

Such was the grove of trees the poet gathered round him, and he sat in the midst of a crowd, of animals and birds. When he had tried a few chords, stroking the lyre with his thumb, and felt that the various notes were in tune, regardless of their pitch, he raised his voice to sing: ‘Begin my song with Jupiter, Calliope, O Muse, my mother (all things bow to Jupiter’s might)! I have often sung the power of Jove before: I have sung of the Giants, in an epic strain, and the victorious lightning bolts, hurled at the Phlegraean field. Now there is gentler work for the lyre, and I sing of boys loved by the gods, and girls stricken with forbidden fires, deserving punishment for their lust.

‘The king of the gods once burned with love for Phrygian Ganymede, and to win him Jupiter chose to be something other than he was. Yet he did not deign to transform himself into any other bird, than that eagle, that could carry his lightning bolts. Straightaway, he beat the air with deceitful wings, and stole the Trojan boy, who still handles the mixing cups, and against Juno’s will pours out Jove’s nectar.

‘You too, Hyacinthus, of Amyclae, Phoebus would have placed in heaven, if sad fate had given him time to do so. Still, as it is, you are immortal, and whenever spring drives winter away, and Aries follows watery Pisces, you also rise, and flower in the green turf. My father, Phoebus, loved you above all others: and Delphi, at the centre of the world, lost its presiding deity, while the god frequented Eurotas, and Sparta without its walls, doing no honour to the zither or the bow. Forgetting his usual pursuits, he did not object to carrying the nets, handling the dogs, or travelling as a companion, over the rough mountain ridges, and by constant partnership feeding the flames.

‘Now, the sun was midway between the vanished and the future night, equally far from either extreme: they stripped off their clothes, and gleaming with the rich olive oil, they had rubbed themselves with, they began a contest with the broad discus. Phoebus went first, balancing it, and hurling it high into the air, scattering the clouds with its weight. Its mass took a long time to fall back to the hard ground, showing strength and skill combined. Immediately the Taenarian boy, without thinking, ran forward to pick up the disc, prompted by his eagerness to throw, but the solid earth threw it back, hitting you in the face, with the rebound, Hyacinthus.

‘The god is as white as the boy, and cradles the fallen body. Now he tries to revive you, now to staunch your dreadful wound, and now applies herbs to hold back your departing spirit. His arts are useless: the wound is incurable. Just as if, when someone, in a garden, breaks violets, stiff poppies, or the lilies, with their bristling yellow stamens, and, suddenly, they droop, bowing their weakened heads, unable to support themselves, and their tops gaze at the soil: so his dying head drops, and, with failing strength, the neck is overburdened, and sinks onto the shoulder.

‘"You slip away, Spartan, robbed of the flower of youth,” Phoebus sighed, “and I see my guilt, in your wound. You are my grief and my reproach: your death must be ascribed to my hand. I am the agent of your destruction. Yet, how was it my fault, unless taking part in a game can be called a fault, unless it can be called a fault to have loved you? If only I might die with you, and pay with my life! But since the laws of fate bind us, you shall always be with me, and cling to my remembering lips. My songs; the lyre my hand touches; will celebrate you. As a new-formed flower, you shall denote my woe, by your markings. And the time will come, when Ajax, bravest of heroes, will associate himself with this same flower, and be identified by its petals.”

‘While the truthful mouth of Apollo uttered these words, look, the blood that had spilt on the ground staining the grass was no longer blood, and a flower sprang up, brighter than Tyrian dye, and took the shape of a lily, though it was purple in colour, where the other is silvery white. Not satisfied with this alone, Phoebus (he, indeed, was the giver of the honour) himself marked his grief on the petals, and the flower bore the letters AI AI, the letters of woe traced there. Nor was Sparta ashamed of producing Hyacinthus: his honour has lasted to this day, and by ancient custom the Hyacinthia is celebrated, at its annual return, by displaying the flower in procession.

Bk 10:220-242 Orpheus sings: The Propoetides

‘But if you should ask the Cyprian city of Amathus, rich in mines, whether it would have wished to have produced those girls, the Propoetides, it would repudiate them, and equally those men, whose foreheads were once marred by two horns, from which they took their name, Cerastae. An altar, to Jove the Hospitable, used to stand in front of the gates: if any stranger, ignorant of their wickedness, had seen it, stained with blood, they would have thought that calves or sheep, from Amathus, were sacrificed there: it was their guests they killed! Kindly Venus was preparing to abandon her cities, and the Cyprian fields, outraged by their abominable rites, but ‘How,’ she said, ‘have my cities, or this dear place, sinned? What is their crime? Instead, let this impious race pay the penalty of death or exile, or some punishment between execution and banishment, and what might that be but the penalty of being transformed?’ While she is deciding how to alter them, she turns her eyes towards their horns, and this suggests that she might leave them those, and she changed them into wild bullocks.

‘Nevertheless, the immoral Propoetides dared to deny that Venus was the goddess. For this, because of her divine anger, they are said to have been the first to prostitute their bodies and their reputations in public, and, losing all sense of shame, they lost the power to blush, as the blood hardened in their cheeks, and only a small change turned them into hard flints.

Bk 10:243-297 Orpheus sings: Pygmalion and the statue

‘Pygmalion had seen them, spending their lives in wickedness, and, offended by the failings that nature gave the female heart, he lived as a bachelor, without a wife or partner for his bed. But, with wonderful skill, he carved a figure, brilliantly, out of snow-white ivory, no mortal woman, and fell in love with his own creation. The features are those of a real girl, who, you might think, lived, and wished to move, if modesty did not forbid it. Indeed, art hides his art. He marvels: and passion, for this bodily image, consumes his heart. Often, he runs his hands over the work, tempted as to whether it is flesh or ivory, not admitting it to be ivory. he kisses it and thinks his kisses are returned; and speaks to it; and holds it, and imagines that his fingers press into the limbs, and is afraid lest bruises appear from the pressure. Now he addresses it with compliments, now brings it gifts that please girls, shells and polished pebbles, little birds, and many-coloured flowers, lilies and tinted beads, and the Heliades’s amber tears, that drip from the trees. He dresses the body, also, in clothing; places rings on the fingers; places a long necklace round its neck; pearls hang from the ears, and cinctures round the breasts. All are fitting: but it appears no less lovely, naked. He arranges the statue on a bed on which cloths dyed with Tyrian murex are spread, and calls it his bedfellow, and rests its neck against soft down, as if it could feel.

‘The day of Venus’s festival came, celebrated throughout Cyprus, and heifers, their curved horns gilded, fell, to the blow on their snowy neck. The incense was smoking, when Pygmalion, having made his offering, stood by the altar, and said, shyly: “If you can grant all things, you gods, I wish as a bride to have...” and not daring to say “the girl of ivory” he said “one like my ivory girl.” Golden Venus, for she herself was present at the festival, knew what the prayer meant, and as a sign of the gods’ fondness for him, the flame flared three times, and shook its crown in the air. When he returned, he sought out the image of his girl, and leaning over the couch, kissed her. She felt warm: he pressed his lips to her again, and also touched her breast with his hand. The ivory yielded to his touch, and lost its hardness, altering under his fingers, as the bees’ wax of Hymettus softens in the sun, and is moulded, under the thumb, into many forms, made usable by use. The lover is stupefied, and joyful, but uncertain, and afraid he is wrong, reaffirms the fulfilment of his wishes, with his hand, again, and again.

‘It was flesh! The pulse throbbed under his thumb. Then the hero, of Paphos, was indeed overfull of words with which to thank Venus, and still pressed his mouth against a mouth that was not merely a likeness. The girl felt the kisses he gave, blushed, and, raising her bashful eyes to the light, saw both her lover and the sky. The goddess attended the marriage that she had brought about, and when the moon’s horns had nine times met at the full, the woman bore a son, Paphos, from whom the island takes its name.

Bk 10:298-355 Orpheus sings: Myrrha’s incestuous love for Cinyras

‘Cinyras was the son of Paphos, and he might have been counted amongst the fortunate, if he, in turn, had been childless. I speak of terrible things. Fathers and daughters, keep away: or if your mind takes pleasure in my song, put no faith in this story of mine, and imagine it did not happen. Or, if you do believe it, believe in the punishment also, that it brought. If nature, however, allows such crimes to be visible, then I give thanks that the people of Thrace, this city, and this land, are far from the regions where such sin is born. Let the land of Panchaia, beyond Araby, produce its balsam, cinnamon, costmary; its incense, exuded from the trees; its flowers different from ours; if it produces myrrh: a strange tree is not worth such a price.

‘Cupid denies that his arrows hurt you, Myrrha, and clears his fires of blame for your crime. One of the three sisters, the Furies, with her swollen snakes, and firebrand from the Styx, breathed on you. It is wrong to hate your father, but that love was a greater wrong than hatred. The pick of the princes, from everywhere, desire you: young men, from the whole of the East, come to win you in marriage. Out of the many, choose one, for your husband, Myrrha, but let one man not be amongst the many.

‘Indeed, she knows it, and fights against her disgraceful passion, and says, to herself: “Where is my thought leading? What am I creating? You gods, I pray, and the duty and sacred laws respecting parents, prevent this wickedness, and oppose my sin, indeed, if sin it is. But it can be said that duty declines to condemn such love. Other creatures mate indiscriminately: it is no disgrace for a heifer to have her sire mount her, for his filly to be a stallion’s mate: the goat goes with the flocks he has made, and the birds themselves conceive, by him whose seed conceived them. Happy the creatures who are allowed to do so! Human concern has made malign laws, and what nature allows, jealous duty forbids.

‘“Yet they say there are races where mother and son, and father and daughter, pair off, and affection is increased by a double bond. Alas for me, that I did not happen to be born there, and that I am made to suffer by an accident of place! – Why do I repeat these things? Forbidden hopes, vanish! He is worth loving, but only as a father. – I could lie with Cinyras, if I were not Cinyras’s already. Now, he is not mine, because he is already mine, and the nearness of our relationship damns me: I would be better off as a stranger. I would be happy to go far away, and leave the borders of my homeland behind me, if I might run from evil: but even if nothing more is permitted, a wicked desire to see Cinyras, touch him, speak to him, and kiss him, face to face, prevents my leaving. But then, what more might you look to have, impious girl? Do you realise how many names and ties you are throwing into confusion? Would you be, then, your mother’s rival, and your father’s mistress? Would you be known, then, as your son’s sister, your brother’s mother? Do you not fear the three sisters, with black snaky hair, that those with guilty hearts see, their eyes and mouths attacked with cruel torches? Since you have still not committed sin in the flesh, do not conceive it in your mind, or disregard the prohibitions, of mighty nature, in vile congress! Grant that you want it: the reality itself forbids it. He is a good man, and mindful of the moral law – but, O, how I wish the same passion were in him!”

Bk 10:356-430 Orpheus sings: Myrrha and her nurse

‘She spoke: Cinyras, however, who was made doubtful of what to do, by the crowd of noble suitors, naming them, asked her whom she wanted, as a husband.

‘At first she is silent, and staring at her father’s face, hesitates, her eyes filling with warm tears. Cinyras thinking this to be virgin shyness, forbids her to cry, dries her cheeks, and kisses her on the lips. Myrrha is overjoyed at this gift, and, being consulted as to what kind of husband she might choose, says: “Someone like you”. Not understanding this, however, he praises her, saying: “Always be so loving.” At the word “loving”, the girl, lowers her glance, conscious of her sin.

‘It was midnight, and sleep had released mortal flesh from worldly cares, but Cinyras’s daughter, wakeful, stirring the embers, reawakens her ungovernable desires, one moment despairing, at another willing to try, ashamed and eager, not yet discovering what to do. As a tall tree, struck by the axe, the last blow remaining, uncertain how it will fall, causes fear on all sides, so her fickle mind, swayed this way and that, her thought taking both directions, seeing no rest for, or end to, her passion, but death. She felt ready to die. She got up, determined, to fix a noose round her throat, and, fastening a cord to the doorway’s crossbeam, she said: “Goodbye, dear Cinyras, and realize the reason for my death!” And she tied the rope around her bloodless neck. They say that the murmured words came to the ears of her loyal nurse, who watched at her foster-child’s threshold.

‘The old woman gets up, and opens the door, and, seeing the equipment of death, cries out, and in the same moment, strikes her breast, snatches at the folds of her robe, and tearing the noose from the girl’s neck, pulls it apart. Then, finally, she has time to cry, to embrace her, and demand the reason for the rope. The girl is mute and still, looking, fixedly, at the ground, and unhappy that her belated attempt at death has been discovered. The old woman insists on knowing, baring her white hair and withered breasts, and begs her to say what grieves her, invoking her infant cradle, and first nurturing.

‘The girl turns away from her pleading, with a sigh. The nurse is determined to know, and promises more than loyalty. “Tell me,” she says, “and let me bring you some help: age does not slow me. If it is some frenzy, I have herbs and charms that heal: if someone is seeking your harm, I will purify you with magic rites: if the gods are angry, anger is appeased by sacrifice. What else could it be? The destiny of your house is fortunate, and on course: they are well, your mother and father.”

