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Wheeler, 12mo. bds. . Land. 1850 046 CYROPEDIA, or Institution of Cyrus, Books 1 to 3, literally translated, 12mo. bds. . Dubl. :? MEMORABILIA of Sokrates, literally transl. from Kuhner's Text, with copious Notes and Prolego- mena by G. B. Wheeler, 12mo. bds. Land. 1847 040 P. OVIDII NASONIS METAMORPHOSEON LIBRI. THE LITERALLY TRANSLATED, AND CAREFULLY REVISED, BY GEORGE B. WHEELER, A.B. TRANSLATOR OF XENOPIION's MEMORABILIA, ETC. LONDON : WILLIAM ALLAN, 13, PATERNOSTER ROW. 1851. LIFE OF OVID. PUBLICS Ovidius Naso was born B. c. 42, at Sulmo, a town of the Peligni in Italy, about ninety miles from Rome. Being intended for the bar, his father sent him early to Rome, and removed him to Athens in his sixteenth year. The progress of Ovid in the study of eloquence was great: but the father's expectations were frustrated. His son was born a poet, and nothing could deter him from pursuing his natural inclination, though often re- minded that Homer lived and died in poverty : every thing which he wrote was expressed in poetical numbers, as he himself says : Et quod tentabam scribei'c versus erat. A lively genius and fertile imagination soon gained for him admirers ; the learned became his friends : Virgil, Propertius, Tibullus, and Horace honoured him with their correspondence : Augustus patronized him with unbounded liberality. These favours, however, were but momentary : the poet was soon after banished by the Emperor to Tomos (or Tomi) on the Euxine sea. The cause of this sudden exile is unknown ; some attri- bute it to an amour with Livia, wife of the Emperor, others assert that it arose from the knowledge that Ovid VI LIFE OF OVID. had of the unpardonable incest of the Emperor with his own daughter Julia. But these reasons are merely conjectural. Whatever the real cause was, it was of a private and secret nature, of which Ovid himself was afraid to speak. It was something improper in the family and court of Augustus, as these lines seem to indicate, Cur aliquid vidi ? Cur noxia lumiria feci Cur imprudent! cognita culpa mihi est ? Inscius Actseon vidit sine veste Dianain Praeda fuit canibus non minus ille suis. And again, Inscia quid crimen viderunt lumina plector Peccatumque oculos est habuisse meurn. And in another passage, Perdiderant cum me duo crimina, carmen 'et error Alterius facti culpa silenda mihi est. Tiraboschi (Storia delict Litt. Ital. i. 201.) has fully examined this subject ; and seems to have proved that the offence of Ovid consisted in having been an acci- dental witness of some scandalous intrigue on the part of Julia, in which Augustus was not implicated. In his banishment Ovid betrayed great pusillanimity, and however afflicted and distressed his situation was, yet the flattery and impatience shewn in his writings, are a disgrace to his pen, and expose him more to ridicule than pity. Though he prostituted his pen to adulation, the Emperor proved deaf to all his entreaties, and refused to listen to his most ardent friends at Rome, who were anxious for the return of the poet. Ovid, who undoubtedly wished for a Brutus to deliver Rome LIFE OF OVID. VII from her tyrannical Augustus, nevertheless continued his flattery to meanness, and when the Emperor died, was so mercenary as to consecrate a small temple to the departed tyrant on the shore of the Euxine, where he regularly offered sacrifice every morning. Tiberius proved as regardless as his predecessor to the interces- sions made for Ovid, and the poet died in the 7th or 8th year of his banishment, in his 59th year, A.D. 17, and was buried at Tomos. The greatest part of Ovid's writings remain. His Metamorphoses, in 15 Books, are curious from their many mythological facts and traditions, but can have no claim to the character of an Epic poem. In composing them Ovid was indebted more to the then existing traditions and theogony of the ancients, than to the powers of his own imagination. Ovid had three wives. Of the last alone he speaks with fondness and affection. He had but one daughter, but by which of his wives is uncertain, and she herself became the mother of two children by two different husbands. The best editions of Ovid's works are by Burmann, published in four vols. 4to. Amst. 1/27. L. Batav. Hvo. 1670. Utrect. 1728. Oxford, with Bentley's notes, 1835. OVID'S METAMOKPHOSES. BOOK I. MY inclination prompts me to speak of forms changed into new bodies. Ye gods breathe favour on my undertakings (for, gods ! you have changed even them), arid bring down one continued poem from the first origin of the world, to my times. 5. Before the sea and the land, and the heaven that covers all things existed, there was one appearance of nature throughout the whole world, which they called Chaos, a rude and undigested mass ; nor was there anything but an inert weight, and the jarring elements of things not well united, heaped together in the same place. 10. No Titan as yet gave light to the world ; nor did the moon continually repair her new horns by increasing ; nor did the earth hang in the air encompassing it, poised by its own weight. Nor had Amphitrite stretched her arms upon the long shores of the earth. 15.' But where- soever there was land, there too was sea and air : the earth was not to be stood upon, the water not to be swam in, and so the air was devoid of light : its own proper form remained with nothing. And one thing stood in the way of others ; because in the same body cold matters fought with hot, moist things with dry, soft things with hard, and things endowed with weight, with those without weight. 21. This contest God, and kinder nature at length decided. For he divided the earth from the heaven, and the water from the earth, and separated the clear heaven from the thick air. 2 METAMORPHOSES. Which elements after he had separated, and taken from the dark heap, he bound together by an harmonious peace, though dispersed in their proper places. 26. The fiery force of the heaven, convex, and without weight, Sprang forth, and chose a place for itself, in the highest eminence of the world. The air is next to it by lightness and locality. The earth is denser than these, and drew to it the ponderous elements, and was condensed with its own weight. The water, flowing all around, took possession of the last place, and con- fined the solid orb of earth. II. Thus after he had separated the mass, whosoever he was of the gods, thus ordered and reduced it, when cut, in separate members. In the first place, he rolled the earth into the form of a great globe, lest it should not be equal on every part. 36. Then he ordered the seas to be poured abroad, and to swell with furious winds, and to draw a shore quite round the environed earth. He likewise added springs, and immense pools and lakes ; and fenced the descending rivers with winding banks ; which located in different places, are partly absorbed by earth itself, partly run into the sea ; and being received in a plain of uncoerced (by banks) water, beat the shores instead of banks. 43. He ordered likewise plains to be extended, and valleys to sink down ; the woods to be covered with green leaves, and the craggy mountains to rise. 45. And as two zones divide heaven on the right, and as many on the left the fifth is hotter than those : in like manner did the providence of the god mark out the enclosed mass of the earth with the same number : of which that which is the middlemost, is not inhabitable by reason of its fervour : a deep snow covers two : and as many he placed betwixt both, and gave them a due temperature, by qualifying the heat with cold. 52. The air rests upon them, which is more ponderous than the fire, as the weight of the water is lighter than the weight of the earth. In that air he ordered the fogs, there the vapours to reside ; and also the thunder to disturb the minds of men, and with the thunderbolt, the winds causing cold. - 57. The Creator of the world BOOK I. 3 too did not leave the air to be possessed by them every- where. They can scarce be hindered from tearing the world to pieces, since each wind governs its own blast in a different tract ; such is the jarring of the brothers. 61. The east wind drew off to the morning quarter, and the Nabathaean kingdom, and Persia, and the mountains lying under the morning rays of the sun. The evening- star, and the shores which are warmed with the setting sun, are next to the west-wind. The shivering Boreas seized upon Scythia, and the north ; the land opposite to which is wet with continual clouds, and the rainy south-wind. 67. Over these he placed the /Ether, clear, and wanting gravity, and having not anything of earthy gross matter. Scarcely had he thus separated all things by fixed boundaries, when the stars, which lay hid a long time, depressed under the mass of the Chaos, began to shine all over heaven. 72. And that no region might be without its animals, the constellations, and the forms of the gods possess the tract of heaven ; the waters fell to the bright fishes to inhabit ; the earth received the wild beasts, and the moveable air, the birds. 76. An animal more sacred than these, and more capable of a higher understanding, and that might rule over the rest, was still wanting. Man was produced. Whether that Creator of all things, the author of a better world, made him of divine seed, or the earth being new, and lately separated from the high eether, retained the seeds of his kindred heaven ; which, being mixed with river water, the son of Japetus formed after the image of the gods that rule over all things. 84. And whilst other animals look downwards upon the earth, he gave to man a lofty face, and ordered him to look at heaven, and lift his countenance upright towards the stars. 78. Thus, what had been lately rude earth, and without any regular form, being changed, put on the figure of man, until then unknown. III. The golden age was first planted in the world, which, without any avenger, of its own accord practised faith and honesty without law. 9 1 . Punishment and fear, there was none ; nor were threatening words read 4 METAMORPHOSES. in brass tables set up to view ; nor did the suppliant crowd fear the countenance of their judge, but they were all secure without an avenger. The pine tree, being not yet cut down in its mountains, had not descended into the liquid waves, to go to visit a foreign part of the world ; and mortals knew no shores besides their own. 97. Deep ditches did not yet enclose towns. There was then no trumpet of straight, no clarions of crooked brass ; no helmets, no sword : nations lived. secure in soft repose, without the help of soldiers. 100. The earth too being free from tillage, and untouched with the harrow, and not wounded with any plough-shares, gave all things of itself ; and men content with food spontaneously produced, no one forcing them, picked up the fruits of trees, and strawberries grow- ing upon the mountains, and wild cherries, and black- berries sticking upon the thorny bramble bushes, and acorns which had fallen from the broad-spreading tree of Jupiter. 107. There was a constant spring, and the gentle west winds with their warm breezes fostered the flowers that grew without seed. By and by too the earth unploughed brought forth grain ; and the land, without lying fallow after having been ploughed up, grew hoary with heavy ears of corn. 111. Now ran rivers of milk, now of nectar, and the yellow honey dropped from the verdant holm oak. IV. Next, upon Saturn's being sent into dark Tartarus, the world was under the sway of Jupiter, and the silver race came on, worse than that of gold, more precious too than that of brass. Jupiter shortened the time of the perpetual spring, and reduced the year by four terms, to winters and summers, and unsteady autumns, and a short spring. Then first of all the air parched with dry heats glowed ; and ice hung bound up by the winds. 121 . Then first did men enter houses ; their houses before were caves, and thick shrubs and twigs tied with bark. Then first of all were the seeds of bread corn buried in long furrows, and bullocks groaned oppressed by the yoke. 125. The brazen generation succeeded in the third place, after that of silver, fiercer in temper, and more inclinable to horrid arms, yet not villainous. The last BOOK 1. i age took its name from hard iron. Immediately all kind of wickedness breaks out into this age of a worse vein; modesty, truth, and faith fled for it ; in whose room came up frauds, and deceits, and plots, and vio- lence, and the wicked covetousness of having a great deal. 132. The mariner gave his sails to the winds, nor had he as yet well known them ; and the keel- pieces, which had stood long in the mountains, bounded over unknown waves. 135. And the wary measurer marked out the ground by a long furrow, which had been common before as the light of the sun and the air. Nor was the rich earth called upon only for corn, and food that was due to mankind, but men went into the bowels of the earth ; and riches, the incentives to mis- chiefs, which the earth had hid, and lodged nigh the Stygian shades, are dug up. 141. And now mischievous iron, and gold more mischievous than iron, comes forth. War too comes out, that fights with both, and shakes his clattering arms in his bloody hand. Men live by plunder ; the guest is not safe from his host ; nor the father-in-law from the son-in-law. The concord of brothers too is rare. 146. The husband is eager for the destruction of his wife, and she for that of her husband. Dread step-mothers mix the dismal wolf's-bane. The son inquires into his father's years, before his time is come. Piety lies vanquished ; and the virgin Astrsea left the earth, reeking with slaughter, the last of all the celestial Deities. V. And that the high firmament might not be more secure than the earth, they say that the giants assaulted the kingdom of heaven, and piled up mountains heaped together to the high stars. Then the almighty Father, casting his thunder, broke through Olympus, and struck Ossa from off Pelion placed below it. 156. Whilst those direful bodies lay, kept down by their own bulk, they say that the earth, being sprinkled with the blood of her own sons, was very wet, and gave life to the warm gore : and lest no monuments should remain of that race of hers, turned them into the shape of men. But that stock too was a despiser of the gods above, and B 2 METAMORPHOSES. very greedy of fell slaughter, and violent : you might have known that they sprung from blood. VI. Which as soon as the Saturnian father saw from the highest eminence of heaven, he groans ; and recollecting the abominable feast of Lycaon's table, not yet made public, the deed being fresh, he conceives in his mind a mighty anger worthy of Jupiter, and calls an assembly of the gods. No delay detained them that were summoned. 168. There is a highway very visible in a clear sky, which has the name of the milky way, distinguishable by its very whiteness. Along this is the path for the gods, to the house of the great thun- derer, and the royal palace. On the right and the left, the courts of the superior gods are crowded through the open folding doors. The inferior race of gods dwell in different places. The potent and splendid inhabitants of heaven have placed their homes in the front. This is the place, which, if boldness may be allowed to my words, I should not fear to call the Palace of great heaven. Wherefore, as soon as the gods were sat down in their marble chamber, He, exalted above the rest in place, and leaning upon his ivory sceptre, shook three or four times the awful hair of his head, with which he moves the earth, the sea, and the stars. 181. After that he opened his indignant mouth in these words. " I was not more concerned for the empire of the world at that time, when each of the snake-footed monsters attempted to lay his hundred arms upon captive heaven : for though that was a cruel enemy, yet that war depended upon one body, and one origin. 187. Now mankind must be destroyed, wheresoever Nereus thunders round the world. I swear by the infernal rivers, that run under the earth in the Stygian grove. All things are first to be tried ; but an incurable wound is to be cut away with the knife, lest the sound part should be affected. 192. I have Semi-gods, have rural Deities, the Fauns, and Nymphs, and Satyrs, and Sylvani, in- habitants of the mountains, to whom, since we do not vouchsafe the honour of heaven, yet let us suffer them to inhabit the earth, which we ha^e given them. 1{)6. BOOK I. 7 Do you think, O ye gods, that they will be sufficiently safe, when Lycaon, noted for cruelty, laid a plot for me, who have the thunder, and rule you ?" All murmured with indignation ; and with burning zeal demand the villain that had dared to attempt such things. 200. Thus, when an impious band raged to extinguish the Roman name, by shedding the blood of Caesar, mankind was astonished with the awful dread of so sudden a ruin, and the whole world was aghast. Nor was the loyalty of your subjects, O Augustus, more acceptable to you, than that of the gods was to Jupiter. Who, after he had suppressed the noise with his voice and hand, all kept silence. 207. As soon as the clamour ceased, checked by the authority of their go- vernor, Jupiter again breaks silence in these words. " He indeed has suffered punishment (lay aside that concern of yours) yet I will inform you what the crime was, and what the punishment was. 211. The infamy of the time had reached our ears ; which desiring to find false, I descend from the top of Olympus, and though a god, traverse the earth under a human shape. It is a source of long delay, to reckon up how much guilt was everywhere found : the scandal of the times was less than the truth. 216. I had passed over Maenalus, dreadful for its dens of wild beasts ; and the pine groves of cold Lycseus with Cyllenus. After this, I enter the habitation, and the inhospitable house of the Arcadian prince, when the late twilight drew on the night. 220. I gave a signal that a god was come, and the common people began to pray. At first, Lycaon laughs at their pious prayers ; and presently says, I will try by a plain proof, whether this be a god, or a mortal : nor shall the truth be questionable. Accordingly he prepares to destroy me, when fast asleep, by an unexpected death. This mode of proving the truth pleases him. 226. And not being content in that, he opens with a sword the throat of an hostage sent from the nation of the Molossians ; and then partly softens in boiling water his half dead limbs, and partly roasted them with fire placed underneath. 230. Which, as soon as he had set upon the table, I overset the house with avenging fire METAMORPHOSES. upon the household gods worthy of the master. He flies away affrighted, and having reached the lonely parts of the country, he howls and in vain endeavours to speak. His mouth gathers rage from himself: and from a desire of slaughter, which he had been used to, he falls upon the cattle, and now too rejoices in blood. 236. His garments pass into hair, his arms into legs ; he becomes a wolf, and yet preserves marks of his former shape. His hoariness is the same, the same violence in his countenance ; his eyes sparkle with the same glare ; and the appearance of fierceness in him is the same. 240. One house is demolished ; but not one house only was worthy to perish. Wheresoever the earth extends, wild Fury reigns. You would think all men had sworn to commit wickedness. Let them all forthwith suffer the punishment, which they have deserved to suffer (thus stands my resolution.)" VII. Part by their words approve of the speeches of Jupiter, and add incentives to him in his furious mood. Others perform their part by silent assent. 24 G. Yet the loss of mankind is a grief to them all ; and they ask what was to be the appearance of the earth, when destitute of mortals ? Who should offer frankincense upon the altars ? Did he design to deliver up the nations of the world to be destroyed by wild beasts ? The king of the gods above forbids them, while asking such questions, to be concerned (for the rest should be matter of care to him), and promises a new race, not like the former, from a wonderful original. And now he was proceeding to scatter his thunder over the whole earth ; but he was afraid, lest the sacred aether should catch the flames from so many fires, and the vast heaven should be burnt. 256. He remembers, too, that it was in the decrees of fate, that a time should come, when the sea, when the land, and the palace of heaven, seized by the flames, should be on fire, and the huge mass of the world should be in danger of perish- ing. Those weapons therefore, made by the hands of the Cyclops, are laid by. 260. A different punishment pleases him, to destroy mankind under the water, and to let fall rain-storms from all the parts of heaven. BOOK T. 9 Immediately he shuts up the north-wind in the ^Eolian caves, and whatsoever other winds drive away the clouds, when drawn over the earth. And then sends out the south-wind. The south- wind flies out with his wet wings, having his dreadful countenance covered with pitchy darkness. 266. His beard is loaded with showers ; the water flows from his hoary hairs ; mists sit upon his brow ; his wings and bosom drop ; and as he pressed the hanging clouds with his broad hand, a crashing noise is made. Upon this, dense showers are poured out from the sky. 2/0. The rainbow, the messenger of Juno, clad in her various colours, draws up water, and supplies nutriment to the clouds. The corn is laid flat, and the wishes of the husbandman lie desperate ; and the labour of the long year perishes without fruit. Nor is the anger of Jupiter content with his own heaven, but his green brother assists him with his auxiliary waters. 276. He calls together the rivers ; who after they had entered the house of their prince, I must not, says he, now use a long exhortation to you. Exert all your strength. So there is need. Open your houses, and, removing all obstacles, give the reins entirely to your rivers. 281. Thus he ordered. They return, and open wide the mouths of their springs, and are rolled into the sea with an unbridled course. He struck the earth with his trident, and she trembled, and opened the repositories of the waters with the shock. 285. The rivers breaking out rush through the open plains, and sweep away the brush-wood with the standing corn, and cattle, and men, and houses, and shrines, with their holy things. If any house remained, and was able to withstand so great a calamity unthrown, yet the water, being higher than it, covers the top of it; and the towers thus oppressed, totter under the stream. 290. And now sea and land had no difference. All was sea. Shores were wanting too to that sea. One man seizes upon a hill, another sits in his curved boat, and draws the oars there, where he had lately ploughed. 295. Another sails over his corn, or the tops of his submerged villa. Another catches fish on the top of an elm-tree. An anchor (if chance so formed it), is cast 10 METAMORPHOSES. in a green meadow : or the crooked keel-pieces rub upon the vineyards helow them : and where the graceful goats lately cropped the grass, there now hideous sea- calves lay their bodies. 301. The Nereids wonder to see groves, and cities, and houses under water : and the dolphins occupy the woods, and run against the high boughs, and beat the tossed oaks. The wolf swims amongst the sheep. The water carries away the yellow lions. The water carries the tigers. Nor does the force of thunder avail the boar ; nor his swift legs the stag, when carried away. 307. And tha wandering bird, having a long time sought for land, where it may be allowed to light, falls down into the sea, her wings being wearied. The great licentiousness of the sea had buried the hills, and the waves before unknown beat upon the mountain tops. 311. The greatest part of men is carried off by the water ; long fastings overcome those whom the water spared, by scanty food Phocis separates the Aonian from the Athenian fields, a fruitful land, whilst it was land ; but at that time it was a part of the sea, and a wide plain of sudden waters. 31(5. There a lofty mountain, by name Parnassus, advances towards the stars with two tops, and rises above the clouds with its summit. Here, when Deucalion (for the sea had covered all other places ) arriving in a small ship with the consort of his bed, stuck fast ; they adore the Corycian nymphs, and the Deities of the mountain, and the prophetic Themis, which then presided over the oracles. There was not a man better than him, nor more a lover of jus- tice, or any woman more regardful of the gods, than her. As soon as Jupiter sees the world overflown with liquid waters, and but one man left of so many thousands, lately living, and one woman left of so many thousands both innocent, and both worshippers of the gods ; he dispersed the clouds, and the rains being removed by a north wind, he both shewed the earth to heaven, and the aether to the earth. 