‘Hearing the word “father”, Myrrha sighed deeply. Even then the nurse had no idea of the sin in her mind, though she guessed it might be some love affair. She begged her, tenaciously, to tell her what it was, and took the weeping girl to her aged breast, and holding her with trembling arms she said: “I know, you are in love! And in this matter (have no fear) my diligence can serve you, your father will never know.” The frenzied girl leapt from her arms, and burying her face in the bed, said, urgently: “Go, I beg you, and forgo the knowledge of my wretched shame! Go, or stop asking why I am grieving. What you are striving to know, is wickedness.” The old woman shuddered, and stretching out her hands that trembled with age and fear, she fell at her foster-child’s feet, pleading, then coaxing, then frightening her, into making her party to it. She threatens her with the evidence of the noose, and the attempt on her life, and promises her help in her love affair. The girl raises her head, and her welling tears rain on her nurse’s breast. She often tries to confess, and often stops herself, and hides her face, in shame, in her clothing: then gets as far as “Mother, you are happy in your husband!” and sighs.

‘A shudder of cold penetrated the nurse’s flesh and bone (now she understood) and her white hair stiffened all over her head. She told her at length, to banish, if she could, this fatal passion. Though the girl knew she was being advised rightly, she was still determined to die, if she could not possess her love. “Live,” said the nurse, “possess your....” - and did not dare say: “father”. She was silent, and confirmed her promise in the sight of heaven.

Bk 10:431-502 Orpheus sings: Myrrha’s crime and punishment

‘The married women were celebrating that annual festival of Ceres, when, with their bodies veiled in white robes, they offer the first fruits of the harvest, wreathes of corn, and, for nine nights, treat sexual union, and the touch of a man, as forbidden. Cenchreis, the king’s wife was among the crowd, frequenting the sacred rites. Finding Cinyras drunk with wine, the king’s bed empty of his lawful partner, the nurse, wrongly diligent, told him of one who truly loved him, giving him a fictitious name, and praised her beauty. He, asking the girl’s age, she said: “Myrrha’s is the same.” After she had been ordered to bring her, and had reached home, she said: “Be happy, my child, we have won!” The unhappy girl felt no joy at all in her heart, and her heart prophetically mourned, yet she was still glad: such was her confusion of mind.

‘It was the hour, when all is silent, and Boötes, between the Bears, had turned his wagon, with downward-pointing shaft: She approached the sinful act. The golden moon fled the sky; black clouds covered the hidden stars; night lacked its fires. You, Icarius, and you, Erigone, his daughter, immortalised for your pious love of your father, hid your faces first. Myrrha was checked by an omen, three times, when her foot stumbled: three times, the gloomy screech owl gave her warning, with its fatal cry: she still went on, her shame made less by blindness and black night. With her left hand, she kept tight hold of her nurse, groping with the other she found a way through the dark.

‘Now she reaches the threshold of the room, now she opens the door, now is led inside. But her trembling knees give way, her colour flees with her blood, and thought vanishes as she goes forward. The closer she is to her sin, the more she shudders at it, repents of her audacity, and wants to be able to turn back, unrecognised. When she hesitated, the old woman took her by the hand, and, leading her to the high bed, delivered her up, saying: “Take her Cinyras, she is yours”, uniting their accursed flesh. The father admitted his own child into the incestuous bed, calmed her virgin fears, and encouraged her timidity. Perhaps he also said the name, “daughter”, in accordance with her age, and she said, “father”, so that their names were not absent from their sin.

‘She left the room impregnated by her father, bearing impious seed in her fatal womb, carrying the guilt she had conceived. The next night the crime was repeated: nor did it finish there. Eventually, Cinyras, eager to discover his lover after so many couplings, fetching a light, saw his daughter and his guilt, and speechless from grief, he snatched his bright sword out of the sheath it hung in. Myrrha ran, escaping death, by the gift of darkness and secret night. Wandering the wide fields, she left the land of Panchaea, and palm-bearing Arabia, behind, and after roaming through nine returns of the crescent moon, weary, she rested at last in the land of the Sabaeans.

‘Now she could scarcely bear the weight of her womb. Tired of living, and scared of dying, not knowing what to pray for, she composed these words of entreaty: “O, if there are any gods who hear my prayer, I do not plead against my well deserved punishment, but lest, by being, I offend the living, or, by dying, offend the dead, banish me from both realms, and change me, and deny me life and death!” Some god listened to her prayer: certainly the last request found its path to the heavens. While she was still speaking, the soil covered her shins; roots, breaking from her toes, spread sideways, supporting a tall trunk; her bones strengthened, and in the midst of the remaining marrow, the blood became sap; her arms became long branches; her fingers, twigs; her skin, solid bark. And now the growing tree had drawn together over her ponderous belly, buried her breasts, and was beginning to encase her neck: she could not bear the wait, and she sank down against the wood, to meet it, and plunged her face into the bark.

‘Though she has lost her former senses with her body, she still weeps, and the warm drops trickle down from the tree. There is merit, also, in the tears: and the myrrh that drips from the bark keeps its mistress’s name, and, about it, no age will be silent.

Bk 10:503-559 Orpheus sings: Venus and Adonis

‘The child, conceived in sin, had grown within the tree, and was now searching for a way to leave its mother, and reveal itself. The pregnant womb swells within the tree trunk, the burden stretching the mother. The pain cannot form words, nor can Lucina be called on, in the voice of a woman in labour. Nevertheless the tree bends, like one straining, and groans constantly, and is wet with falling tears. Gentle Lucina stood by the suffering branches, and laid her hands on them, speaking words that aid childbirth. At this the tree split open, and, from the torn bark, gave up its living burden, and the child cried. The naiads laid him on the soft grass, and anointed him with his mother’s tears. Even Envy would praise his beauty, being so like one of the torsos of naked Amor painted on boards. But to stop them differing in attributes, you must add a light quiver, for him, or take theirs away from them.

‘Transient time slips by us unnoticed, betrays us, and nothing outpaces the years. That son of his grandfather, sister, now hid in a tree, and now born, then a most beautiful child, then a boy, now a man, now more beautiful than he was before, now interests Venus herself, and avenges his mother’s desire. For while the boy, Cupid, with quiver on shoulder, was kissing his mother, he innocently scratched her breast with a loose arrow. The injured goddess pushed her son away: but the wound he had given was deeper than it seemed, and deceived her at first. Now captured by mortal beauty, she cares no more for Cythera’s shores, nor revisits Paphos, surrounded by its deep waters, nor Cnidos, the haunt of fish, nor Amathus, rich in mines: she even forgoes the heavens: preferring Adonis to heaven.

‘She holds him, and is his companion, and though she is used to always idling in the shade, and, by cultivating it, enhancing her beauty, she roams mountain ridges, and forests, and thorny cliff-sides, her clothing caught up to the knee, like Diana. And she cheers on the hounds, chasing things safe to hunt, hares flying headlong, stags with deep horns, or their hinds. She avoids the strong wild boars, the ravening wolves, and shuns the bears armed with claws, and the lions glutted with the slaughter of cattle. She warns you Adonis, as if it were ever effective to warn, to fear them too, saying: “Be bold when they run, but bravery is unsafe when faced with the brave. Do not be foolish, beware of endangering me, and do not provoke the creatures nature has armed, lest your glory is to my great cost. Neither youth nor beauty, nor the charms that affect Venus, affect lions or bristling boars or the eyes and minds of other wild creatures. Boars have the force of a fierce lightning bolt in their curving tusks, and so does the attack of tawny lions, in their huge anger: the whole tribe are hateful to me.”

‘When he asks her why, she says: “I will tell, and you will wonder, at the monstrous result of an ancient crime. But now the unaccustomed effort tires me, and, look, a poplar tree entices us with its welcome shade, and the turf yields a bed. I should like to rest here on the ground,” (and she rested) “with you.” She hugged the grass, and him, and leaning her head against the breast of the reclining youth, she spoke these words, interspersing them with kisses:

Bk 10:560-637 Venus tells her story: Atalanta and Hippomenes

‘“Perhaps you have heard of a girl who beat the fastest men at running: that was no idle tale, she did win. Nor could you say whether her speed or her beauty was more deserving of high praise. Enquiring of the god, about a husband, the god replied: ‘You don’t need a husband, Atalanta: run from the necessity for a husband. Nevertheless, you will not escape, and, still living, you will not be yourself.’ Afraid of the god’s oracle, she lived in the dark forests, unmarried, and fled from the crowd of insistent suitors, setting harsh conditions: ‘I will not be won, till I am beaten in running. Compete in the foot-race with me. Wife and bed will be given as prizes to the swift, death to the tardy: let those be the rules.’

‘“Truly she was pitiless, but (such was the power of her beauty) a rash crowd of suitors came, despite the rules. Hippomenes had taken his seat as a spectator at the unjust contest, and said ‘Who would try for a wife at such a risk?’ condemning the young men for their excess of passion. But when he saw her face and her unclothed body, one like mine, Adonis, or like yours if you were a woman, he was stunned. Stretching out his hands, he said: ‘Forgive me, you, that I just blamed! I had not yet realised what the prize was you were after.’ Praising her, he falls in love with her, and hopes none of the youths run faster, afraid, through jealousy. ‘But why, in this competition, is my luck left untested?’ he says. The god himself favours the bold!’

‘“While Hippomenes was debating with himself like this, the virgin girl sped by on winged feet. To the Aonian youth she flew like a Scythian arrow, yet it made him admire her beauty all the more. The race gave her a beauty of its own. The breeze blew the streaming feathers on her speeding sandals behind her, and her hair was thrown back from her ivory shoulders. Ribbons with embroidered edges fluttered at her knees, and a blush spread over the girlish whiteness of her body, just as when a red awning over a white courtyard stains it with borrowed shadows. While the stranger was watching this, the last marker was passed, and the victorious Atalanta was crowned with a festive garland, while the losers, groaning, paid the penalty according to their bond.

‘“Undeterred by the youths’ fate, Hippomenes stepped forward and, fixing his gaze on the girl, said ‘Why seek an easy win beating the lazy? Race me. If fortune makes me the master, it will be no shame for you to be outpaced by such a man as me, since Megareus of Onchestus is my father, and his grandfather was Neptune, so I am the great-grandson of the king of the ocean, and my courage is no less than my birth. Or if I am beaten, you will have a great and renowned name for defeating Hippomenes.’ As he spoke Schoeneus’s daughter looked at him with a softening expression, uncertain whether she wanted to win or lose, and said to herself: ‘What god, envious of handsome youths, wants to destroy this one and send him in search of marriage, at the risk of his own dear life? I am not worth that much, I think. Nor is it his beauty that moves me (yet I could be touched by that too) but that he is still only a boy. He does not move me himself: it is his youth. What if he does have courage, and a spirit unafraid of dying? What if he is fourth in line from the ruler of the seas? What if he does love, and thinks so much of marriage with me, that he would die, if a harsh fate denies me to him? While you can, stranger, leave this blood-soaked marrying. Wedding me is a cruel thing. No one will refuse to have you, and you may be chosen by a wiser girl. – Yet why this concern when so many have already died before you?

‘“‘Let him look out for himself! Let him perish, since he has not been warned off by the death of so many suitors, and shows himself tired of life. – Should he die, then, because he wants to live with me, and suffer an unjust death as the penalty for loving? My victory would not avoid incurring hatred. But it is not my fault! I wish you would desist, or if you are set on it, I wish you might be the faster! How the virginal expression of a boy clings to his face! O! Poor Hippomenes, I wish you had never seen me! You were so fitted to live. But if I were luckier, if the harsh fates did not prevent my marriage, you would be the one I would want to share my bed with.’ She spoke: and inexperienced, feeling the touch of desire for the first time, not knowing what she does, she loves and does not realise she loves.

Bk 10:638-680 Venus tells her story: The foot-race

‘“Now her father and the people were calling out for the usual foot-race, when Hippomenes, Neptune’s descendant invoked my aid, as a suppliant: ‘Cytherea, I beg you to assist my daring, and encourage the fire of love you lit.’ A kindly breeze brought me the flattering prayer, and I confess it stirred me, though there was scant time to give him my help. There is a field, the people there call it the field of Tamasus, the richest earth in the island of Cyprus, which the men of old made sacred to me, and ordered it to be added to my temples, as a gift. A tree gleams in the middle of the field, with rustling golden leaves, and golden branches. Come from there, by chance, I was carrying three golden apples, I had picked, in my hands, and I approached Hippomenes, showing myself only to him, and told him how to use them.

‘“The trumpets gave the signal, and, leaning forward, they flashed from the starting line, and skimmed the surface of the sand, with flying feet. You would think them capable of running along the waves without wetting them, and passing over the ripened heads of the standing corn. The young man’s spirit was cheered by shouts and words of encouragement: ‘Run, Hippomenes! Now, now is the time to sprint! Use your full power, now! Don’t wait: you’ll win!’