330. Nor does the rage of the sea continue. And the governor of the main laying aside his triple weapon, assuages the waters, and calls the green Triton, standing out of the deep, and having his shoulders covered with shell-fish growing there, and bids BOOK I. 1 1 him blow his noisy trumpet, and to call back now the waters and rivers by a signal given. His hoUow-wreathed trumpet is taken up by him, which grows to a great wideness from the bottom part ; which, as soon as it received the air in the middle of the sea, it filled the shores lying under the rising and setting sun, with its sound. Then too, as soon as it touched the mouth of the god dropping with his wet beard, and being blown, sounded the bidden retreat, it was heard by all the waters of both land and sea, and stopped all the streams, i by whose waters it was heard. Now the seafas a shore, "KX the proper channel receives the full rivers. The rivers subside : the hills seem to mount out of the waters. 345. The ground rises ; places seemingly grow, upon the waters decreasing : and after a long time the woods shew their naked tops, and retain the mud left in their branches. The world was restored. Which after Deu- calion sees to be empty, and that the desolate earth was in a profound silence, he thus speaks to Pyrrha, with tears bursting out. 351. "O sister, wife, O thou the only woman left, whom our common pedigree and descent from brothers, and then the marriage tie joined to me ; and now these dangers join ; we two are the whole people of the earth, whatsoever the west and the east behold. The sea hath possessed itself of the rest. 356. Now too as yet have we no certain assurance of life ; the rain-clouds yet terrify my mind. What senti- ment wouldest thou now have had, if thou hadst been delivered from this destruction without me, O hapless one? How could' st thou alone have borne the terror of it ? With whom to comfort thee, would'st thou have borne thy griefs? 361. For I, believe me, if the sea had got thee only, I would have followed thee, wife, and the sea should have had me too. O that I could repair by my father's arts, the people that are lost, and infuse souls into the moulded earth. 365. Now mankind re- mains in us two (so it seemed good to the gods) and we are left as the models of men." Thus he spoke, and then they wept. They determined to pray to the heavenly Deities, and to seek assistance by the sacred oracles. No delay is made ; they go together to the waters of 12 METAMORPHOSES. Cephisus, though not yet clear, yet cutting their wonted channel. 3/1. And after they had sprinkled sacred water, taken thence, upon their clothes and head, they turn their steps to the temple of a sacred goddess ; the top of which was defiled with filthy moss ; and the altars stood without fires. 375. As soon as they reached the steps of the temple, each falls on his face upon the ground, and trembling, gave kisses to the cold stone ; and then spoke thus : '*If the deities, pre- vailed upon by just prayers, are to be mollified ; if the anger of the gods is to be appeased, tell us, O Themis, by what art the loss of our kind is to be repaired ; and give your assistance, O most gentle goddess, in this ruinous case." 381. The goddess was moved, and gave them an answer : " Depart from my temple, and cover your heads, and loose the garments girt about you, and throw the bones of your great mother behind your backs." They were amazed a long time, and Pyrrha first breaks silence with her voice, and refuses to obey the orders of the goddess: and begs with a fearful mouth, that the goddess would grant her pardon ; and dreads to violate her mother's shade, by scattering her bones around. 388. In the mean time they consider with themselves the words of the given oracle, involved in dark obscurity, and revolve them over and over betwixt themselves. 390. Upon that the son of Prometheus comforts the daughter of Epimetheus with these gentle sayings. " Either my cunning deceives me, or the ora- cles are pious, and advise no wickedness. Our great parent is the earth. I suppose the stones in the body of the earth are called her bones ; we are commanded to throw these behind our backs." 395. By whose in- terpretation, though the Titaness was moved, yet hope is mixed with doubt ; so much do both distrust the advice of Heaven ; but what harm will it do to try ? They descend and cover their heads, and ungird their tunics, and cast stones, as ordered, behind their foot- steps. 400. The stones (who should believe it, but that antiquity is for a witness of the thing ?) began to lay aside their hardness and stiffness, and in continuance to be soft, and when softened, to take upon them a new BOOK I. 13 shape. And presently, after they were grown ligger, and a milder nature was bestowed, it happened that, some shape of man might be seen in them-, yet not a very apparent one ; but as a statue of marble begun, and yet not completed, and very like rude images. 407. Yet that part of them which was moist with any juice, and earthy, was turned into the use of a human body. What is solid, and cannot be bent, is changed into bones ; what was lately a vein, continued so under the same name. 411. And in a short time, by the power of the gods above, the stones that were thrown by the hands of the man, took the shape of a man, and female kind was repaired by the throwing of the woman. Thence we are a hardened generation, and capable of undergoing toils, and give proofs from what originals we are. VIII. The earth brought forth the other animals, in different shapes of her own accord, after the old moisture thereof was thoroughly heated by the fire of the sun ; and the mire, and the wet fens swelled with heat ; and the fruitful elements of things nourished by an enlivening soil, as in the womb of a mother, grew, and in con- tinuance of time, took some regular shape upon them. 422. Thus when the seven-streamed Nile has quitted the saturated fields, and returned its waters to their ancient channel, and the fresh mire has been heated with the setherial sun, the ploughmen upon turning up the clods find a great many animals, and amongst them some just begun about the time of their first formation ; some they see not quite finished, and as yet destitute of some of their parts : and in the same body oftentimes one part is alive, whilst the other part is rude earth. 430. For when wet and heat have had a due mixture, they conceive ; and all things arise from these two. And though water be repugnant to fire, a moist heat produces all things, and this jarring concord is fit for procreation. Therefore when the earth, dirty from the late deluge, was heated with aetherial sunshine, and a nourishing warmth, it produced innumerable species, and partly restored the former figures of animals, partly produced new monsters. 438. She desired not indeed to 14 METAMORPHOSES. have done it ; but yet she brought forth thee too, pro- digious Python ; and thou, being a serpent of a kind till then unknown, wast a terror to the new people ; so vast a part of a mountain didst thou occupy. 44 1 . The god that bears the bow, and who had never used such arras before, save against deer and timorous goats, de- stroyed this noxious serpent by a thousand arrows, almost quite exhausting his quiver, his poison being shed through his black wounds. 445. And that length of time might not blot out the fame of the work, he instituted sacred games with famous contests, called Pythia, from the name of the conquered serpent. In these, whosoever of the young men conquered in boxing, running, or chariot racing, received the honour of a crown of oaken leaves. 450. There was 110 bay yet : and Phoebus encircled his temples, finely adorned with long hair, with spriys from any tree. IX. Daphne, the daughter of Peneus, was the first love of Phoebus, a love which blind chance gave him not, but the cruel anger of Cupid. The Delian god, proud of having lately subdued the serpent, had seen him bending his bow by drawing the string, and said, "O wanton boy, what hast thou to do with gallant arms ? that harness becomes my shoulders, who am able to give sure wounds to a wild beast, and to give the same to an enemy. 459. Who lately killed with innumerable arrows the swelling Python, who covered so many acres of land with his poisonous body. 461. Be thou content to raise I know not what kind of love with thy torch ; and do not lay claim to the matter of my praises." To him the son of Venus replies : " Let your bow transfix all things, O Phoebus, my bow shall transfix you ; and as much as all animals bend to you, so much less is your glory than ours." 466. This he said, and cleaving the air with his moving wings, with great activity he perched upon the shady top of Parnassus, and drew two weapons out of his arrow-bearing quiver, of dif- ferent workmanship ; the one drives away, the other causes love : what causes love, is of gold, and glitters with a sharp point ; what drives it away, is blunt, and has lead under the reed. 472. The god lodged this in BOOK I. If) the Peneian nymph ; but with the other he wounded the very marrow of Apollo, through his pierced bones. Immediately the one is in love ; the other flies the name of a lover, rejoicing in the lonely parts of woods, and the skins of wild beasts taken in hunting^ an imitator of the unmarried Phoebe. 477. A fillet tied together her hair, put up without any order. Many courted her ; she, hating all courtiers, not patient to endure, and unacquainted with man, traverses the solitary parts of woods, and never regards what Hymen, what love, what marriage is. Her father often said, " Daughter, thou owest me a son-in-law :" her father often said, " Daughter, thou owest me grand-children." She hating marriage-torches as a crime, overspreading her beautiful face with a bashful blushing, and clinging to her father's neck with fawning arms, she said, " My most dear father, grant me to enjoy a perpetual virginity : her father granted this before to Diana." 488. He indeed com- plies ; but that beauty forbids thee to be what thou wishest, and thy handsome person opposes thy desire. 490. Phcebus is in love, and covets a union of Daphne ; once he saw her, and hopes for what he covets ; and his own oracles deceive him ; and as the light stubble is burnt when the ears are taken off, and as hedges burn with torches, which by chance a traveller has held too near them, or has left now about break of day : thus the god was wrapt in the flames ; thus burns he all his breast through, and nourishes his barren love by hoping. 497. He beholds her unadorned hair floating upon her neck ; and what would they be, if they were adorned ? says he. He sees her eyes sparkling with fire like stars ; he sees a pretty little mouth, which it is not enough to see ; he commends both her fingers and her hands, and her arms fairer, and her shoulders more than half bare : whatever parts are concealed, he thinks them still fairer. 503. She flies swifter than the light wind ; nor does she stop upon these words of him recalling her. " O Peneian nymph, stay, I beseech you. I don't follow as an enemy ; stay, nymph. Thus the l&mbjZies the wolf, thus the doe the lion ; thus the doves with trembling wing fly the eagle : each creature 16 METAMORPHOSES. its euemies. Love is the cause of my following. 508. Woe's me ! lest you should fall on your face, or the thorns should tear your legs unworthy to be hurt, and I should be the cause of pain to you. The places are rough, through which you make such haste ; I beg of you, run more moderately, and restrain your flight ; I myself will follow more moderately. 512. Yet inquire of whom you please. I am not an inhabitant of the mountain ; I am no shepherd ; I do not here, as an uncouth clown, watch herds or flocks. Ah ! rash creature, you know not, you know not whom you fly from ; and therefore do you fly. 515. The Delphic land, and Claros, and Teuedos, and the palace of Patara yields to me. Jupiter is my father : by me what shall be, and was, and is, is disclosed : by me songs harmonize with strings ; our arrow indeed is sure ; yet there is one more sure than ours, which has made a wound in my empty breast. 52 1 . Physic is my invention ; and I am called ' the Helper,' throughout the world ; and the power of simples is subjected to us. Woe's me, that love is curable by no herbs ; nor do the arts avail the master, that avail all others !" 525. The daughter of Peneus flies from him about to speak more words with a timorous course ; and leaves with himself his words unfinished. Even then too she appeared comely : the winds made bare her body, and the blasts meeting her, tossed about her garments, exposed to their influence, and the light air forced back her uncombed hair before it. 530. Her beauty was increased by her flight. But indeed the youthful god cannot bear any longer to waste so much smooth language, and as love advised him, he follows her steps with speedy pace. As when a grey-hound has spied a hare in the empty plain, and he pursues his prey by swiftness, the other her safety : the one is like as if he was going to cling to her, and now he hopes to have her, and grazes upon her very heels with his snout stretched out. 537- The other is in doubt whether she be catched, and is delivered from his very bites ; and leaves the mouth of the dog touching her. So is the god, and the young virgin ; he swift with hopes, she with fear. Yet he that follows, being BOOK I. 17 assisted of love, is swifter, and denies her rest, and is just upon the back of her as she flies, and breathes upon her hair scattered upon her neck. Her strength being now spent, she grew pale, and being quite foiled with the fatigues of this hurrying race, looking upon the waters of Peneus, she says, " O father, bring me help, if you, rivers, have the power of gods." (546. She says too, " earth, in which have I pleased too much, yawn beneath me, or destroy, by changing it, that shape which causes me to be hurt.") This prayer being scarce ended, a heavy numbness seizes her limbs ; her soft midriff is enclosed by a thin bark : her hairs grow into thin leaves, her arms into boughs ; her feet, that were lately so swift, stick fast by steady roots ; a shady summit overspreads her face ; her neatness alone continues in her. 553. Phoebus loves this tree too ; and placing his right hand upon the boll he perceives the breast still to tremble under the new bark ; and embracing the boughs as if her members in his arms, he gives kisses to the wood ; yet the wood declines his kisses. 557- To whom the god said : " But seeing thou can'st not be my wife, thou shalt however be my tree : my hair shall always have thee, my bay-tree, my harps have thee, my quivers shall have thee. 560. Thou shalt accompany the Latin generals, when the joyful voice of the soldiery shall sing a triumph, and the Capitol shall see long pompous trains mount upon it. 562. Thou the same shalt stand as a most faithful guardian to the door-cheeks of Augustus before the gate, and shalt protect the oak in the middle betwixt two trees of thine : and as my head is youthful with unshorn locks, do thou too ever wear the perpetual honours of green leaves." 566. Paean ended his speech; the laurel nodded assent to this, with its new-made boughs ; and seemed to move its top as a head. X. There is a grove of ^Emonia, which a rugged wood encloses on all sides. They call it Tempe : through which the river Peneus issuing forth from the bottom of mount Pindus, is rolled along with frothing waters ; and by a heavy cataract, draws together a cloud scattering vapouring mists : and with its spray rains c 2 18 METAMORPHOSES. upon the tops of the woods, and with its noise disturbs more places than are near it. This is the house, this the abode, this is the retired habitation of the great river : residing in this cavern made of rocks, he gave laws to the waters, and to the nymphs inhabiting the waters. 577- The rivers of that region first repair thither, not knowing whether they should congratulate or console the father, the poplar-bearing Sperchius, and restless Euipeus, and aged Apidauus, and the gentle Amphrysus and ^Eas, and by and by other rivers ; who, by what course their violence led them, draw down their waters weary with their wanderings into the sea. 583. Inachus alone is absent ; and concealed in the bottom of his cave, increases his waters by his tears ; and most wretched, laments his daughter lo as lost ; he knows not whether she enjoys life, or is amongst the ghosts : but her whom he finds nowhere, he thinks can exist no- where ; and fears the worst in his mind. 588. Jupiter had seen lo returning from her father's river, and said : "O virgin, worthy of Jupiter, and likely to make some lover happy by thy bed, seek the shade of either of these groves (and he shewed her both), whilst it is hot, and the sun is now at the highest in the middle of his circle. 593. But if you are afraid to enter those lonely abodes of wild beasts alone, you may pass within the secret re- cesses of the groves safe with a god for your protector, and not a god of the vulgar sort ; but with me who hold the sceptre of heaven in my great hand, and who scatter the wandering thunder. 597. Do not fly from me," (for she was in the act of flight), and now she had left the pastures of Lerua, and the Lyrcaean plains planted with trees ; when the god covered the broad earth with darkness drawn over it, and stopped her flight, and violated her modesty. 601. In the mean time Juno looked down into the middle of the fields, and wondering that the floating clouds had made the appearance of night under a bright day,, she perceived these were not the vapours of a river, nor raised from the moist earth ; and looks around to see where her hus- band was, as who knew full well the sly intrigues of her spouse, who had been so often detected. 607. Whom BOOK I. 19 after she found not in heaven, I am either deceived, or I am injured, says she ; and descending from the top of the sky, she alighted upon the earth, and ordered the mist to withdraw. 610. He had already perceived the approach of his wife, ' and changed the shape of the daughter of Inachus into a heifer. Even the very cow is beautiful. The daughter of Saturn extols the beauty of the cow, though unwillingly ; and likewise inquires whose it was, and from whence it came, or of what herd it was, as if ignorant of the truth. 615. Jupiter feigns that she was produced out of the earth, that the proprietor may no further be inquired after. The daughter of Saturn begs her of him as a present. What could he do ? It was cruel to deliver up his love to her, and liable to suspicion not to give her. It is shame which advises him on that hand ; and love dissuades on this ; and his modesty would have been conquered by his love ; yet if so slight a present as a cow should be denied to the sharer of his descent and bed, it might well appear not to be a cow. 622. After the mistress was given her, the goddess did not immediately lay aside all her apprehension ; and was afraid of Jupiter, and was fearful of her being stolen, until she had delivered her to Argus, the son of Aristor, to be guarded. XI. Argus had a head studded on all sides with an hundred eyes ; each pair of them took rest in their turns ; the others watched, and remained upon the guard. He looked to lo, in what place soever she stood ; he had lo before his eyes, though he was turned from her. 630. He suffers her to feed in the day : but when the sun is under the deep earth, he shuts her up, and ties a cord about her neck, unworthy of such usage. She is fed with the leaves of trees, and bitter herbs ; and for a couch, the unhappy creature lies upon the earth that has not always grass : and drinks the muddy rivers. 635. And when she was minded as a suppliant to stretch out her arms to Argus, she had no arms to stretch out to Argus ; and she uttered lowings from her mouth, endeavouring to complain, and dreaded the noise, and was affrighted at her own. voice. She 20 METAMOIIPHOSES. came likewise to Inachus's banks, the banks where she often used to play ; and as soon as she saw her recent horns in the water, she was afraid, and, being alarmed, ran away. 642. The Naiades know not, Inachus himself knows not, who she may be ; but she follows her father, and follows her sisters, and suffers herself to be touched, and offers herself to them ad- miring her. Aged Inachus held her some grass he pulled up : she licks his hands, and gives kisses to her father's palms. 647. Nor does she keep in her tears: and if words should follow her attempts, would beg his help ; and would declare her name, and misfortunes. Instead of words, letters, which her foot scrawled in the dust, made a dismal discovery of her body's being changed. " Woe's me !" cries out her father Inachus ; and hanging upon the horns and neck of the groaning and snow-white cow, he cries out again : c< Woe's me ! Art thou my daughter, who has been sought for through all lands ? Thou when not found, wast matter of less sorrow to me, than now thou art found. Thou art silent, and returnest no words in answer to mine ; but only fetchest sighs from the bottom of thy breast ; and what alone thou can'st do, lowest in answer to my words. 658. But I, ignorant, was preparing a bride-chamber, and marriage torches for thee ; and my first hope was of a son-in-law ; the second of grand-children ; but now thou must have a husband from the herd, now a son of the herd. 661. Nor is it possible for me to end these such sorrows by death, but it is really a mis- fortune to me to be a god ; and the gate of death being shut against me stretches my mourning to a time without end." Star-eyed Argus, removes her from him, whilst he was lamenting in this manner; and carries the daughter, taken from her father, into different pas- tures. He occupies the lofty top of a mountain far away ; from which, as he sits, he looks about him on all sides. XII. But the governor of the gods above is not able any longer to bear with such great calamities of the grand-daughter of Phoroneus ; and calls his son, whom the bright Pleias, Maia, brought forth, and orders him BOOK I. 21 to put Argus to death. 671. But small delay was made to take his wings upon his feet, and his sopori- ferous staff in his powerful hand, and the covering for his hair. After he had put these things in order, the son of Jupiter leaps down from his father's high abode upon the earth, and there took off his cap, and put off his wings : his staff alone was kept. With this he drives, as a shepherd, some goats through the lonely country, taken up, as he came along ; and plays upon some oat-straws joined together. 678. Juno's keeper, Argus, being charmed with the tones of this new contrivance, says : " Whosoever thou art, thou may'st sit with me upon this stone ; for there is not in any place more plentiful grass for cattle : and thou seest here a shade convenient for shepherds." 682. The grandson of Atlas, sat down, and with much talking stopped as it were the day in its progress, by his discourse ; and tries too to conquer his watchful eyes, by playing upon his joined pipes. 685. Yet he strives hard to vanquish soft sleep ; and though sleep was received by part of his eyes, yet he wakes with the other part ; he inquires too (for the pipes had been lately invented) by what means it had been found out. XIII. Then the god says : " In the cold mountains of Arcadia, there was amongst the Hamadryades of Nonacrine, a certain Naias very famous : the nymphs called her Syrinx. 692. She had not once, but many times, eluded the satyrs that pursued her, and whatso- ever gods, the shady woods, or the fruitful country con- tains.' She made her court to the Ortygian goddess, by her occupation, and by her virginity ; and being clad after the fashion of Diana, she might have deceived one, and might have been thought to be the daughter of Latona, if she had not had a bow of dog-tree, and the other one of gold ; yet even so she deceived people. 698. Pan spies her returning from the hill of Lycseum, and having his head crowned with sharp pine leaves, he utters these words. 700. It was reserved for him but to have said the words : and' that the nymph, slighting his suit, fled through the solitary places, till she came to the smooth river of the sandy Ladon ; and 22 METAMORPHOSES. that here, the waters stopping her course, she prayed to her liquid sisters, that they would change her : and that Pan, when he thought that Syrinx was now caught by him, seized upon some marshy reeds, instead of the body of the nymph ; and whilst he sighs there, that the winds, moving amongst the reeds, made a shrill noise, and like one complaining. 