‘“Who knows whether Megareus’s heroic son, or Schoeneus’s daughter, was more pleased with these words? O how often, when she could have overtaken him, she lingered, and watching his face for a while, left him behind against her will! Panting breath came from his weary throat, and the winning post was far off. Only then did Neptune’s scion throw away one of the fruits from the tree. The girl was astonished, and, eager for the shining apple, she ran off the course, and picked up the spinning gold. Hippomenes passed her: the stands resounded with the applause. She made up for the delay and the lost time by a burst of speed, and left the youth behind once more. Again she delayed when a second apple was thrown, followed, and passed the man. The last section of track was left. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘be near me, goddess who made me this gift!’ He threw the shining gold vigorously, sideways, into the deep field, from where she would take longer to get back. The girl seemed to hesitate as to whether she should chase it: I made her pick it up, and added weight to the fruit she held, and obstructed her equally with the heaviness of the burden and the delay. And lest my story be longer than the race itself, the virgin was overtaken: the winner led away his prize.

Bk 10:681-707 Venus tells her story: The transformation

‘“Adonis, did I deserve to be thanked, to have incense brought me? Unthinking, he neither gave thanks, nor offered incense to me. I was provoked to sudden anger, and pained by his contempt, so as not to be slighted in future, I decreed an example would be made of them, and I roused myself against them both.

‘“They were passing a temple, hidden in the deep woods, of Cybele mother of the gods, that noble Echion had built in former times fulfilling a vow, and the length of their journey persuaded them to rest. There, stirred by my divine power, an untimely desire to make love seized Hippomenes. Near the temple was a poorly lit hollow, like a cave, roofed with the natural pumice-stone, sacred to the old religion, where the priests had gathered together wooden figures of the ancient gods. They entered it, and desecrated the sanctuary, with forbidden intercourse. The sacred images averted their gaze, and the Great Mother, with the turreted crown, hesitated as to whether to plunge the guilty pair beneath the waters of the Styx: but the punishment seemed too light. So tawny manes spread over their necks, that, a moment ago, were smooth; their fingers curved into claws; forelegs were formed from arms; all their weight was in their breast; and their tails swept the surface of the sand. They had a fierce expression, roared instead of speaking, and frequented the woods for a marriage-bed. As lions, fearful to others, they tamely bite on Cybele’s bit. You must avoid, them, my love, and with them all the species of wild creature, that do not turn and run, but offer their breasts to the fight, lest your courage be the ruin of us both!”

Bk 10:708-739 Orpheus sings: The death of Adonis

‘She warned him, and made her way through the air, drawn by harnessed swans, but his courage defied the warning. By chance, his dogs, following a well-marked trail, roused a wild boar from its lair, and as it prepared to rush from the trees, Cinyras’s grandson caught it a glancing blow. Immediately the fierce boar dislodged the blood-stained spear, with its crooked snout, and chased the youth, who was scared and running hard. It sank its tusk into his groin, and flung him, dying, on the yellow sand.

‘Cytherea, carried in her light chariot through the midst of the heavens, by her swans’ swiftness, had not yet reached Cyprus: she heard from afar the groans of the dying boy, and turned the white birds towards him. When, from the heights, she saw the lifeless body, lying in its own blood, she leapt down, tearing her clothes, and tearing at her hair, as well, and beat at her breasts with fierce hands, complaining to the fates. “And yet not everything is in your power” she said. “Adonis, there shall be an everlasting token of my grief, and every year an imitation of your death will complete a re-enactment of my mourning. But your blood will be changed into a flower. Persephone, you were allowed to alter a woman’s body, Menthe’s, to fragrant mint: shall the transformation of my hero, of the blood of Cinyras, be grudged to me?” So saying, she sprinkled the blood with odorous nectar: and, at the touch, it swelled up, as bubbles emerge in yellow mud. In less than an hour, a flower, of the colour of blood, was created such as pomegranates carry, that hide their seeds under a tough rind. But enjoyment of it is brief; for, lightly clinging, and too easily fallen, the winds deflower it, which are likewise responsible for its name, windflower: anemone.’

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Book 11

• Bk 11:1-66 The death of Orpheus.
• Bk 11:67-84 The transformation of the Maenads.
• Bk 11:85-145 Midas and the golden touch.
• Bk 11:146-171 Pan and Apollo compete before Tmolus.
• Bk 11:172-193 Midas and the ass’s ears.
• Bk 11:194-220 Laomedon and the walls of Troy.
• Bk 11:221-265 Peleus and Thetis.
• Bk 11:266-345 Ceyx tells the story of Daedalion.
• Bk 11:346-409 Peleus and the wolf
• Bk 11:410-473 The separation of Ceyx and Alcyone.
• Bk 11:474-572 The Tempest
• Bk 11:573-649 The House of Sleep.
• Bk 11:650-709 Morpheus goes to Alcyone in the form of Ceyx.
• Bk 11:710-748 They are turned into birds.
• Bk 11:749-795 The transformation of Aesacus.

Bk 11:1-66 The death of Orpheus

While the poet of Thrace, with songs like these, drew to himself the trees, the souls of wild beasts, and the stones that followed him, see, how the frenzied Ciconian women, their breasts covered with animal skins, spy Orpheus from a hilltop, as he matches songs to the sounding strings. One of them, her hair scattered to the light breeze, called: ‘Behold, behold, this is the one who scorns us!’ and hurled her spear at the face of Apollo’s poet, as he was singing. Tipped with leaves, it marked him, without wounding. The next missile was a stone, that, thrown through the air, was itself overpowered by the harmony of voice and lyre, and fell at his feet, as though it were begging forgiveness for its mad audacity. But in fact the mindless attack mounted, without restraint, and mad fury ruled. All their missiles would have been frustrated by his song, but the huge clamour of the Berecyntian flutes of broken horn, the drums, and the breast-beating and howls of the Bacchantes, drowned the sound of the lyre. Then, finally, the stones grew red, with the blood of the poet, to whom they were deaf.

First, the innumerable birds, the snakes, and the procession of wild animals, still entranced by the voice of the singer, a mark of Orpheus’s triumph, were torn apart by the Maenads. Then they set their bloody hands on Orpheus, and gathered, like birds that spy the owl, the bird of night, wandering in the daylight, or as in the amphitheatre, on the morning of the staged events, on either side, a doomed stag, in the arena, is prey to the hounds. They rushed at the poet, and hurled their green-leaved thyrsi, made for a different use. Some threw clods of earth, some branches torn from the trees, and others flints. And so that their madness did not lack true weapons, by chance, oxen were turning the soil under the ploughshare, and, not far away from them, brawny farm workers were digging the solid earth, sweating hard to prepare it for use, who fled when they saw the throng, leaving their work tools behind. Hoes, heavy mattocks, and long rakes lay scattered through the empty fields. After catching these up, and ripping apart the oxen, that threatened them with their horns, the fierce women rushed back to kill the poet. As he stretched out his hands, speaking ineffectually for the first time ever, not affecting them in any way with his voice, the impious ones murdered him: and the spirit, breathed out through that mouth to which stones listened, and which was understood by the senses of wild creatures – O, God! – vanished down the wind.

The birds, lamenting, cried for you, Orpheus; the crowd of wild creatures; the hard flints; the trees that often gathered to your song, shedding their leaves, mourned you with bared crowns. They say the rivers, also, were swollen with their own tears, and the naiads and dryads, with dishevelled hair, put on sombre clothes. The poet’s limbs were strewn in different places: the head and the lyre you, Hebrus, received, and (a miracle!) floating in midstream, the lyre lamented mournfully; mournfully the lifeless tongue murmured; mournfully the banks echoed in reply. And now, carried onward to the sea, they left their native river-mouth and reached the shores of Lesbos, at Methymna. Here, as the head lay exposed on the alien sand, its moist hair dripping brine, a fierce snake attacked it. But at last Phoebus came, and prevented it, as it was about to bite, and turned the serpent’s gaping jaws to stone, and froze the mouth, wide open, as it was.

The ghost of Orpheus sank under the earth, and recognised all those places it had seen before; and, searching the fields of the Blessed, he found his wife again and held her eagerly in his arms. There they walk together side by side; now she goes in front, and he follows her; now he leads, and looks back as he can do, in safety now, at his Eurydice.’

Bk 11:67-84 The transformation of the Maenads

However, the god, Lyaeus, did not allow such wickedness by his followers to go unpunished. Grieved by the loss of the poet of his sacred rites, he immediately fastened down, with twisted roots, all the Thracian women who had seen the sin, since the path, that each one was on, at that moment, gripped their toes and forced the tips into the solid ground. As a bird, when it is caught in a snare, set by a cunning wild-fowler, and feels itself held, tightens the knot by its movement, beating and flapping; so each of the women, planted, stuck fast, terrified, tried uselessly to run. But the pliant roots held her, and checked her, struggling. When she looked for where her toenails, toes and feet were, she saw the wood spreading over the curve of her leg, and, trying to strike her thighs with grieving hands, she beat on oak: her breasts turned to oak: her shoulders were oak. You would have thought the jointed arms were real branches, and your thought would not have been wrong.

Bk 11:85-145 Midas and the golden touch

This did not satisfy Bacchus. He left the fields themselves, and with a worthier band of followers sought out the vineyards of his own Mount Tmolus, and the River Pactolus, though at that time it was not a golden stream, nor envied for its valuable sands. His familiar cohorts, the satyrs and bacchantes accompanied him, but Silenus was absent. The Phrygian countrymen had taken him captive, stumbling with age and wine, bound him with garlands, and led him to King Midas, to whom, with Athenian Eumolpus, Orpheus of Thrace had taught the Bacchic rites.

When the king recognised him as a friend and companion of his worship, he joyfully led a celebration of the guest’s arrival, lasting ten days and nights on end. And now, on the eleventh day, Lucifer had seen off the train of distant stars, and the king with gladness came to the fields of Lydia, and restored Silenus to his young foster-child.

Then the god, happy at his foster-father’s return, gave Midas control over the choice of a gift, which was pleasing, but futile, since he was doomed to make poor use of his reward. ‘Make it so that whatever I touch with my body, turns to yellow gold.’ he said. Bacchus accepted his choice, and gave him the harmful gift, sad that he had not asked for anything better. The Berecyntian king departed happily, rejoicing in his bane, and testing his faith in its powers by touching things, and scarcely believing it, when he broke off a green twig from the low foliage of the holm-oak: the twig was turned to gold. He picked up a stone from the ground: the stone also was pale gold. He touched a clod of earth, and by the power of touch, the clod became a nugget. He gathered the dry husks of corn: it was a golden harvest. He held an apple he had picked from a tree: you would think the Hesperides had given it to him. If he placed his fingers on the tall door-pillars, the pillars were seen to shine. When he washed his hands in clear water, the water flowing over his hands would have deceived Danaë.

His own mind could scarcely contain his expectations, dreaming of all things golden. As he was exulting, his servants set a table before him, heaped with cooked food, and loaves were not lacking. Then, indeed, if he touched the gift of Ceres with his hand, her gift hardened. If he tried, with eager bites, to tear the food, the food was covered with a yellow surface where his teeth touched. He mixed pure water with wine, the other gift of his benefactor, but molten gold could be seen trickling through his lips.

Dismayed by this strange misfortune, rich and unhappy, he tries to flee his riches, and hates what he wished for a moment ago. No abundance can relieve his famine: his throat is parched with burning thirst, and, justly, he is tortured by the hateful gold. Lifting his shining hands and arms to heaven, he cries out: ‘Father, Bacchus, forgive me! I have sinned. But have pity on me, I beg you, and save me from this costly evil!’ The will of the gods is kindly. Bacchus, when he confessed his fault restored him, and took back what he had given in fulfilment of his promise. ‘So you do not remain coated with the gold you wished for so foolishly,’ he said, ‘go to the river by great Sardis, make your way up the bright ridge against the falling waters, till you come to the source of the stream, and plunge your head and body at the same moment into the foaming fountain, where it gushes out, and at the same time wash away your sin.’ The king went to the river as he was ordered: the golden virtue coloured the waters, and passed from his human body into the stream. Even now, gathering the grains of gold from the ancient vein, the fields harden, their soil soaked by the pale yellow waters.

Bk 11:146-171 Pan and Apollo compete before Tmolus

Hating wealth, Midas lived among woods and fields, and the mountain caves Pan always inhabits. But he remained dull-witted, and, as before, his foolish mind was destined once again to hurt its owner. Mount Tmolus, stands steep and high, commanding a wide view of the distant sea, its sloping sides extending to Sardis on the one side, and as far as tiny Hypaepae on the other. While Pan was there, playing light airs on his reeds glued together with wax, he boasted of his pipings, to the gentle nymphs, and dared to speak slightingly of Apollo’s song compared with his own, and entered an unequal contest with Tmolus, the god of the mountain, as judge.