709. And the god being taken with this new art, and the sweetness of the sound, said : This way of talking with thee shall con- tinue with me ; and accordingly unequal reeds being fastened together with a joining of wax, they kept the name of the girl." The Cyllenian god, being just going to say such things, saw all his eyes were sunk, and his organs of sight covered with sleep. Immediately he stops his voice, and confirms their sleep, stroking his languid eyes with his soporiferous wand. 717. And without delay, wounds him nodding with his crooked sword, where the head is joined to the neck ; and throws it down bloody upon the rock ; and stains the craggy mountain with his blood. 720. Argus, thou liest dead ; and the light which thou had'st in so many eyes is put out ; and one night seizes a hundred eyes together. The daughter of Saturn, takes these eyes, and places them in the feathers of her bird : and fills its tail with star-like gems. XIV. She was immediately inflamed with rage ; nor did she put off the time of expressing her anger ; and presented a dreadful fury before the eyes and mind of the Grecian lady, and buried in her bosom invisible stings, and drove in a fright the poor wandering creature through the whole world. Thou., O Nile, remainedst the utmost boundary to her immense toil. 729. Which as soon as she reached, she fell upon her knees placed on the edge of the bank, and raising herself up with her neck aloof, and holding up the only face she could to the stars, she seemed to complain with Jupiter, both by groaning and tears, and a mournful lowing, and to heg an end of her calamities. 734. He embracing the neck of his wife with his'arms, begs she would end her punish- ment at last ; and lay aside your fears for the future, says he : she shall never be the occasion of any trouble BOOK I. 23 to you again ; and he bids the Stygian waters hear this. As soon as the goddess was pacified, lo takes her for- mer shape, and becomes what she was before : the hairs fly from off her body, her horns decrease, and the ball of her eye becomes less ; the opening of her mouth is contracted, her shoulders and her hands return, and her hoof, vanishing, is disposed of into five nails : nothing of the cow remains in her, but the whiteness of her appearance ; and the nymph, being now content with the service of two feet, is raised upon them : and yet is afraid to speak, lest she should low after the manner of a cow ; and timorously tries again words long disused. Now she is worshipped as a most famous goddess, by the linen-wearing people. Epaphus is believed to have been born to her at last of the seed 'of great Jupiter ; and has temples jointly with his mother in the cities of Egypt. Phaeton, sprung from the sun, was equal to him in spirit and years ; whom formerly talking great things, and not yielding to him, and proud of his father Phoebus, the grandson of Inachus could not bear ; and says, "Thou like a mad fool believest thy mother in all things, and art puffed up with conceit arising from a pretended father." Phaeton blushed, and in shame sup- pressed his resentment; and carried to Clymene his mother the reproaches of Epaphus. "And mother," says he, "to grieve you the more, I the free, the fierce youth, held my tongue : I am ashamed these scandals should be uttered against us, and that they could not be con- futed. 760. But, if I am descended of divine race, do you give me some token of so great a descent, and claim me for heaven." Thus he spoke, and cast his arms about his mother's neck; and begged by her own, and Merope's head, and the marriage of his sisters, that she would give him some tokens of his true father. 765. It is doubtful, whether Clymene was more moved by the entreaties of her son, or resentment of the crime charged upon her : she held up both her arms to heaven ; and looking to the light of the sun, she says, "0 son, I swear to thee by this beam bright with shining rays, which both hears and sees us, that thou wast begot by this sun, whom thou beholdest ; that thou wast begot by this sun, who 24 METAMORPHOSES. regulates the world ; and if I tell a lie, let him deny himself to be seen by me ; and let this light be the last to my eyes. 773. Nor is it any long trouble for you to visit your father's dwelling. His house is contiguous to our earth, where he rises. If your inclination does but dispose you, go ; and inquire of him yourself." Phaeton immediately springs forth, full of joy upon 'these sayings of his mother, and has now nothing but heaven in his mind ; and passes by his ^Ethiopians, and the Indians situated under the violent heat of the sun; and briskly goes to the rising of his father. BOOK II. THE palace of the sun was elevated on lofty pillars, shining with radiant gold, and the pyropus that looks like fire ; the utmost top of which neat ivory covered. Two folding doors of silver shone at the entrance, and the workmanship exceeded even the material ; for Mulciber had carved there the seas encompassing the earth in the middle ; and the orb of the earth, and the heaven which is over that orb. 8. The waters have in them the green gods, and the musical Triton, and the ambiguous Pro- teus, and jEgaeon pressing the huge backs of whales with his arms ; Doris too and her daughters, part of which seem to swim, part sitting upon a bank to dry their green hair, and some to ride upon fishes : they have not all one face, nor yet quite different ; but such as that of sisters ought to be. 15. The earth has upon it men, and cities, and woods, and wild beasts, and rivers, and nymphs, and the other Deities of the creation. Upon these was placed the representation of the shining heaven, and its six signs upon the right door, and as many upon the left. Whither, as soon as the son of Clymene came by an ascending path, and entered the house of his doubted father, immediately he turns his steps towards his father's countenance, and stands at a distance ; for he could not bear the light nearer. 23. Phoebus sat arrayed in a scarlet robe, upon a throne glit- tering with bright emeralds. On his right and left were Day, and Month, and Year, and Ages, and Hours placed at equal distances ; and the fresh Spring stood covered with a flourishing crown ; Summer stood naked, and wore garlands made of the ears of corn. Autumn too stood there, besmeared with trodden grapes ; and icy Winter, rough with hoary hair. 31. From thence the Sun, being in the middle of the place, saw the young man D 26 METAMORPHOSES. affrighted at the novelty of those matters, with those eyes, with which he beholds all things ; and says, " What is the reason of your journey hither ? what do you seek in this my citadel, O son Phaeton, not to be denied by your father ?" 35. He replies, " O thou public light of the vast world, father Phoebus, if you grant me the use of this name, and if Clymene does not conceal her fault under a false pretence, give me some pledges, dear father, by which I may be believed to be your true issue ; and take away this wavering from our minds." 40. Thus he said. But the father laid aside the rays shining all round his head, and commanded him to come nearer; and giving him an embrace, says, "Neither art thou worthy to be denied to be my son, and Clymene gave thee thy true descent ; and that thou mayest the less doubt oj it, ask any gift and thou shalt have it from me, giving it thee : let the lake to be sworn by the gods, unknown to our eyes, be witness of this promise." 47. Scarce had he well done ; when he begs his father's chariot, and the command and government of the wing- footed horses for a day. The father was sorry he had sworn ; who, shaking his illustrious head three or four times said, " My words are become rash by thine. I wish I could not give what I promised ! I confess, son, this alone I would deny thee. I may dissuade you. Thy desire is not safe. Thou desirest a great gift, Phaeton ; and what doth not suit thy strength, nor such boyish years. 56. Thy condition is mortal : that is not a thing for a mortal, which thou wishest for. Thou ignorantly affectest more too than is allowed the gods above to obtain. Let every one please himself; yet ne'er a one is able to stand upon the fire-bearing axle- tree except myself. 60. Even the governor of vast Olympus, who throws the fierce thunder with his terri- ble right hand, cannot drive this chariot ; and what is reckoned greater than Jupiter ? The first part of the way is up hill ; and along which the horses, fresh in the morning, hardly mount. It is highest in the middle of heaven ; from whence it is a terror to myself to see the sea and the land, and even my breast quakes with dread- ful fear. The last part of the way is down hill, and BOOK II. 27 requires a steady command of the horses. Then too Tethys, who receives me in her waters below, is wont to fear, lest I should be tumbled headlong. 70. Add too, that the heaven is whirled round with a continual turning, and drags along the high stars, and revolves them about with a swift rolling. I struggle against this ; nor does the motion, that overcomes all things else, overcome me. And I am borne in a direction contrary to the rapid world. Suppose now the chariot was given you, what will you do ? Can you move against the whirling heavens, that the hurrying sphere shall not carry you along with it ? 76. Perhaps you imagine in your mind there are groves there, and cities of the gods, and temples rich with presents. Your way is through ambuscades, and the forms of wild beasts. And that you may keep your road, and may be carried off by no miss of it : you must go betwixt the horns of the opposing Bull, and through the ^Emonian bows, and the mouth of the violent Lion, and the Scor- pion bending his cruel arms by a long round, and the Crab bending his claws in a different manner. Nor is it easy for you to govern the steeds spirited by those fires which they have in their breasts, which they breathe out of their mouths and nostrils : they hardly suffer me, when their keen minds are once heated, and their necks struggle with the reins. 88. But do thou have a care, son, lest I should be the occasion of a present that will be pernicious to thee ; and whilst the case allows it, cor- rect thy prayers. 90. Surely you desire some sure pledges, that you may believe you sprung from my blood. I give you sure pledges thereof, by being thus concerned for you : and I am proved to be your father, by a father's fear. Lo, behold my countenance : and I wish you could put your eyes into my breast, and dis- cover my fatherly concern therein. 95. Finally, look about upon whatsoever the rich world has in it ; and ask any one of so many and such great good things of heaven, earth, and sea; 'you shall suffer no refusal. This one thing I interpose against, which in its true name is a punishment, not an honour: Phaeton, you ask a punishment instead of a present. 100. Why, ignorant 28 METAMORPHOSES. youth, do you hold my neck with your fawning arms ? Doubt not ; whatsoever you wish for, shall be given you (we have sworn by the Stygian waters) but do you wish more wisely." He ended his admonitions. Yet the other resists his advice, and presses his point, and burns with desire of the chariot. 105. \Vhereforethefather, staying as long as he could, brings the young man to the high chariot, a present of Vulcan's. The axle-tree was of gold, the pole of gold, the curved shoeing of the wheels' surface gold ; the range of spokes of silver : Chrysolites and gems, placed along the yoke in order, gave a clear light, by reflecting the Sun. 111. And, whilst the magnanimous Phaeton admires those things, and views the work, behold the watchful Aurora opened the roseate doors from the bright sunrise, and the courts full of roses. The stars fly away ; the troops whereof Lucifer drives on, and moves the last from his station in heaven. 116. Then the father, when he saw the earth, and the whole world grow red, and the horns of the moon, almost spent, vanish as it were ; Titan orders the swift Hours to yoke the horses. The nimble goddesses perform their orders, and lead the steeds vomiting fire, satiated with the juice of Ambrosia, from the high stalls, and put the rattling bridles on them. 122. Then the father rubbed the face of his son with a sacred ointment, and made it capable of enduring the rapid flame : and put the rays upon his hair ; and fetching from his trou- bled breast sighs presaging his future sorrow, he said, 126. " If thou canst obey this advice, at least, of thy father, spare, my boy, the goads, and use the bridle strongly. They make haste enough of their own accord ; it is the difficulty to hold them in, eager as they are. And let not the way please you by the five bows direct. 