The aged judge was seated on his mountain-top and shook his ears free of the trees. Only an oak-wreath circled his dark hair, and acorns brushed against his hollow temples. Looking at the god of the flocks he said: ‘There is nothing to prevent my judging.’ Pan sounded the rustic reeds, and entranced Midas (who chanced to be near the playing) with wild pipings. Following this, sacred Tmolus turned his face towards that of Phoebus: his forests followed.

Phoebus’s golden hair was wreathed with laurel from Parnassus, and his robes dyed with Tyrian purple, swept the earth. He held his lyre, inlaid with gems and Indian ivory, in his left hand, and the plectrum in the other. His attitude was that of a true artist. Then with skilled fingers, he plucked the strings, and Tmolus, captivated by their sweetness, ordered Pan to lower his pipes in submission to the lyre.

Bk 11:172-193 Midas and the ass’s ears

The judgment of the sacred mountain-god satisfied all opinions, and yet Midas’s voice alone challenged it and called it unjust. The god of Delos did not allow such undiscriminating ears to keep their human form, but drew them out and covered them with shaggy grey hair, and made them flexible at the base, and gave them powers of movement. Though the rest was human, he was punished in that sole aspect: he wore the ears of a slow-moving ass. He was anxious to conceal them, and tried to detract from the shameful ugliness of his head with a purple turban. But the servant who used to trim his long hair with a blade, found it out, who, since he dare not reveal the disgrace he had seen, but eager to broadcast it to the four winds, and unable to keep it to himself, went off quietly and dug a hole in the soil. In a tiny voice, he whispered to the hollow earth, and buried his spoken evidence under the infill, and stole away having closed up the hidden trench. But a thick bed of quivering reeds began to shoot up there, and as soon as they had grown, at the end of the year, they gave the burrower away: stirred gently, then, by the wind they repeated the buried words, and testified against his master.

Bk 11:194-220 Laomedon and the walls of Troy

Having punished him, Latona’s son left Mount Tmolus and, flying through the clear air, he came to earth in the country of Laomedon, this side of the narrows of the Hellespont, named from Helle, daughter of Nephele. To the right of the deeps of Sigeum, and to the left of those of Rhoeteum, there was an ancient altar of Jupiter the Thunderer, ‘source of all oracles’. There, Apollo saw Laomedon building the foundations of the new city of Troy. The great undertaking prospering with difficulty, and demanding no little resources, he, and Neptune, trident-bearing father of the swelling sea, put on mortal form, and built the walls of the city for the Phrygian king for an agreed amount in gold. The edifice stood there.

But the king denied them payment, and as a crowning treachery, perjured himself by claiming they were lying. The ruler of the ocean said: ‘You will not go unpunished’, and he turned all his waters against the shores of tight-fisted Troy. He flooded the land to form a strait, swept away the farmers’ crops, and buried the fields beneath the waves. Even this was insufficient punishment: He demanded also that Hesione, the king’s daughter, be given to a sea-monster, whom Hercules freed, as she was chained to the solid rock. Hercules demanded the payment promised, an agreed number of horses. But the reward for all his work being refused, he seized the twice-perjured walls of conquered Troy. Telamon, his companion, did not go without honour, and Hesione was given to him in marriage.

Peleus, Telamon’s brother, was already distinguished by having a goddess as his wife, and was not more proud of being Jupiter’s grandson (his father Aeacus being the son of Jove by Aegina) as his son-in-law (by marrying Thetis), since he was not the only brother to be Jove’s grandson, but he was the only one to marry a goddess.

Bk 11:221-265 Peleus and Thetis

For aged Proteus had said to Thetis: ‘Goddess of the waves, conceive: you will be the mother of a warrior who will surpass his father’s deeds when he reaches manhood, and will be more famous than him.’ So Jupiter, lest earth produce someone greater than himself, fled from union with ocean-dwelling Thetis, though he had felt the hot fire of passion in his heart, and ordered his grandson, Peleus, son of Aeacus, to fulfil his promise, on his behalf, and enter the arms of the sea-maiden.

There is a bay, shaped like a scythe, in Haemonia, its arms projecting in a curved arc, which would provide a harbour, if the waves were deeper: the waters cover the surface of the sand: the shore is solid earth, that takes no footprints, does not hinder a passage, and has no seaweed covering it. A myrtle grove grows nearby, dense with its red and black berries. There is a cave in the centre, whether fashioned by art or nature is uncertain, but probably by art. Often, Thetis you used to come there, naked, seated on a bridled dolphin. There Peleus found you, as you lay, overcome by sleep, and when, though influenced by his entreaties, you refused him, he prepared to use force, winding both arms round your neck.

He would have taken you then, if you had not, by your well-known arts, frequently changed your form. But when you became a bird, he still held you as a bird; now as a tree, Peleus clung fast to the tree. Your third guise was a striped tigress: in fear of that the son of Aeacus loosed his arms from your body. Then he entreated the gods of the sea, with wine poured over the waters, with sheep’s entrails, and the smoke of incense, until Proteus, the Carpathian seer spoke from his deep gulfs: ‘Son of Aeacus, you will have the bride you desire, if you bind her, unawares, with nooses and tight cords, while she is lulled asleep in the rocky cave. Though she deceives you with a hundred counterfeit shapes, hold her to you, whatever she becomes, until she is again what she was before.’ So he spoke, and hid his face below the waves, letting the waters flow in upon his final words.

Now Titan was low in the sky, and, his chariot pointed downwards, was close to the western ocean, when the lovely Nereid left the waves, and came to her accustomed bed. Peleus had scarcely taken a good grip of her virgin body, when she took on new forms, until she realised her limbs were tightly bound, and her arms spread wide apart. Then at length she sighed, saying: ‘Not without some god’s help have you won,’ and she showed herself as Thetis. When she acknowledged herself, the hero embraced her, achieved his wish, and conceived with her the mighty Achilles.

Bk 11:266-345 Ceyx tells the story of Daedalion

Peleus was happy in his wife and son, and was a man for whom all things were successful, if you exclude the crime of killing his brother Phocus. Guilty of shedding his brother’s blood, exiled from his father’s country, the soil of Trachin gave him sanctuary. Here Ceyx, son of Lucifer, the morning star, ruled, without force or shedding blood, his face filled with his father’s radiance. At that time he was sad and unlike his normal self, mourning the loss of his brother, Daedalion. The son of Aeacus came to him, weary with cares and travel, and entered the city with a few companions. He left the flocks of sheep and cattle he had brought with him in a shady valley not far from the city walls. When he was first allowed to meet the king, he held out the draped olive branch of the suppliant, and told him whose son he was, concealed his crime, and lied about the cause of his flight. He begged to be allowed to support himself in the city or the fields. The king of Trachis replied with these kind words: ‘Peleus, the opportunities in our kingdom are open even to the lower ranks, and I do not rule an inhospitable realm. Add to this willingness, the powerful influence of a noble name, and your being the grandson of Jove. So waste no time in supplication! You will receive all that you wish. Take a share of everything you see, and call it yours! I wish what you see was better than it is!’

And he wept. Peleus and his companions asked what the cause was of so much grief, to which he replied: ‘Perhaps you think that bird, the hawk, that lives on prey, and terrifies other winged creatures, always had feathers. He was once a man (and – inner nature is so consistent – even then he was fierce, warlike and equipped for violence): his name, Daedalion. We were the sons of Lucifer, who summons the dawn, and is last to leave the sky. I care for peace; preserving peace, I care for; and my wife: savage warfare pleased my brother. His power subdued kings and nations, that now, transformed, flutters the doves of Boeotia. He had a daughter, Chione, endowed with great beauty, who at fourteen, and ready for marriage, had a thousand suitors. It chanced that Phoebus-Apollo, and Mercury, son of Maia, one returning from his sacred Delphi, the other from the summit of Cyllene, saw her at the same instant, and, at the same instant, flushed with desire. Apollo deferred his hope of union with her till the night, but Mercury could not wait, and touched the virgin’s face with his sleep-inducing wand. She lay beneath that potent touch, and suffered the assault of the god. Night scattered the heavens with stars: Phoebus, having gained access disguised as an old woman, enjoyed the delight that had been forestalled. When Chione came to full term she bore the wing-footed god a son, Autolycus, crafty, talented in all intrigue, who could make black seem white, and white black, not unworthy of his father; and to Phoebus (it was a twin birth) she bore Philammon, famous for tuneful song and the lyre.

But what is the benefit in having produced two sons, in having pleased two gods, in being the child of a powerful father, and grandchild of the shining one? Is glory not harmful also to many? It certainly harmed her! She set herself above Diana, and criticized the goddess’s beauty. But, the goddess, moved by violent anger, said to her: “Then I must satisfy you with action.” Without hesitating, she bent her bow, sent an arrow from the string, and pierced the tongue, that was at fault, with the shaft. The tongue was silent, neither sound nor attempts at words followed: and as she tried to speak, her life ended in blood.

I embraced her, in my misery, feeling a father’s grief in my heart, and spoke words of comfort to my dear brother. Her father heard them no more than the cliffs hear the murmuring of the sea, mourning his lost one, bitterly. But when he saw the burning of her body, four times he made as if to throw himself into the blazing pyre; four times was thrust back; fled madly; and ran where there were no tracks, like a bullock whose neck is tender from the yoke, tormented by hornets’ stings. Even then to me he seemed to run faster than humanly possible, and you would have thought he had winged feet.

He escaped us all, swift with desire for death, and gained the summit of Parnassus. When Daedalion hurled himself from the high cliffs, Apollo, pitying him, turned him into a bird, and lifted him, pendent on suddenly-formed wings, giving him a hooked beak, and curved talons, his former courage, and greater strength of body. Now, as a hawk, he rages against all birds, is merciful to none, and, suffering, is a cause of suffering.’

Bk 11:346-409 Peleus and the wolf

While Lucifer’s son was telling the strange story of his brother, Peleus’s herdsman, Onetor the Phocian, came racing up, breathing hard with the pace, shouting: ‘Peleus! Peleus! I bring you news of grave trouble.’ Peleus ordered him to tell it, whatever it was, the Trachinian king himself waiting with anxious face. The herdsman said: ‘When the sun was at the zenith, seeing as much of the track left as he had already run, I had driven the tired oxen down to the bay. Some of the bullocks were kneeling on the yellow sand, lying there gazing out at the wide expanse of ocean; some were wandering slowly here and there; while others had waded out and stood up their necks in the water. There is a temple near the sea, not gleaming with gold and marble, but made of heavy timber, and shaded by an ancient grove. Nereus and the Nereids haunt it (a sailor, drying his nets on the shore, told me they were the gods of those waters). Close to it, there is a swamp, choked with dense willows, which the salt flood has turned into marshland. From it, a wolf, a huge beast, terrifies the places round about with its heavy crashing noises. It came out of the marsh reeds, its deadly jaws smeared with foam and clots of blood, and its eyes filled with red flame. It was savage with rage and hunger, more with rage; since though hungry it did not bother with the dead cattle, or with satisfying its deadly appetite, but wounded the whole herd, slaughtering them all in its hostility. Some of our men were wounded by its fatal jaws while protecting them, and given up as dead. The shore and the shallows were red with blood, and the marshes full of bellowing. But delay is fatal: the thing allows no hesitation. While there are some of us left, let us encounter it in armour, and, seizing our weapons, meet with it carrying spears!’

So the countryman spoke: the losses did not stir Peleus: conscious of his guilt he concluded that Psamathe, the bereaved Nereid, was sending a funeral offering to her murdered son Phocus, by means of those same losses. Oetean King Ceyx ordered his men to put on their armour, and take their deadly spears, while he was himself preparing to go with them. But Alcyone, his wife, disturbed by the shouting, scattering her hair that she had not yet quite arranged, flung herself on her husband’s neck, begging him, with words and tears, to send help, but not to go himself, and protect both their lives, by protecting his own. Peleus, the son of Aeacus, said: ‘Queen Alcyone, forget these loving fears that so become you! I am grateful for your husband’s offer of help, but I have no wish for arms to be used against the creature on my behalf. I must pray, instead, to the goddess of the ocean!’

There was a high tower; a beacon on top of the citadel; a welcome sight for labouring vessels. They climbed up, and looked out, with murmuring sighs, at the cattle lying on the shore, seeing their rampaging killer with bloody jaws, its shaggy pelt dripping gore. There, stretching his hands out towards the shores of the open sea, Peleus prayed to sea-born Psamathe to forget her anger, and to aid him. She was unmoved by the prayers of the son of Aeacus, but Thetis, as a suppliant for her husband, obtained her forgiveness.

The wolf persisted even when ordered away from the savage slaughter, maddened by the taste of blood, until the goddess changed it to marble, as it was clinging to the wounded neck of a heifer. The body remained completely the same, except for its colour: the colour of the stone showed it no longer wolf, no longer to be feared. But the fates did not allow the exiled Peleus to remain in that country. The wandering fugitive reached Magnesia, and there was absolved of the murder by Haemonian King Acastus.