130. There is a road cut obliquely with a broad bend- ing, and, being constrained within the limits of three zones, it shuns the southern pole, and the bear joined to the Aquilones Let your way be here : you will see plain prints of the wheels. And that heaven and earth may have equal heat, neither go too low, nor drive the chariot along the top of the sky. 136. If you go too high, you will burn the celestial mansions ; and if you BOOK II. 29 go too low, the earth : you will go safest in the midst. And let not the right wheel carry you off to the wreathed snake, nor the left draw you to the low altar. Keep betwixt both. I commit the rest to fortune ; who I pray may help you, and provide better, than you do for yourself. 142. Whilst I speak, the moist night has reached the goals placed upon the western shore ; fur- ther delay is not allowed us. We are called for ; and the darkness being banished, Aurora shines. 145. Take the reins in your hand ; or, if you have a breast to be changed, use our advice, not chariot, whilst you may ; and while you yet stand upon solid ground ; and whilst you, ignorant soul, do not yet load the chariot you badly wished for, suffer me to give light to the world, which you may see secure." 150. He occupies the light chariot with his youthful body, and stands over it ; and rejoices to take in his hands the reins given him ; and then gives thanks to his father unwilling to receive them. In the mean time, the winged horses of the sun, Pyroeis, Eous, and yEthon, and the fourth Phlegon, fill the air with flame-darting neighings, and beat the barriers with their feet. 156. Which after Tethys, ignorant of the fate of her grandson, pushed away, and a full scope of the vast heaven was given them ; they take their way, and cleave the opposite clouds with their feet moving through the air ; and, raised upon their wings, pass the east-wind that arose from the same parts. 161. But the weight of the chariot was light, and what the horses of the Sun could scarcely feel ; and the yoke wanted its wonted heaviness. And as crooked ships, without pro- per ballast, totter, and through their excessive lightness move unsteadily through the sea, thus does the chariot without the usual weight give jumps into the air, and is darted up on high, and is like one empty. 167. Which as soon as the horses perceived, they rush forward, and leave the beaten road, and run not in the order as they did before. He is frightened, and knows not which way to turn the reins committed to him ; nor does he know where the way is ; nor, if he did know, could he com- mand them. 1/1. Then for the first time did the cold Triones grow hot, by the rays, and attempted in vain to D 2 30 METAMORPHOSES. be dipped in the forbidden sea. And the Serpent which is seated next to the icy pole, being till then stiff with cold, and not formidable to any one, became scorched, and felt new rage from the heat. M*6. They say too that you, Bootes, fled in trepidation, though you were usually but slow, and thy cart generally hindered thee. But when the unhappy Phaeton beheld' from the top of the sether the earth lying far, very far below, he grew pale, and his knees trembled with the sudden fright ; and darkness overspread his eyes in the midst of so much light. 182. And now he could wish he had never touched his father's horses ; and now he is sorry that he ever knew his pedigree, and that he prevailed in his suit to his father : now desiring to be called Merope's son : He is hurried along just as a pine-wood ship, driven by a furious north-wind ; to which her steersman has given up all her helm, which he has left to the gods and his prayers. 187. What can he do? Much of heaven is left behind his back ; but there is more before his eyes. He measures both in his mind ; and one while looks forward to the west, which it is not allowed to him by fate to reach ; and sometimes looks back to the east ; "> and being ignorant what to do, he is stupified ; and nei- ther lets go the bridle, nor is able well to hold it ; ny does he know the names of the horses : and in greali fright he sees strange objects scattered up and down in divers parts of heaven, and the forms of huge wild beasts. 1 95. There is a place where the Scorpion bends his arms into two bows, and with his tail, and claws, turned round on each side, stretches his members through the space of two signs. As soon as the youth saw him reeking with a sweat of black poison, threaten- ing wounds with the bended point of his tongue ; bereft of his senses, he dropped the reins in a cold fright. 201. Which lying on the top of their backs, when they touched the steeds, they rush away ; and, no body re- straining them, they scour away through the air of an unknown region^ and where their fury drove them, that way without restraint they hurry along, and run against the stars fixed up in the high heavens, and drag away the chariot through lonely places : and one while make BOOK II. 31 for the highest parts ; another while are borne away in a descent, and steep ways, in a space nearer to the earth. 208. And the moon wonders that her brother's horses run lower than her own ; and the burnt clouds smoke. 210. As any land is highest, it is caught by the flames, and rending, makes great chasms ; and is quite dried, its moisture being all carried off. The grass grows grey, and trees are burnt with their leaves ; and the dry standing corn affords fuel for its own consumption. I complain of small matters. Great cities with their walls perish : and the fires turn whole nations with their people to ashes. 216. Woods with mountains blaze. Athos burns, and the Cicilian Taurus, and Tmolus, and (Ete ; and Ida now dry, formerly very famous for its fountains ; and Helicon frequented by virgins ; and Hsemus, not yet called (Eagrius. 220. ytna burns to a prodigious height with doubled fires ; and two-topped Parnassus, and Eryx, and Cynthus, and Othrys, and Rhodope that was at last to be free from snows : and Mimas, and Dindyma, and Mycale, and ' Cifhseron made for the celebration of holy rites. Nor do its colds avail Scythia ; Caucasus is on fire, and Ossa with Pindus, and Olympus higher than them '. both ; and the lofty Alps, and the cloudy Appenine. ..^27. But then Phaeton beholds the world set on fire on all sides, and cannot endure such mighty heats ; and sucks in at his mouth the hot air, as it were out of a profound furnace; and perceives his chariot to burn. And now too he cannot bear the ashes and embers ejected ; and is involved on all hands with hot smoke : and being covered with a pitchy darkness, he knows not whither he is going, or where he is ; and is hurried away at the pleasure of the winged horses. 235. They be- lieve that then the nations of the jEthiopians got their black hue, the blood being forced into the outer parts of the body. Then Libya was made dry, the moisture being carried off by the heat. Then the nymphs lamented the loss of their springs and lakes, with their hair spread disshevelled. Bo?otia seeks for Dirce, Argos Amymone, Ephyre the waters of Pyrene. Nor do rivers, that had got banks remote from one another 32 METAMORPHOSES. in place, remain secure : Tanais smoked in the middle of its waters, and aged Peneus, and the Teuthrantean Caicus, and the swift Ismenus, with the Phocaic Erymanthus, and Xanthus destined to burn again, and the yellow Lycormas. 246. And Maeander, who plays in his winding streams ; and the Mygdonian Melas, and the Tsenarean Eurotas. The Babylonian Euphrates too was burnt up ; Orontes was burnt, and the rapid Ther- modon, and Ganges, and Phasis, and Ister. 250. Alpheus is in a vast heat ; the banks of the Sperchius burn : and the gold which Tagus carries in its rivers melts with the fire : and the river-birds, which serenaded the Maeonian banks with their singing, grew vastly hot in the middle of Cayster. The Nile being affrighted fled into the farthest part of the world, and concealed his source, which still lies hid. His seven mouths are void of water, and dusty, being seven valleys without any water. The same misfortune dries up the Ismarian rivers, Hebrus with Strymon ; and the western rivers, the Rhine, and the Rhone, and the Po, and the Tyber, to whom the government of the world was promised. 260. All the ground gapes, and the light penetrates through the chinks into hell, and terrifies the infernal king with his wife : and the sea is contracted ; and that is a field of dry sand, which lately was the deep. The mountains too, which the deep sea had covered, start up, and increase the number of the scattered Cyclades, The fishes seek the bottom : nor dare the crooked dolphins raise themselves above the seas into the air, as usual. The bodies of sea-calves float belly upwards, dead upon the top of the deep. The report is too, that Nereus himself, and Doris, and their daughters, lay hid under the warm waters. 270. Three times Neptune ventured to thrust his arms, with a stern countenance, out of the waters ; but three times he could not bear the fires of the air. Yet the kindly earth, as she was surrounded with the sea, amidst the waters of the main, and the springs on all sides contracted, which had hid them- selves in the bowels of their dark mother, lifts up, dry as she was, her all-bearing face, and held her hand before her forehead, and shaking all things with a vast BOOK II. 33 trembling, she sunk down a little, and was lower than she uses to be ; and thus speaks with her sacred voice : " If this pleases you, and I hare deserved it, why do your thunders cease, O you greatest of the gods ? Let me, if I must perish by the force of fire, perish by your fire ; lessen the disaster by your being the author of it. Indeed it is with much ado I get my jaws open for these very words : (the heat bore hard upon her mouth) lo, behold my singed hair, and the smoke 'in my eyes : the embers too fly over my mouth. 285. Do you return me these fruits, this honour for my fertility and service, that I bear the wounds of the crooked plough and harrows, and am tilled all the year round, for that I furnish leaves for the cattle, and ripe nutriment and pleasant corn for mankind, and frankincense for you? 290. But suppose I had deserved destruction, what have the waters de- served ? What has your brother deserved ? Why do the seas, delivered to him by lot, decrease, and are removed further from the sky ? But if neither a regard for your brother, nor me, affects you ; yet pity your own heaven : look about, both poles smoke on each hand of you ; which, if your fire destroys, your own palaces will fall. 296 Lo, Atlas himself is in distress, and hardly supports the burning heavens upon his shoulders. If the sea, if the earth perishes, if the palace of heaven perishes, we are then plunged in old Chaos. Deliver it from the flames, if there be any thing left ; and provide for the preservation of the world." 301. These things said the earth alone' ; for indeed she could not bear the heat any longer, nor say more ; and withdrew her coun- tenance within herself, and to caves that are nigh the ghosts. But the almighty Father calling all the gods of heaven to witness, and him too that had given Phaeton the chariot, that unless he gave his assistance, all things would perish by a heavy fate ; he mounts aloft to the highest eminence of heaven, from whence he uses to draw the clouds over the broad earth ; from whence he makes his rumbling noise, and throws his brandished thunder. But then he neither had clouds which he could draw over the earth ; nor showers to pour down from the sky. He thunders, and threw the bolt, heaved 34 METAMORPHOSES. from his right ear, at the charioteer ; and at once drove him from his life and the wheels, and stopped fires with cruel fires. 314. The horses are affrighted; and making a jump opposite to the thunder, they get their necks out of the yoke, and leave the harness broke to pieces. In one place lie the bridles, in another the axle-tree pulled away from the pole ; in another part the spokes of the broken wheels ; and the fragments of the chariot pulled in pieces were scattered far and wide. 319. But Phaeton, whilst the flame consumes his yellow hair, tumbles headlong, and moves in a long tract though the air ; as sometimes a star, which if it did not fall from the serene heaven, yet might seem to fall. Whom the great river Eridanus receives in a part of the world far distant from his native country, and washes his smoking countenance. II. & III. The Hesperian Naiades commit his body smoking from the three-forked fire to a tomb, and in- scribe the stone with these verses. " Here lies Phaeton, the guider of his father's chariot, which if he did not keep secure, yet he miscarried in a grand attempt." 329. But the miserable father hid his face overspread with dismal sorrow, and (if we may but believe it) they say that one day passed without any sun. The fires gave light enough, and there was some convenience in that calamity. 333. But Clymene, after she had said whatever things were to be said in so great misfortunes, ran over the whole world mourning and distracted, and tearing her bosom ; and first seeking for his lifeless limbs, and then his bones, she found his bones at length buried upon the bank of a foreign river ; and lay down upon the place, and bedewed his name, read upon the marble stone, with her tears, and warmed it with her naked breast. 340. The Heliades, mourn no less, and bestow tears, an empty present, upon his death ; and, smiting their breasts with their palms, call night and day upon Phaeton, who was not destined to hear their miserable complaints ; and they lie spread about his grave. The moon had four times filled up her disk, by filling up her horns ; whilst they, according to their custom (for use had made it a custom) uttered great BOOK II. 35 lamentation ; of which Phaethusa, the eldest of the sisters, being desirous to lie down upon the ground, complained that her feet grew stiff; to whom the fair Lampetie endeavouring to come, she also was detained by a root suddenly growing. 350. A third, endeavouring to tear her hair, pulls off leaves ; another complains that her legs were held fast by the stump of a tree ; another that her arms were become long boughs. And whilst they wondered at these things, the bark closes upon their groins, and by degrees encompasses their bellies, and breasts, and shoulders, and hands ; and their mouths only were left out calling upon their mother. 356. What could their mother do ; but go hither and thither, whither her passion draws her, and join her mouth with theirs, whilst yet she may 1 But that is not enough : she tries to pull their bodies out of the trunks of the trees, and breaks the tender branches with her hands : but from thence drops of blood flow as from a wound. 361. Which soever of them is wounded, cries out, " O mother, spare me, I beseech you ; spare me, I beseech you : my body is torn in the tree ; and now farewell :" the bark closed over at the last words. 364. From thence the tears flow : and amber dropping from the new boughs hardens in the sun ; which the clear river receives, and sends to be worn by the Latin brides. IV. Cycnus the son of Sthenelus was by at this strange event ; who though he was allied to thee, Phaeton, by the blood of his mother, yet was he nearer to thee in affection. He leaving his kingdom (for he reigned over the people and the cities of the Ligurians) filled the green banks, and the river Po, and the wood now augmented with his transformed sisters, with his com- plaints; when the man's voice was rendered shrill, and grey feathers conceal his hair, and his neck is stretched out to a great length from his breast, and a membrane ties together his red toes : wings cover his sides ; a bill without a point occupies his mouth. 377. Cycnus be- comes a new bird ; and does not trust himself to the sky and Jupiter, as being mindful of the fire unjustly thrown by him. He tenants the pools, and wide lakes ; 36 METAMORPHOSES. and, hating fire, chooses the rivers, contrary to flames, to dwell in. V. & VI. In the mean time the father of Phaeton clad in mourning, and destitute of his usual comeliness, just such as he uses to be, when he suffers an eclipse in his disk, both hates the light, and himself, and the day ; and gives up his mind to sorrow, and adds resentment to his sorrow, and denies his service to the world. 385. " My condition," says he, " has been restless enough from the very beginning of my life, and I repent of the pains taken by me without end, and without honour. Let any one else drive the chariot that bears the light. If there be nobody, and all the gods confess they cannot do it, let Jove himself drive it, that however, whilst he tries our reins, he may at last lay aside his thunder ; that is, to deprive fathers of their children. Then he may know, when he has tried the strength of the fire-footed horses, that he did not deserve death, who could not well govern them." 394. All the deities stand about the sun, saying such things ; and beg with humble supplication, that he would not bring eternal darkness on the world. Jupiter too excuses the fire thrown at his son, and, like a king, adds threats to his entreaties. Phoebus collects up his wild horses, as yet trembling with fear, and vents his fury upon them with the goad and the whip ; for he is in a fury, and upbraids them with his son, and charges his death upon them. But the almighty Father goes round the great walls of heaven, and carefully searches, lest any part should be impaired by the violence of the fire : which after he saw to be secure, and in their full strength, he views the earth, and the works of men : (yet he has a more particular care of his dear Arcadia) and he restores the springs, and the rivers not yet daring to run : he gives grass to the earth, leaves to the trees, and com- mands the damaged woods to grow green again. 409. Whilst he frequently goes and comes, he stopped short at the sight of a Nonacrine virgin; and the fires received within his bones grew raging hot. Her business was not to soften the wool by teazing it, nor BOOK II. 37 to plait her hair in different positions : but a buckle fastened her coat, and a white fillet tied up her neglected hair ; and one while she took a light dart in her hand, another a bow. 415. She was a soldier of Phoebe, nor did any nymph come upon mount Msenalus more ac- ceptable to Trivia, than she. But no power is lasting. The high sun had that space of heaven beyond the middle, when she enters a grove, which no age had ever thinned. 419. Here she puts her quiver off her shoulder, and unbent her flexible bow, and lay down upon the ground which the grass had covered, and pressed her painted quiver with her bended neck. When Jupiter saw her weary, and without a keeper, certainly, says he, " My wife will never know of this stolen leap ; or if she does come to know of it, is, oh ! scolding of such great import?" 425. Immediately he puts on the form and dress of Diana ; and says, " O virgin, one part of my companions, upon what mountains have you been hunting ?" The virgin raises herself from the turf, and said, " Hail goddess, if I may be judge, greater than Jupiter, let him hear what I say himself, if he will." He laughs, and hears ; and rejoices that he is preferred before himself ; and gives her kisses, neither moderate enough, nor so to be given by a virgin. 432. He hinders her, a going to tell him in what wood she had been hunting, by an embrace, and does not discover himself without a crime. 434. She indeed on the other hand, as much as a woman could do (O daughter of Saturn, would you had seen her, you would have been more gentle to her ;) she indeed struggles hard ; but what girl, or what man, could prevail against Jupi- ter ? Jupiter, having gained his point, makes off for the summit of the sky : the grove, and the conscious wood is her aversion. 439. Withdrawing her foot from thence, she had well nigh forgot to take up her quiver with her arrows, and the bow which she had hung by. Behold Dictynna, attended with her train of nymphs, marching along through the lofty Maenalus, and proud of the slaughter of wild beasts, sees her, and calls her when seen : she, being called upon, ran away ; and at fii$t was afraid lest Jupiter should be in her too. 445. E 38 METAMORPHOSES. But after she saw the nymphs walk along with her, she was sensible there was no roguery in the case ; and came up to their train. Alas ! how difficult it is not to betray a crime by one's looks ! She scarce takes her eyes from the ground ; nor is she joined close to the side of the goddess, as she used to be before ; nor is she the foremost in the whole company : but she is silent, and by her blushing gives signs of her injured modesty. 451. And but that Diana is a maid, she might have perceived her fault by a thousand tokens: the nymphs are said to have perceived it. The moon's horns now put out again in her ninth orb ; when the hunting goddess, faint from her brother's flames, lighted upon a cold grove, from which issued a rivulet running along with a murmuring noise, and turned up the polished sands. 457. After she had commended the place, she touched the surface of the waters with her foot ; and commending them too, she says : " Every one that could see is far off : let us wash our bodies with waters poured upon them." 460. Parrhasis blushed: they all put off their clothes ; she alone affects delays : her robe was taken from her whilst hesitating ; which being put off, her crime appeared with her naked body. The Cynthian Goddess, Diana, said to her, being confounded, and willing to cover her womb with her hands ; " Get thee gone far hence, and defile not these sacred springs:" and so she commanded her to depart from her company. 466. The wife of the great thunderer had perceived this some time before ; and had put off her heavy vengeance to a proper time. There is now no cause of delay ; and now too a boy called Areas (that very thing Juno was heartily grieved at) was born of her rival. 4/0, Upon whom as soon as she had turned her cruel mind, together with her eyes; " Forsooth," said she, " this too was reserved for thee to be fruitful, thou adulteress ; and that my injury might be made known to the world, by this birth ; and the shame of my Jupiter made notorious. 4/4. Thou shalt not carry this off unpunished ; for I will take from thee that shape, with which thou, plaguy dame, pleasest thyself, and with which thou pleasest my husband." 476. BOOK II. 39 This she said ; and then threw her flat on the ground, seized by the hair on her forehead. She held out her arms as a suppliant : her arms began to grow rough with black hairs, and her hands to be bent, and to grow into crooked claws, and to perform the office of feet ; and the mouth, formerly commended by Jupiter, to become deformed with a wide opening. 482. And lest prayers, and suppliant words, should bend her mind to pity, the power of speaking is taken from her : an angry and threatening voice, and full of terror, issues from her hoarse throat. 485. Yet her former under- standing continued in her too, offer she was become a bear ; and, signifying her sorrow by continual groaning, she lifts up such hands as she had to heaven and the stars ; and though she cannot call Jupiter ungrateful, she thinks him so. 489. Ah, how often durst she not rest at night in the lonely wood, and wandered about before her own house, and in lands formerly her own ! Ah, how often was she driven by the barking of dogs over the rocks ! and though a huntress, fled from hunters, frighted. She oftentimes lay hid upon seeing wild beasts, forgetting what she was ; and though a bear her- self, dreaded the bears seen by her in the mountains ; and feared the wolves, though her father was amongst them. 496. Behold Areas comes, her son, ignorant of his Lycaonian mother, bearing three times five years upon his last birth-day; and whilst he pursues the wild beasts, whilst he chooses forests proper for hunting, and encloses the Erymanthian woods with his platted nets, he lights upon his mother, who stood still upon seeing Areas, and was like one that knew him. He flies; and not knowing her, was afraid of her as she kept her eyes fixed without ceasing upon him ; and she coveting to come near him. 500. He was going to run her through the breast with his wounding spear ; the Almighty pre- vented it ; and took away both them, and the wicked- ness intended, and placed them, carried through the air with a swift wind, in heaven, and made them neighbour- ing constellations. Juno swelled with rage, after her rival shone amongst the stars ; and goes down into the sea to hoary Tethys, and the aged Ocean ; a regard for 40 METAMORPHOSES. whom has oftentimes moved the gods : and says to them, inquiring the occasion of her coining, "Do you ask me, why I, the Queen of the Gods, am come hither from the setherial habitations ? Another has now pos- session of heaven, instead of me. 514. Let me be a liar, if when the night shall make the world dark, you see not in the highest part of heaven stars there honoured to my great affliction, where the last circle, and the shortest in compass, surrounds the extreme part of the axis of the world. Is there indeed any reason why any one should refuse to injure Juno, and dread her being offended, who alone do benefits by my attempts to injure? O, what a mighty exploit have I done ; how vast is my power ! 