Bk 11:410-473 The separation of Ceyx and Alcyone

Meanwhile Ceyx, troubled by heart’s anxiety, concerning his brother, and what had followed his brother’s strange fate, was preparing to go and consult the sacred oracle of Apollo, at Claros, that reveals human affairs. The infamous Phorbas, leader of the Phlegyans, had made Delphi inaccessible. Nevertheless, before he set out, he discussed it with you, faithful Alcyone.

She felt a chill, immediately, deep in her marrow, her face grew boxwood-pale, and her cheeks were drenched in flowing tears. Three times she tried to speak, three times her face was wet with weeping, and sobs interrupting her loving reproaches, she said: ‘What sin of mine has turned your mind to this, dear one? Where is that care for me that used to come first? Can you now leave Alcyone behind, without a thought? Does it please you now to travel far? Am I dearer to you, away from you? But I suppose your way is overland, and I shall only grieve, not fear, for you. My anxieties will be free from terror.

The waters scare me, and the sombre face of the deep: and lately I saw wrecked timbers on the shore, and I have often read the names on empty tombs. Do not allow your mind to acquire false confidence, because Aeolus, son of Hippotas, is your father-in-law, who keeps the strong winds imprisoned, and, when he wishes, calms the sea. When once the winds are released and hold sway over the waters, nothing can oppose them: every country, every ocean is exposed to them. They vex the clouds in the sky, and create the red lightning-flashes from their fierce collisions. The more I know of them (I do know them, often seeing them as a child in my father’s house) the more I consider them to be feared. But if no prayers can alter your purpose, dear one, husband, if you are so fixed on going, take me with you, also! Then we shall be storm-tossed together, and at least I shall know what I fear, together we shall bear whatever comes, together we shall be borne over the waters.’

The star-born husband was moved by the daughter of Aeolus’s words and tears: there was no less love in himself. But he would not relinquish his planned sea-journey, nor did he want to put Alcyone in peril. His anxious heart tried to comfort her, with many words, yet, despite that, he could not win his case. He added this further solace, the only one that moved his lover: ‘Every delay will seem long to us indeed, but I swear to you by my father’s light, to return to you as long as the fates allow it, before the moon has twice completed her circle.’

When her hopes had been revived by these promises of return, he immediately ordered the ship to be dragged down the slipway, launched into the sea, and fitted out with her gear. Alcyone, seeing this, as if she foresaw what was to come, shuddered again, and she gave way to a flood of tears. She hugged him, and, in wretched misery, said a last ‘Farewell’ and her whole body gave way beneath her. With Ceyx still seeking reasons for delay, the young crew, double-ranked, pulled on the oars, with deep-chested strokes, and cut the water with their rhythmic blows.

She raised her wet eyes, and leaning forward could see her husband standing on the curved afterdeck, waving his hand, and she returned the signal. When he was further from shore, and she could no longer recognise his features, she followed the fleeting ship with her gaze, while she could. When even that was too far off to be seen, she still could see the topsails unfurling from the masthead. When no sails could be seen, with heavy heart, she sought out the empty bedroom, and threw herself on the bed. The room and the bed provoked more tears and reminded her of her absent half.

Bk 11:474-572 The Tempest

They had left the harbour, and the breeze was stirring the rigging: the captain shipped the oars, ran the yard up to the top of the mast, and put on all sail to catch the freshening breeze. The ship was cutting through the waves, no more than mid-way across, maybe less, far from either shore, when, at nightfall, the sea began to whiten with swelling waves, and the east wind to blow with greater strength.

The captain shouts: ‘Lower the yards, now, and close reef all sails.’ He shouts the order but the adverse wind drowns it, and his voice cannot be heard above the breaking seas. Yet, some of the crew, on their own initiative, remove the oars, some protect the bulwarks, some deny the wind canvas-room. Here one bails water back into the water, another secures the spars. While these things are being done, randomly, the storm increases its severity, and the roaring winds attack from every quarter, stirring the angry waves. The captain himself is fearful, and admits he does not know how things stand, what to order, what to prevent: such is the weight of destruction, so much more powerful than his skill.

There is uproar: men shouting, the rigging straining, the sound of the breaking sea from a weight of sea, and the crash of thunder. The waves rise up and seem to form the sky, and their spray touches the lowering clouds. Now the water is tainted yellow, with sand churned from the depths, now blacker than the Styx, while the waves break white with hissing foam. The Trachinian ship is driven in the grip of fate, now lifted on high, as if looking down on the valleys from a mountain summit, into the depths of Acheron: now sinking, caught in the trough of the wave, staring at heaven from the infernal pool. Again and again the force of the flood strikes the sides with a huge crash, sounding no lighter a blow than when, sometime, an iron ram, or a ballista, strikes a damaged fortress. As fierce lions, on the attack, drive themselves onto the armoured chests and extended spears of the hunters, so the waves drove forward in the rising winds, reaching the height of the ship, and higher, above it.

And now the wooden wedges give way, and, stripped of their wax covering, cracks appear, offering the lethal waves a passage. Look how the heavy rain falls from the melting clouds, and you would think the whole heaven was emptying into the sea, and the sea was filling the heavenly zones. The sails are soaked with spray, and the seawater mingles with water from the heavens. The sky is starless, and the murky night is full of its own and the storm’s gloom. Flashes of lightning cleave it, and give light: the rain is illuminated by the lightning flares.

Now the sea pours into the ship’s hollow hull, as well. As a soldier, more outstanding than the rest, who has often tried to scale the battlement of a besieged city, succeeds at last, and fired with a love of glory, takes the wall, one man in a thousand; so when the waves have battered nine times against the steep sides, the tenth wave surging with greater impetus rushes on, and does not cease its assault on the beleaguered craft, until it breaches the conquered vessel’s defences. So one part of the sea is still trying to take the ship, and part is already inside.

All is confusion, as a city is confused when some are undermining the walls from outside, while others hold them from within. Skill fails, and courage ebbs, and as may separate deaths as advancing waves seem to rush upon them and burst over them. One cannot hold his tears, another is stupefied, and one cries out that they are fortunate whom proper burial rites await. One worships the gods in prayer, and, lifting his arms in vain to the sky, he cannot see, begs for help. Some think of fathers and brothers, some of home and children, or whatever they have left behind. But Alcyone is what moves Ceyx: nothing but Alcyone is on Ceyx’s lips, and though he only longs for her, he rejoices that she is not there.

How he would like to see his native shores again, and turn his last gaze towards his home, but he knows not where it is: the sea swirls in such vortices, and the covering shadows of pitch-black clouds so hide the sky, that it mirrors the aspect of night. The mast is shattered by the onset of a storm-driven whirlwind, and the rudder is shattered. One ultimate wave, like a conqueror delighting in his spoils, rears up gazing down at the other waves, and, as if one tore Pindus, and Athos, from their base, and threw them utterly into the open sea, it fell headlong, and the weight and the impulse together, drove the ship to the bottom. The majority of the crew met their fate with the ship, driven down by the mass of water, never to return to the light. The rest clung to broken pieces of the vessel.

Ceyx himself, held on to a fragment of the wreck, with a hand more used to holding a sceptre, and called on his father, Lucifer, and his father-in-law, Aeolus, but alas, in vain. Mostly it is his wife’s, Alcyone’s, name on his lips.

He thinks of her, and speaks to her, and prays that the waves might carry his body to her sight, and that, lifeless, he might be entombed by her dear hands. While he can swim, and as often as the waves allow him to open his mouth, he speaks the name of Alcyone, far off, until the waves themselves murmur it, See, a black arc of water breaks over the heart of the sea, and the bursting wave buries his drowning head.

Lucifer was indistinct, and not to be known, that dawn, and since he was not allowed to leave the sky, he covered his face in dense cloud.

Bk 11:573-649 The House of Sleep

Meanwhile, Alcyone, Aeolus’s daughter, counts the nights, unaware of this great misfortune, quickly weaving clothes for him to wear, and for herself, for when he returns, and she promises herself the homecoming that will not be. She piously offers incense to all the gods, but worships mostly at Juno’s temple, coming to the altars for a man who is no more, hoping her husband is safe, and returning to her, preferring her above any other woman. Of all her prayers, only this could be granted.

The goddess could no longer bear these appeals for one who was dead, and, to free her altar from those inauspicious hands, she said: ‘Iris, most faithful carrier of my words, go quickly to the heavy halls of Sleep, and order him to send Alcyone a dream-figure in the shape of her dead Ceyx, to tell her his true fate.’ As she spoke, Iris donned her thousand-coloured robe, and, tracing her watery bow on the sky, she searched out, as ordered, the palace of that king, hid under cloud.

There is a deeply cut cave, a hollow mountain, near the Cimmerian country, the house and sanctuary of drowsy Sleep. Phoebus can never reach it with his dawn, mid-day or sunset rays. Clouds mixed with fog, and shadows of the half-light, are exhaled from the ground. No waking cockerel summons Aurora with his crowing: no dog disturbs the silence with its anxious barking, or goose, cackling, more alert than a dog. No beasts, or cattle, or branches in the breeze, no clamour of human tongues. There still silence dwells. But out of the stony depths flows Lethe’s stream, whose waves, sliding over the loose pebbles, with their murmur, induce drowsiness. In front of the cave mouth a wealth of poppies flourish, and innumerable herbs, from whose juices dew-wet Night gathers sleep, and scatters it over the darkened earth. There are no doors in the palace, lest a turning hinge lets out a creak, and no guard at the threshold. But in the cave’s centre there is a tall bed made of ebony, downy, black-hued, spread with a dark-grey sheet, where the god himself lies, his limbs relaxed in slumber. Around him, here and there, lie uncertain dreams, taking different forms, as many as the ears of corn at harvest, as the trees bear leaves, or grains of sand are thrown onshore.

When the nymph entered and, with her hands, brushed aside the dreams in her way, the sacred place shone with the light of her robes. The god, hardly able to lift his eyes heavy with sleep, again and again, falling back, striking his nodding chin on his chest, at last shook himself free of his own influence, and resting on an elbow asked her (for he knew her) why she had come, and she replied:

‘Sleep, all things’ rest: Sleep, gentlest of the gods, the spirit’s peace, care flies from: who soothes the body wearied with toil, and readies it for fresh labours: Sleep, order a likeness, that mirrors his true form, and let it go, the image of King Ceyx, to Alcyone, in Trachin of Hercules, and depict a phantasm of the wreck. This, Juno commands.’

After she had completed her commission, Iris departed no longer able to withstand the power of sleep, and, feeling the drowsiness steal over her body, she fled, and recrossed the arch by which she had lately come.

From a throng of a thousand sons, his father roused Morpheus, a master craftsman and simulator of human forms. No one else is as clever at expressing the movement, the features, and the sound of speech. He depicts the clothes and the usual accents. He alone imitates human beings. A second son becomes beast, or bird, or long snake’s body. The gods call him Icelos, the mortal crowd Phobetor. The third, of diverse artistry, is Phantasos: he takes illusory shapes of all inanimate things, earth, stones, rivers, trees. These are the ones that show themselves by night to kings and generals, the rest wander among citizens and commoners. Old Somnus passed them by, choosing one of all these brothers, Morpheus, to carry out the command of Iris, daughter of Thaumas, and relaxing again into sweet drowsiness, his head drooped, and he settled into his deep bed.

Bk 11:650-709 Morpheus goes to Alcyone in the form of Ceyx

Flying through the shadows on noiseless wings, Morpheus, after a short delay, comes to the Haemonian city. Shedding his wings, he takes the shape of Ceyx, pallid like the dead, and naked, and stands before his unfortunate wife’s bed. He appears with sodden beard, and seawater dripping from his matted hair. Then he bends over her pillow, with tears streaming down his face, and says: ‘My poor wife, do you know your Ceyx, or has my face altered in death? Look at me: you will recognise me, and find for a husband, a husband’s shade! Your prayers have brought me no help, Alcyone! I am dead! Do not hold out false hopes of my return! Storm-laden Auster, the south wind, caught the ship in Aegean waters, and tossed in tempestuous blasts, wrecked her there. My lips, calling helplessly on your name, drank the waves. No dubious author announces this news to you, nor do you hear it as a vague report: I myself, drowned, as you see me before you, tell my fate. Get up, act, shed tears, wear mourning: do not let me go down unwept to Tartarus’s void.’

Morpheus spoke these words in a voice she would believe to be her husband’s (the tears that he wept also seemed real tears) and his hands revealed Ceyx’s gestures. Alcyone groaned, tearfully, stirring her arms in sleep, and seeking his body, grasped only air, and cried out: ‘Wait for me! Where do you vanish? We will go together.’ Roused by her own voice, and her husband’s image, she started up out of sleep. First she gazed round to see if he was still there, the one she had just seen. At the sound of her cry the servants had brought a lamp. Not finding him anywhere, she struck her face with her hands, tore her clothes from her breasts, and beat at the breasts themselves. She did not wait to loosen her hair, but tore at it, and shouted at her nurse, who asked the cause of her grief: ‘Alcyone is nothing, is nothing: she has died together with her Ceyx. Be done with soothing words! He is wrecked: I saw him, I knew him, I stretched out my hands towards him as he vanished, eager to hold him back. It was a shadow, yet it was my husband’s true shadow, made manifest. True, he did not have his accustomed features, if you ask me, nor did his face shine as before. But pallid and naked, with dripping hair, I, the unfortunate one, saw him. Look, my poor husband stood on that very spot,’ and she tried to find a trace of his footprints. ‘This is what I feared, with my divining mind, this: and I begged you not to leave me, chasing the winds. But, for certain, I should have desired you to take me with you, since you were going to your death. How good it would have been to have gone with you: then no part of my life would have lacked your presence, nor would we be separated by death. Now I have died absent from myself, and am thrown through the waves, absently, and the sea takes me, without me.

My mind would treat me more cruelly than the sea, if I should try to live on, and fight to overcome my sorrow! But I shall not fight, nor leave you, my poor husband, and at least now I shall come as your companion. If not the sepulchral urn the lettered stone will join us: if I shall not touch you, bone to my bone, still I will touch you, name to name.’ Grief choked further words, and lamentation took their place wholly, and sighs drawn from a stricken heart.

Bk 11:710-748 They are turned into birds

Morning had broken. She went out of the house towards the shore, sadly seeking the place where she had watched him depart. And while she stayed there, and while she was saying: ‘Here he loosed the rope, on this strand he kissed me as he left,’ and while she recalled the significant actions by their locations, and looked seawards, she saw in the flowing waves what looked like a body, unsure at first what it was: after the tide had brought it a little nearer, though it was some way off, it was clearly a body. She did not know whose it was, but was moved by the omen of this shipwrecked man, and as if she wept for the unknown dead, she cried out: ‘Alas for you, poor soul, whoever you may be, and your wife, if you have one!’ The body had been washed nearer by the sea, and the more she gazed at it, the smaller and smaller shrank her courage: woe! Now it was close to land, now she could see who it was: it was her husband! She cried out: ‘It’s him!’ and together tearing at cheeks, and hair, and clothes she stretched out her trembling hands to Ceyx, saying: ‘O, is it like this, dear husband, is it like this, wretched one, you return to me?

A breakwater built by the waves, broke the initial force of the sea, and weakened the onrush of the tide. Though it was amazing that she could do so, she leapt onto it: she flew, and, beating the soft air on new-found wings, a sorrowing bird, she skimmed the surface of the waves. As she flew, her plaintive voice came from a slender beak, like someone grieving and full of sorrows. When she reached the mute and bloodless corpse, she clasped the dear limbs with her new wings and kissed the cold lips in vain with her hard beak.

People doubted whether Ceyx felt this, or merely seemed to raise his face by a movement of the waves, but he did feel it: and at last through the gods’ pity, both were changed to birds, the halcyons. Though they suffered the same fate, their love remained as well: and their bonds were not weakened, by their feathered form. They mate and rear their young, and Alcyone broods on her nest, for seven calm days in the wintertime, floating on the water’s surface. Then the waves are stilled: Aeolus imprisons the winds and forbids their roaming, and controls his grandsons’ waves.

Bk 11:749-795 The transformation of Aesacus

Seeing these birds flying together over the wide sea, some old man praised those affections maintained till the end. Someone near by, or the same man (pointing to a long-necked diving bird) said: ‘That bird also, skimming over the ocean, trailing his slender legs, is a descendant of kings. If you want to trace his ancestry in unbroken line to himself, its source was Ilus the younger, the son of Tros, and his brothers Assaracus, and Ganymede, whom Jove snatched, Ilus’s son, old Laomedon, and his son Priam, whom fate assigned to Troy’s last days. That bird was Hector’s brother, Aesacus, who, if he had not met his strange fate in youth, would perhaps have had no less a name than Hector, though Hecuba, daughter of Dymas, bore Priam the first, the other Aesacus, is said to have been born to Alexirrhoë, daughter of two-horned Granicus, the river-god, in secret, under the shadow of Mount Ida.

He hated cities, and lived in the remote mountains, and insignificant country places, far away from the glittering court, and rarely visited crowded Ilium. Yet he did not have an uncultured heart, or one averse to love, and he often pursued Hesperie, the River Cebren’s daughter, through all the woodland glades, whom he had caught sight of, drying her flowing hair, in the sun, on her father’s shore. The nymph fled on sight, as a frightened hind flees the tawny wolf, or a wild duck, caught far from the pool she left, the hawk. But the Trojan hero, driven by swift love, followed her, driven by swift fear. Behold, a serpent, hidden in the grass, bit her foot with his curving fang, as she fled by, and left his poison in her body. Her flight ended with her life. The lover clasped her unbreathing body and cried: ‘I regret, I regret I followed you! But I did not expect this, and it was not worth this to attempt to win you. We two have destroyed you, poor girl: the wound given by a snake, the cause of it all myself! Let me be the more accursed, if I do not send you solace by my death.’

He spoke, and threw himself from a cliff, eroded below by the rough waves, into the sea. Tethys, pitying him, caught him gently as he fell, clothed him with feathers as he floated on the water, and denied him the opportunity to choose his death. The lover was angered, that he was forced to live, against his will, and that his spirit was thwarted, wishing to leave its unhappy residence. When he had gained the new wings on his shoulders, he flew up and threw his body again into the sea. His feathers broke his fall. In a rage, Aesacus dived headlong into the deep and tried endlessly to find a path to death. His love made him lean: his legs are long between the joints: his neck remained long: his head is far from his body. He loves seawater, and from diving there he takes his name, mergus, the diver.

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Book 12

• Bk 12:1-38 Iphigenia at Aulis.
• Bk 12:39-63 The House of Rumour
• Bk 12:64-145 The death and transformation of Cycnus.
• Bk 12:146-209 Nestor tells the story of Caeneus-Caenis.
• Bk 12:210-244 Nestor tells of the battle of Lapiths and Centaurs.
• Bk 12:245-289 The deaths of Amycus, Gryneus, Cometes.
• Bk 12:290-326 The deaths of Corythus, Aphidas and others.
• Bk 12:327-392 Pirithoüs, Theseus and Peleus join the fight
• Bk 12:393-428 Cyllarus and Hylonome.
• Bk 12:429-535 The transformation of Caeneus.
• Bk 12:536-579 Nestor tells of the death of Periclymenus.
• Bk 12:579-628 The death of Achilles.

Bk 12:1-38 Iphigenia at Aulis

The father, Priam, mourned for the son, Aesacus, not knowing that he was still alive in winged form. Hector with his brothers had also, inappropriately, offered sacrifices at a tomb inscribed with his name. Paris was not present at this sad ritual, he, who presently brought extended war on his country because of the wife he had stolen. The whole Pelasgian race, joined together to pursue him, in a thousand ships, and vengeance would not have been long in coming had not fierce winds made the seas un-navigable, and the land of Boeotia detained the waiting ships in the fishing-grounds of Aulis. After they had prepared a sacrifice to Jupiter there, after the customs of their country, and when the ancient altar was alive with the kindled flames, The Greeks saw a dark-green snake sliding into a plane tree that stood near to where they had begun the sacrifice. There was a nest with eight young birds in the crown of the tree, and these the serpent seized and swallowed in its eager jaws, together with the mother bird, who circled her doomed fledglings.

They looked at it wonderingly, but Calchas, the seer, son of Thestor, interpreted the truth, saying: ‘We will conquer, Greeks, rejoice! Troy will fall, though our efforts will be of long duration,’ and he divined nine years of war from the nine birds. The snake, was turned to stone, exactly as it was, twined around the green branches, and stamped in the stone its serpent shape.

Boreas, the north-wind, continued to stir the waves violently, and would not grant the warships a crossing, and some thought Neptune was sparing Troy, because he had built its walls. But not Calchas. He knew and did not withhold from them, that a virgin’s blood would appease the wrath of Diana, the virgin goddess. When consideration of the common cause had conquered affection, and the king had suppressed the father, and as Iphigenia stood, among her weeping attendants, before the altar, to surrender her innocent blood, the goddess was vanquished, and veiled their eyes in mist, and, in the midst of the rites and confusion of the sacrifice, and the cries of the suppliants, they say she substituted a hind for the Mycenean girl. When, therefore, Diana had been appeased, by the required victim, and the sea’s anger had subsided simultaneously with that of Phoebe, the thousand ships, driven by a tail wind, reached the shores of Phrygia, after many adventures.

Bk 12:39-63 The House of Rumour

There is a place at the centre of the World, between the zones of earth, sea, and sky, at the boundary of the three worlds. From here, whatever exists is seen, however far away, and every voice reaches listening ears. Rumour lives there, choosing a house for herself on a high mountain summit, adding innumerable entrances, a thousand openings, and no doors to bar the threshold. It is open night and day: and is all of sounding bronze. All rustles with noise, echoes voices, and repeats what is heard. There is no peace within: no silence anywhere. Yet there is no clamour, only the subdued murmur of voices, like the waves of the sea, if you hear them far off, or like the sound of distant thunder when Jupiter makes the dark clouds rumble.

Crowds fill the hallways: a fickle populace comes and goes, and, mingling truth randomly with fiction, a thousand rumours wander, and confused words circulate. Of these, some fill idle ears with chatter, others carry tales, and the author adds something new to what is heard. Here is Credulity, here is rash Error, empty Delight, and alarming Fear, sudden Sedition, and Murmurings of doubtful origin. Rumour herself sees everything that happens in the heavens, throughout the ocean, and on land, and inquires about everything on earth.

Bk 12:64-145 The death and transformation of Cycnus

She had spread the news that the Greek fleet was nearing, filled with brave warriors, and so the arrival of the armed host was no surprise. The Trojans opposed the landing, and defended their coast. You, Protesilaüs, were the first to fall beneath Hector’s deadly spear, and joining in battle cost the Greeks dearly, and they knew mighty Hector’s spirit by the slaughter. The Phrygians learnt at no small expense of blood, the power of an Achaian hand. Now the Sigean shores ran red: now Cycnus, a son of Neptune, had consigned a thousand men to death: now Achilles pursued in his chariot, and laid whole columns of men low with a blow of his spear from Pelion. Searching the battlelines for Cycnus or for Hector, he came upon Cycnus (His meeting with Hector postponed till the tenth year of the war).

Then Achilles, urging on his horses, their snowy necks straining against the harness, he drove his chariot straight at the enemy, striking out, with the quivering spear, with all his strength, saying: ‘O youth, whoever you may be, take death’s comfort in being killed by Achilles of Haemonia!’ So Aeacides spoke: His heavy spear followed the words, but although there was certainly no error in the flight of the spear, still the sharp point of the flying blade had no effect, and only bruised Cycnus’s chest, like a blunted weapon. ‘O son of the goddess,’ Cycnus said, ‘fame has made you known to me, why are you amazed I have no wound? (He was indeed amazed) Neither this helmet you see, with its yellow horsehair crest, nor the hollow shield weighing down my left arm, is to protect me: they only look to serve as ornament. Mars too wears his armour for this reason! Take away the use of this protective covering: I will still escape unharmed. It is worth something to be the son, not of Nereus’s daughter, but of him who rules Nereus and his daughters, and the whole ocean as well.’

He spoke, and hurled his spear at Achilles, but it stuck fast in his round bronze shield. It tore through the bronze and nine layers of bull’s hide, but was stopped by a tenth. Shaking it off, the Greek hero once more threw a quivering spear from his mighty hand. Again his enemy’s body was whole and unharmed. A third spear could not even graze Cycnus though he laid himself open to it. Achilles flared up, like a bull in the arena, when it charges with its deadly horns at the Carthaginian cloak, and finds it escapes damage. He examined the spear to see if the iron point had been loosened: it was fixed to the shaft. ‘Is my hand enfeebled,’ he said, ‘so that the power it had is lacking against this man?’ Certainly it was strong enough when I led the overthrow of Lyrnessus’s walls, or when I drenched the island of Tenedos, and Mysian Thebes, Eetion’s city, in their own blood, when the River Caïcus ran red with the slaughter of those around it, and Telephus twice felt the touch of my spear. Here also, my right hand has prevailed, and will prevail, striking so many, the heaps of corpses I made and see on the shore.’

He spoke, and as if not believing the results of his previous actions, he threw the spear straight at Menoetes, one of the Lycian men, simultaneously piercing his breastplate and the breast beneath. As the dying man beat his head against the solid earth, Achilles pulled the spear from the hot wound, and cried: ‘This is the hand, and this is the spear with which I have just been victorious: I shall use it on this enemy, and I pray his end may be the same.’ Thus he pursued the death of Cycnus again, and the ashen shaft did not err, thudding unavoidably into the left shoulder, from which it recoiled as if from a wall or a solid rock. Achilles saw that Cycnus was stained with blood where it struck, and exulted, but in vain: there was no wound: it was Menoetes’s blood! Then truly maddened, he leapt headlong from his high chariot, and seeking out his charmed enemy, at close quarters, with glittering sword, saw shield and helmet carved through, but still the iron blunted on the impenetrable body. He could stand it no longer, and he beat at the face and hollow temples of his enemy three or four times with his raised shield and sword-hilt.

One presses as the other gives way: he rushes and harries him, allowing no respite from the shock. Fear grips Cycnus, shadows swim in front of his eyes, and, as he steps backwards, his retreating step is blocked, by a boulder, on the open ground. As he is trapped with his body bent against it, Achilles turns him over with great force, and dashes him to the ground. Then pressing his hard knees and shield into Cycnus’s chest, he pulls on the helmet straps, which, tightening under the chin, squeeze the throat and windpipe, and stop the passage of breath. He prepares to strip his defeated enemy: he sees empty armour: the god of the sea has changed the body into that of a white bird, whose name is the one he bore, but a moment ago.

Bk 12:146-209 Nestor tells the story of Caeneus-Caenis

This battle brought about that truce, of many days duration, when both sides grounded their weapons and rested. While alert sentries patrolled the Trojan walls and alert sentries patrolled the Greek trenches, a feast day arrived, on which Achilles, the victor over Cycnus, was propitiating Pallas with the blood of a sacrificial cow. When its entrails had been placed on the blazing altars, and the perfume the gods love had climbed to the heavens, part was put aside for their holy rites, and the rest set out on the tables. The leaders reclined on couches, and ate their fill of the roasted meat, while they quenched their thirst, and drowned their cares, with wine. The zither, the sound of singing, the long boxwood flute pierced with many holes, was not their entertainment, rather they lengthened the night with talk, and courage was their theme. They talked of their enemies’ battles, and of their own, and delighted in recounting, in turn, the dangers they had encountered and survived. What else should Achilles speak of, and what else should be spoken of in great Achilles’s presence?

The foremost talk was of his latest victory, the overthrow of Cycnus. It seemed wondrous to all of them that a warrior should have a body no spear could penetrate, impervious to wounds, and that blunted iron swords. Achilles himself and the Greeks were marvelling at it, when Nestor said: ‘Cycnus has been the only one among your generation who ignored swords, and whom no blow could pierce. But, long ago, I myself saw one Caeneus of Thessaly, who could take a thousand strokes with unwounded body: Thessalian Caeneus, I say, who, famous for his exploits, lived on Mount Othrys, and what made it more remarkable in him, he had been born a woman.’ All who there were interested by this strange wonder, and asked him to tell the story.

Achilles, among the rest, said: ‘Say on, old one! O ancient eloquence, wisdom of our age, all of us equally desire to hear, who Caeneus was, why he was changed to his opposite, what campaign you met him in, fighting against whom, by whom he was overcome, if anyone overcame him.’ Then the old warrior said: ‘Though the slowness of age hampers me, and many things I once saw have slipped from me, I can still remember many. Nothing sticks more firmly in my mind than this, amongst all those acts, in battle and at home, and if length of years alone enabled a man to report many deeds, I have lived two hundred years: now I live in my third century.

‘Elatus’s daughter, Caenis, loveliest of the virgins of Thessaly, was famous for her beauty, a girl longed for in vain, the object of many suitors throughout the neighbouring cities and your own (since she was one of your people, Achilles). Perhaps Peleus also would have tried to wed her, but he had already taken your mother in marriage, or she was promised to your father. Caenis would not agree to any marriage, but (so rumour has it) she was walking along a lonely beach, and the god took her by force. When Neptune had enjoyed his new love he said: “Make your wish, without fear of refusal. Ask for what you most want!” (The same rumour mentioned this.)

‘“This injury evokes the great desire never to be able to suffer any such again. Grant I might not be a woman: you will have given me everything,” Caenis said. She spoke the last words in a deeper tone, that might have been the sound of a man’s voice. So it was: the god of the deep ocean had already accepted her wish, and had granted, over and above it, that as a man Caeneus would be protected from all wounds, and never fall to the sword. Caeneus, the Atracides, left, happy with his gifts, and spent his time in manly pastimes, roaming the Thessalian fields.

Bk 12:210-244 Nestor tells of the battle of Lapiths and Centaurs

‘Pirithoüs, the daring son of Ixion, married Hippodame, and invited the cloud-born centaurs to take their place at tables, set in lines, in a tree-shaded cave. Caeneus, and the other Thessalian princes were there, and I was there myself. The festive palace echoed with the noisy crowd. See, they were singing the marriage song, and the great hall smoked with fires, and in came the virgin surrounded by a throng of young wives and mothers, conspicuous, in her beauty. We declared Pirithoüs to be blessed in his bride, which almost betrayed his good fortune. For your heart was heated by the sight of the girl as much as by wine, Eurytus, most savage of the savage Centaurs: and drunkenness twinned with lust ruled it.

‘At once the tables were overturned and the banquet in turmoil, and the new bride was grabbed by the hair and dragged off by force. Eurytus seized Hippodame: the others whosoever they wished to, or could, and it looked like the rape of a city. The palace sounded with women’s cries. We all leaped up quickly, and Theseus, first, shouted out: ‘What foolishness drives you to this, Eurytus, that you challenge Pirithoüs in my presence, and unknowingly attack two in one? Lest his words were in vain, the brave hero pushed aside those threatening him, and rescued the girl from the madmen. The other made no reply (since he could not defend his actions with words) but attacked her champion, with violent hands, striking at his face and noble chest.

‘There chanced to be an ancient mixing-bowl nearby, embossed with raised designs, and Theseus raised the huge thing, he himself being huger, and threw it straight at Eurytus’s face. He fell backwards, drumming his feet on the blood-soaked earth, gouts of blood spurting from mouth and wound equally, along with brain-matter and wine. His twin-natured brothers, taking fire at his death, emulated each other, in shouting: ‘To arms! To arms!’ with a single voice. Wine gave them courage, and, in the first battle, cups, fragile jars, and round basins were sent flying, things intended for feasting, now used for fighting and killing.

Bk 12:245-289 The deaths of Amycus, Gryneus, Cometes

‘First, Amycus, son of Ophion, did not fear to despoil the inner shrine of its offerings, and snatched, first, from the sanctuary, a chandelier, thickly hung with gleaming lamps, and raising it on high, as one wields a sacrificial axe to break the bull’s snowy neck, he dashed it against the forehead of Celadon, the Lapith, leaving him with the bones of his face crushed past recognition. His eyes leapt from their sockets, and his nose, pushed in, as the bones of his face shattered, was driven into his palate. At this, Pelates of Pella, wrenching a leg from a maple-wood table, knocked Amycus to the ground, his chin driven into his chest: and his enemy sent him to the shadows of Tartarus with a second wound, as he spat out teeth, mixed with dark blood.

‘Then Gryneus, standing near the smoking altar, gazing at it with wild eyes, shouted: “Why not put this to use?” and lifting the huge altar with its flames, he threw it into the midst of the crowd of Lapiths, crushing two of them, Broteas and Orios: Orios’s mother was Mycale, who was often known to draw down the horned moon by her incantations despite its struggles. “You will not escape with impunity, if I can find a weapon.” said Exadius, who found the equivalent of a spear in a stag’s antlers that hung on a tall pine tree, as a votive offering. Gryneus was pierced in the eyes by the twin branches, and his eyeballs gouged out, one of which stuck to the horn, and the other slipped down onto his beard, and hung there in a clot of blood.

‘Then Rhoetus snatched up a burning brand from the altar, wood from a plum tree, and swinging it down from the right hand side, broke Charaxus’s temples protected by yellow hair. The hair flared like a dry cornfield, set alight by the quick flames, and the blood seared in the wound gave out a terrible sizzling noise, as a bar of iron is prone to do, when the smith takes it, red-hot, from the fire, with curved tongs, and plunges it into a bath of water: it whistles and hisses immersed in the bubbling liquid.

‘The wounded man shook the rapacious flames from his shaggy hair, and tearing a stone sill from the ground lifted it on his shoulders, a load for oxen, its very weight preventing him from hurling it as far as his enemy: but the mass of stone crushed his friend Cometes, who was standing nearer. Rhoetus could not contain his delight, saying: “May the rest of the crowd on your side be as formidable as that!” and he renewed his attack with the half-burned branch, and with three or four heavy blows broke through the joints of his skull until the bones sank into the fluid brain.

Bk 12:290-326 The deaths of Corythus, Aphidas and others

‘The victor turned his attention to Euagrus, Corythus and Dryas. When Corythus, one of these, fell, whose first downy hair covered his cheeks, Euagrus cried: “What glory is there on your part in shedding the blood of a boy?” Rhoetus stopped him from speaking, thrusting the fiery flames into the man’s open mouth, and down his throat. He pursued you, also, savage Dryas, whirling the branch round his head, but with a different result. As Rhoetus came on exulting in the succession of killings, you ran him through with a charred stake, where neck and shoulder meet. Rhoetus groaned and with an effort wrenched the stake out of the solid bone: then he ran, drenched in his own blood. Orneus and Lycabas, also ran; Medon, wounded in the right shoulder; Thaumas and Pisenor; and Mermeros who had recently overcome everyone by his fleetness of foot, and now ran more slowly from the wound he had suffered. Pholus, Melaneus, and Abas the boar-hunter also fled, and Asbolus, the augur, who had vainly tried to dissuade them from fighting. To Nessus, who also ran with him, fearful of being wounded, he said: “Do not flee! You are fated to be preserved for Hercules’s bow.” But Eurynomus, and Lycidas, Areos and Imbreus did not escape death: all these Dryas’s hand killed as they fronted him. You also received a wound in front, Crenaeus, though you had turned your back in flight: as you looked back the heavy blade took you between the eyes, where nose and forehead meet.

‘Aphidas lay amongst the intense noise, without waking, all his strength sunk in endless sleep, still holding a cup of mixed wine, in his limp hand, stretched out on the shaggy skin of a bear from Mount Ossa. Phorbas caught sight of him at a distance, uselessly idle in the fight, and fitting his fingers into the strap of his javelin said: “Go drink your wine mixed with the waters of Styx.” Without hesitating he hurled his spear at the youth, and the ash shaft tipped with iron was driven through his neck, as he chanced to be lying with his head thrown back. He did not feel death, and the black blood flowed from his welling throat, onto the couch and into the wine-cup itself.’

Bk 12:327-392 Pirithoüs, Theseus and Peleus join the fight

‘I saw Petraeus trying to tear an oak-tree full of acorns from the ground. While he had his arms round it, bending it this way and that, and shaking the loosened trunk, Pirithoüs sent a lance through his ribs, and pinned his writhing body to the hard wood. They say that Lycus fell by Pirithoüs’s might, and Chromis by Pirithoüs’s might, but Dictys and Helops gave the victor a greater title to fame. Helops was transfixed by a javelin that passed through both temples; hurled from the right and piercing the left ear. Dictys, fleeing in desperate panic, pressed hard by Ixion’s son, stumbled on a mountain height, and fell headlong, breaking a huge flowering ash with the weight of his body, and entangling his entrails in the shattered tree.

‘Aphareus was there, his avenger, who tried to hurl a rock torn from the mountainside: but as he tried Theseus, the son of Aegeus, caught him with his oaken club and broke the massive bones of his elbow. Having neither time nor desire to inflict further injury on his worthless body, he leaped onto tall Bienor’s back, unused to carrying anything but its owner, and, pressing his knees into the centaur’s flanks, and clutching the mane with his left hand, he shattered the face, the mouth uttering threats, and the solid temples, with his knotted club. With the club he overthrew Nedymnus, and Lycopes the javelin-thrower; Hippasos, his chest protected by a flowing beard, and Ripheus, who towered above the treetops; Thereus, also, who used to take bears on the mountain slopes of Thessaly, and carry them home angry and alive.

‘Demoleon could no longer stand the success Theseus was enjoying: he had been trying, with great effort, to tear up the solid trunk of an ancient pine. Unable to do it, he broke it off and hurled it at the enemy. But Theseus drew well away from the oncoming missile, warned by Pallas, or so he would have us believe. The tree trunk did not fall without effect, since it severed tall Crantor’s chest and left shoulder from the neck. He was your father’s armour bearer, Achilles, whom Amyntor king of the Dolopians, having been defeated in battle, gave to Peleus, the Aeacides, as a true pledge of peace.

‘When Peleus, some distance away, saw him torn apart by the frightful wound he shouted: “Accept this tribute to the dead, at least, Crantor, dearest of youths, ” and with his powerful arm, he hurled his ash spear, at full strength, at Demoleon. It ruptured the ribcage, and stuck quivering in the bone. The centaur pulled out the shaft minus its head (he tried with difficulty to reach that also) but the head was caught in his lung. The pain itself strengthened his will: wounded, he reared up at his enemy and beat the hero down with his hooves. Peleus received the resounding blows on helmet and shield, and defending his upper arms, and controlling the weapon he held out, with one blow through the arm he pierced the bi-formed breast.

‘Peleus had already, before this, killed Phlegraeos and Hyles, from a distance, and Iphinoüs and Clanis in close conflict. He added Dorylas to these, who wore a wolfskin cap on his head, and instead of a deadly spear, carried a magnificent pair of crooked bull’s horns, dyed red with copious blood.

‘I shouted to him (my courage giving me strength) “See how your horns give way before my spear” and I threw my javelin. Since he could not evade it, he blocked a wound to his forehead with his right hand, and his hand was pinned to his forehead. He screamed, but Peleus (as he stood near him) struck him with his sword in mid-stomach, as he came to a halt there, overcome by the harsh wound. Dorylas leapt forward fiercely, dragging his guts on the ground, and as he dragged he trampled them, and as he trampled he tore them, entangled his legs in them, and fell, with emptied belly.

Bk 12:393-428 Cyllarus and Hylonome

‘Nor did your beauty, Cyllarus, if indeed we attribute beauty to your centaur race, save you in the fighting.

‘His beard was beginning to show; a beard the colour of gold; and a golden mane fell from his shoulders half way down his flanks. He had a liveliness of expression that was pleasing; his neck and shoulders, chest and hands, and all his human parts, you would praise as almost sculpted by an artist. Nor was the equine part below marred, or inferior to the human: give him a horse’s head and neck and he would be worthy of a Castor, the back so fit for a rider, the deep chest so muscular. He was blacker than pitch all over, except for a white tail, and legs also snow-white.

‘Many females of his race courted him, but one, Hylonome, won him, none lovelier, among the female centaurs, in the deep forests. She alone held Cyllarus’s affections, by endearments, by loving and admitting love; and by her appearance, as far as those limbs allow its cultivation: now she would smooth her mane with a comb, now entwine it with rosemary, now violets or roses: or else she wore bright lilies. She bathed her face twice a day in the spring that fell from the woods, on the heights near Pagasae, twice dipped her body in the stream. She would wear only selected skins of wild beasts that became her, over her shoulder or across her left flank. Their love was equally shared. They wandered the mountainsides together, rested at the same time in caves: and now they had both come to the palace of the Lapiths, and both fought fiercely.

‘A javelin (who threw it is unknown) came from the left and took you, Cyllarus, below the place where the chest swells to the neck. When the weapon was withdrawn the heart, though only slightly pierced, grew cold with the whole body. Immediately Hylonome clasped the dying limbs, sealed the wound with her hand, placed her mouth on his, and tried to prevent the passage of his spirit. Seeing he was dead, with words that the noise prevented from reaching my ears, she threw herself onto the spear that had pierced him, embracing her husband in dying.’

Bk 12:429-535 The transformation of Caeneus

‘Still Phaeocomes stands before my eyes, he, who had tied six lion skins together with knotted cords, as a covering, protecting both man and horse. Hurling a log, that two teams of oxen could hardly move, he crushed the skull-bone of Tectaphos, son of Olenus. The broad dome of his head was shattered, and the soft brain matter oozed out through the hollow nostrils, eyes and ears, like curdled milk through the oak lattice, or as liquid trickles through a coarse sieve, under the weight, and squeezes thickly through the close mesh. But even as Phaecomes prepared to strip the arms from the fallen man (your father knows this), I thrust my sword deep into the despoiler’s thigh. Chthonius and Teleboas also fell to my sword: the first carried a forked branch, the other a spear: he gave me a wound with the spear - see, the scar! - the mark of the old wound is still visible. In those days I would have been sent to capture Troy’s citadel; then, I could have entertained Hector greatly with my weapons, if not overcome him. But Hector at that time was a child or not yet born, now my age has weakened me.

‘What need to tell you how Periphas conquered dual-shaped Pyraethus? Why tell of Ampyx who drove his cornel-wood spear that had lost its tip into the opposing face of four-footed Echeclus? Macareus threw a crowbar at the chest of Pelethronian Erigdupus, killing him: and I remember how a hunting spear, from the hand of Nessus, buried itself in Cymelus’s groin. Nor would you have thought Mopsus, Ampycus’s son, only prophesied the future: bi-formed Hodites fell to Mopsus’s throw, trying in vain to speak, his tongue fixed to the floor of his mouth, the floor of his mouth to his throat.

‘Caeneus had killed five: Styphelos, Bromus, Antimachus, Elymus; and Pyracmos, who was armed with a battle-axe. I do not recall their wounds, but I noted their number, and their names. Then Latreus rushed forward, massive in body and limbs, armed with the spoils of Emathian Halesus whom he had killed. He was between youth and age, but had the strength of youth, his hair greying on his temples. Prancing in a circle, turning to face each of the battle-lines in turn, and conspicuous for his Macedonian lance, helmet and shield, he clashed his weapons, pouring out many proud words, into the empty air. “Do I have to put up with you, Caenis? For you will always be a woman, Caenis, to me. Does your natal origin not remind you; does not the act you were rewarded for come to mind, at what cost you gained this false aspect of a man? Consider what you were born as, or what you experienced, go, pick up your distaff and basket of wool and twist the spun thread with your thumb: leave war to men.”

‘At this Caeneus threw his spear, ploughing a furrow in the centaur’s side, where man and horse joined, as he was stretched out in the act of galloping. Maddened with pain, Latreus struck the Phylleian youth in his unprotected face, with the lance: but it bounced off like a hailstone from a rooftop, or a small pebble from a hollow drum. Then he closed up on him, and tried to thrust his sword into his impenetrable side: the sword found no way in. The centaur shouted: “You will still not escape! I will kill you with the sword’s edge if the point is blunt.” Turning his blade sideways he reached out for his enemy’s loins with his long right arm. The blow resounded, as if it struck a body of marble, and the weapon fractured in pieces as it hit the firm flesh.

‘When he had exposed his unwounded limbs for long enough to his wondering enemy, Caeneus said: “Now let me try your body with my blade!” and he drove his fatal weapon into the other’s side, turning and twisting his hand, buried in the guts, causing wound on wound. See, the centaurs maddened, rushed on him with a great shout, and all aimed and threw their spears at the one man. The spears fell, blunted: and Caeneus, son of Elatus, remained unpierced and unbloodied by all their efforts. This marvel astonished them.

‘“Oh, what overwhelming shame!” Monychus exclaimed. “A people defeated by one who is scarcely a man: yet he is the man, and we, with our half-hearted attempts are what he once was. What use are our huge limbs? What use our twin powers, and that double nature uniting the strongest living things in us? We are not sons of a divine mother: nor of Ixion who was such as aspired to captivate great Juno: we are overcome by an enemy, who is half a man! Roll down rocks and tree trunks on him, and whole mountainsides, and crush that stubborn spirit with the forests we hurl! Let their mass constrict his throat, and let weight work instead of wounds.”

‘He spoke, and finding a chance tree-trunk toppled by a furious southerly wind, he threw it at his powerful enemy. He served as the example, and in a little while Mount Othrys was bare of trees, and Pelion had lost its shade. Buried under the huge pile, Caeneus strained against the weight of trees, and propped up the mass of oak on his strong shoulders, but as it mounted above his mouth and face, he had no breath of the air that he breathed, and lacking it, often, he tried in vain to raise himself into the air, and throw off the forest piled on him, and often heaved, as if steep Mount Ida, that we see there, look, was shaken by an earthquake.

‘His fate is doubtful: some said his body was thrust down to empty Tartarus, by the mass of forest: but Mopsus, the son of Ampycus denied this. He saw a bird with tawny wings fly into the clear air from the midst of the pile, which I saw also, then, for the first and last time ever. As Mopsus watched him smoothly circling his camp in flight, making a great noise, he pursued him with mind and vision, saying “Hail to you, Caeneus, glory of the race of Lapiths, once a great hero, but now a bird alone!” The thing was believed because of its author: grief was added to anger, and we could barely accept one man being conquered by so many enemies. Nor did we cease to work off our pain with the sword until half were dead, and half, fleeing, were swallowed by the night.’

Bk 12:536-579 Nestor tells of the death of Periclymenus

As the hero from Pylos told of this battle between the Lapiths and the half-human Centaurs, Tlepolemus, son of Hercules, leader of the Rhodians, could not keep his mouth silent in his indignation at Hercules, the descendant of Alceus, being overlooked. He said ‘Old man, it is amazing that your recital forgot to praise Hercules: certainly my father often used to tell me of the cloud-born centaurs he defeated.’ Nestor answered him, sternly. ‘Why do you force me to remember wrongs, to re-open wounds healed by the years, and to reveal hatred for your father and the injuries he did me? He has done deeds beyond belief, the gods know, and filled the earth with his praises: that, I wish I could deny. But we do not praise Deïphobus, or Polydamas, or Hector: who praises an enemy indeed?

‘That father of yours razed Messene’s walls; destroyed the innocent cities of Elis and Pylos, and overthrew my household gods with fire and sword. I say nothing of the others he killed: there were twelve of us, sons of Neleus, outstanding young men, all except myself fell to Hercules’s strength. We must accept that the others could be defeated: the death of Periclymenus was strange, whom Neptune, founder of Neleus’s bloodline, had granted the power to assume any form he wished and reverse that which he had assumed. Now, after he had changed to every form in turn, he reverted to the shape of a bird, the eagle that carries the lightning bolts in its curved talons, beloved by the king of the gods. He tore at the hero’s face with all the power of his wings, his hooked beak, and crooked claws. Then, as he soared among the clouds, and hung poised there, the Tirynthian fired his unerring bow at him, and pierced him where the wing meets the side.

‘The wound was not fatal, but the sinews, severed by the wound, failed, devoid of movement or power of flight. He fell to earth, his weakened pinions not mastering the air, and the arrow, clinging lightly to the wing, was driven upwards with the body’s weight, and forced through the top of the breast into the left side of the throat.

‘Now, O most glorious leader of the Rhodian fleet, do you think I should cry out your Hercules’s praises? Yet I look for no other revenge for my brothers than to be silent about his mighty deeds: there is unbroken friendship between you and me.’

When Nestor had told his tale in a pleasant voice, passing from the old man’s story to the gifts of Bacchus again, they rose from the couches: the rest of the night was given to sleep.

Bk 12:579-628 The death of Achilles

But the god of the trident, who rules the ocean waters, grieved, with a father’s feelings, for the son changed into a swan, the bird of Phaethon, and, hating fierce Achilles, he nursed an excessive anger in his memory.

And now, when the war against Troy had lasted for almost ten years, he called to Sminthean Apollo, the unshorn, in these words: ‘O, by far the best loved of my brother’s sons, who built the walls of Troy with me, to no purpose, do you sigh at all to see these battlements at the moment of their destruction? Do you grieve at all that so many thousands died defending her walls? Not to name all of them, does not the shade come before you of Hector, dragged round his own citadel, Pergama? But savage Achilles, more cruel than war itself, is still alive, ravager of our creation. Let him be given up to me. I would let him feel what I can do with my three-pronged spear: but since I am not allowed to meet face to face with the enemy, destroy him unexpectedly with a hidden arrow!’

The Delian god nodded, and satisfying his own and his uncle’s desire, he came to the Trojan lines, wrapped in a cloud, and there, among human massacre, he saw Paris firing infrequent shafts at unknown Greeks. Showing himself as a god, he said: ‘Why waste your arrows on the blood of the rank and file? If you care for your own, aim at Achilles, grandson of Aeacus, and avenge your dead brothers!’ He spoke, and, pointing to Pelides, who, with his weapon, was strewing the ground with Trojan bodies, he turned Paris’s bow towards him, and guided the unerring shaft with deadly hand. This was the one thing that could delight old Priam since Hector’s death.

So, Achilles, conqueror of so much greatness, you are conquered, by the cowardly thief of the wife of a Greek! If your death had to be by a woman’s hand, in war, you would rather have fallen to an Amazon’s two-edged axe.

Now Achilles, grandson of Aeacus, the terror of the Phrygians, the glory and defence of the Pelasgian name, the invincible captain in battle, was burned: one god, Vulcan, armed him, and that same god consumed him. Now he is ash, and little if anything remains of Achilles, once so mighty, hardly enough to fill an urn. But his fame lives, enough to fill a world. That equals the measure of the man, and, in that, the son of Peleus is truly himself, and does not know the void of Tartarus.

So that you might know whose it was, even his shield makes war: and arms, for his arms, are raised. Diomede, son of Tydeus, and the lesser Ajax, Oileus’s son, dare not claim them, nor the younger son of Atreus, Menelaüs, nor the elder, Agamemnon, greater in warfare, nor the rest. Only Ajax, the son of Telamon, and Ulysses, Laërtes’s son, were confident enough for such glory. Agamemnon, the descendant of Tantalus, in order to escape the invidious burden of choosing between them, ordered the leaders of the Greeks to meet in the middle of the camp, and he transferred judgment of the dispute to them all.