251.1 forbade her to be a woman ; she is made a goddess : thus I inflict punishment upon offenders ; thus is my power great. Let him claim for her her former shape, and take from her the form of a wild beast ; which he did before Jin the case of the Grecian grand- daughter of Phoroneus. 525 . Why does he not wed her, Juno being divorced, and place her in my bed-chamber, and take Lycaon for his father-in-law ? But do you, if the contempt of your injured foster-child affects you, drive the seven Triones from your green waters ; and repulse the stars received into heaven, in reward of adultery ; that my rival may not be dipped in your pure sea." VII. The gods of the sea agreed to it. The daughter of Saturn enters the liquid air in her neat chariot, with her painted peacocks ; peacocks as lately painted upon the killing of Argus, as thou, babbling crow, wast suddenly turned into black wings ; whereas thou had'st been white before. 536. For this bird was formerly of a silver hue, with snow-white feathers; so that it equalled the doves that are wholly without spot ; nor would it yield to the geese that were to save the Capitol by their watchful voice, nor to the swan who loves the rivers. Its tongue was its misfortune : its babbling tongue giving the occasion, the colour which was white, is now contrary to white. 542. There was not a more beautiful lady in all ^Emonia, than the Larisssean Coronis. She pleased thee certainly, O thou God of Delphos, whilst BOOK II. 41 she was either chaste or unobserved : but the Phoebean bird perceived her falseness to her lover ; and the inexorable informer took a journey to his master, to dis- cover her secret miscarriage ; whom the prattling jack- daw follows upon his moving wings, in order to inquire into the whole affair; and hearing the occasion of his going, " You do not," says he, " take a useful journey : do not despise the presages of my tongue. VIII. "Consider what I was, and what I am, and in- quire into my deserts ; you will find my fidelity was my ruin. For upon a certain time Pallas had shut up Erichthonius, a child born without a mother, in a basket made of Actsean twigs; and gave it to keep to the three virgins descended from the double-formed Cecrops : but indeed told them not what it was, and gave them a charge not to look into her secrets. I, being hid amongst the light leaves, observed from a thick elm what they did. 559. Two of them Pandrosos and Herse, keep what was committed to them, without treachery. One of them, Aglauros, calls her sisters timorous, and unties the knots of the basket with her hand ; but they behold within a child, and a snake laid by him. I tell what was done to the goddess ; for which this requital is made me, that I am said to be discharged from under the protection of Minerva, and am placed after the bird of the night. 566. My punish- ment may warn birds not to court danger by their bab- bling. But I suppose she did not solicit me of her own accord, and not asking any such favour : you may inquire into this matter of Pallas herself; although she be angry with me ; yet angry as she is, she will not deny this. 570. For Coroneus, famous in the land of Phocis, (I say things well known) begot me ; and so I was a lady of royal birth ; and was courted by rich wooers (do not despise me.) My beauty injured me : for, while I was walking with slow paces along the shores, as I was wont upon the top of the sands, the god of the sea saw me, and was inflamed : and after he had spe-nt some time to no purpose, in soliciting me, in the softest words, he prepares for violence, and pursues me : away I scour, and leave the thick shore, and am tired in vain E 2 42 METAMORPHOSES. in the soft sand. 5/9. Upon that I invoke both gods and men ; but my voice did not reach any mortal at all : a virgin was moved for a virgin's defence, and gave me assistance. I held up my arms to heaven : my arms began to grow black with light feathers. I endeavoured to throw my clothes off my shoulders, but they were feathers, and had run their roots deep into my skin. 585. I endeavoured to beat my naked breasts with my palms ; but I had now neither palms nor naked breasts. I ran ; nor did the sand retard my feet, as before ; and I was lifted up from the surface of the ground. By and by I mount up, and move through the air, and am given for a faultless companion to Minerva. 590. Yet what signifies this, if Nyctimene, made a bird by a hor- rid crime, has succeeded me in my honour ? IX. " Has not a thing, which is very well known throughout all Lesbos, been heard by you, that Nycti- mene defiled her father's bed ? She is a bird indeed ; but, being conscious of her crime, she avoids being seen, and the light; and conceals her shame in darkness ; and is driven out of the air by all the birds." The crow says to him, saying such things, " I wish thy recalling me may prove a mischief to thee ; we despise thy vain omen." Nor does he cease his journey ; but tells his master, that he saw Coronis lying with a young man of ^Emonia. 601. His laurel crown dropped off upon hearing the crime of his loved one : and at once both his counte- nance, plectrum, and colour forscok the god. And when his mind was heated with swelling rage, he takes his wonted arms, and levels his bow bent from the extremi- ties, and shot with an unavoidable arrow quite through that breast which had been so often joined with his own breast. When wounded, she gave a groan; and, pulling the arrow out of the wound, she sprinkled her white limbs with red gore : and said, " I might, Phrebus, have made you satisfaction ; but I might have brought forth first : now we shall t\vo of us die in one." 611. Thus far she spoke ; and then poured out her blood, together with her life : a deadly cold seized her body void of life. The lover, alas! is sorry too late for the cruel vengeance he had taken ; and hates himself for having listened to BOOK II. 43 the bird, for having been enraged. 615. He hates the bird, by which he was obliged to know the crime of his beloved, and the cause of his grief. He also hates his bow- string, his bow and hand ; and, with his hand, the rash weapons, his arrows ; and cherishes her in his bosom^ after she was fallen down : and by late assistance endea- vours to conquer fate ; and practises his physical arts in vain. 620. Which after he saw them tried in vain, the pile made, and that her limbs were ready to be burnt in the funeral fires : then indeed he uttered groans fetched from the bottom of his heart ; (for it is not lawful for the faces of the gods to be wet with tears) loud as a mallet, which, heaved from the right ear of a butcher, whilst the cow looks on, batters to pieces the hollow temples of a sucking calf, with a fair stroke. 627. Yet after Phoebus had poured out odours upon her breast, not at all acceptable to her ; and given her embraces, and per- formed her obsequies hastened by his injustice ; he did not suffer his seed to sink into the same ashes ; but delivered his son at once from the flameg, and his mother's womb ; and carried him into the cave of the double-shaped Chiron : and forbade the crow who ex- pected for himself a reward of his tongue not false, to remain amongst the white birds. X. In the mean time the savage Chiron, was glad of a pupil of divine race ; and rejoiced in the honour that was mixed with his trouble. Lo, the daughter of the Centaur, having her shoulders over-cast with her yellow hair, comes ; whom formerly the nymph Chariclo, having borne upon the banks of a rapid river, called Ocyroe. 699. She was not content to learn her father's arts only, but sung the secrets of the fates. Therefore after she had conceived in her mind the prophetic fury, and was armed with the god, whom she had shut up in her breast : she beholds the infant, and said : " Grow, child, the giver of health to the whole world, mortal bodies shall oftentimes owe themselves to thee. Nay, it will be practicable for thee to restore life when taken away ; and venturing to do that once with the gods angry at thee for it, thou bhalt be prevented, by thy grandfather's flame, from being able to grant this/crrowr 44 METAMORPHOSES. again : and of a god thou shalt become a lifeless body ; and a god again, who lately wast a lifeless body : and thou shalt twice change thy fate. 650. Thou, likewise, dear father, now not mortal, and produced under this law at your nativity, to remain all ages, wilt then desire to die, when thou shalt be tormented with the blood of a direful serpent, received into your wounded members ; and the gods shall make thee from eternal, capable of death : and the three goddesses of destiny shall cut thy thread of life?' 656. Something was yet left of his fate, she sighs from the bottom of her breast, and tears, bursting out, ran down her cheeks : and then she says, " My fate prevents me, and I am forbid to speak more ; and the use of my voice is precluded. 660. My arts were not so much worth, which have brought the anger of a god upon me ; I wish I had not known things to come. Now human shape seems to be withdrawing from me : now grass pleases me for my food : now have I a strong inclination to run in the wide fields : I am turned into a mare, and a body already allied to me : but yet why entirely 1 for my father is double-shaped." 666. The last part of her complaint, as she was saying these words, was but little understood ; and her words were confused. And presently they were not words indeed ; nor do they seem to be the noise of a mare, but of one counterfeiting a mare: and in a little time she uttered clear neighings ; and put down her arms upon the grass. 671. Then her fingers grow together, and a smooth hoof of one continued piece of horn binds up her five nails ; the length of her face and neck in- creases : the greatest part of her long coat becomes a tail ; and as her hair lay scattered upon her neck, it passed into a right-side mane ; and at once both her voice and shape was changed. These portents too occasioned the invention of a new name. XL The Philyreian hero wept, and begged thy help, god of Delphos, in vain : for neither could' st thou annul the orders of great Jupiter : nor, if thou could' st annul them, wast thou present : thou then dwelledst in Elis, and the Messenian fields. 68 1 . It was that time, when a shepherd's skin-coat covered thee, and a staff cut out BOOK II. 45 of a wood was the burden of thy left hand, and of the other a pipe consisting of seven unequal reeds. And whilst love is all your concern ; whilst your pipe enter- tains you, some cows are said to have strayed unobserved into the Pylian lands. 686. The son of Maia the daughter of Atlas sees them ; and with his usual cun- ning hides them, being first driven off, in the woods. Nobody had perceived this theft, but an old swain born in that country : all the neighbourhood called him Battus. He kept the forests, and the flourishing pas- tures of Neleus, and studs of fine-bred mares. 692. Him he was afraid of, and took him aside with a gentle hand ; and says to him : " Whosoever thou art, stranger, if any one by chance should inquire for these herds, deny that you saw them ; and, lest no requital should be made you for so doing, take a handsome cow for your reward." 696. And accordingly he gave him one. Upon receiving which, the stranger returned him these words : " You may go safe ; that stone shall speak of your theft sooner than I ;" and at the same time he pointed to a stone. The son of Jupiter pretends to march off. 699. But by and by returns ; and changing his visage together with his voice, " Countryman," said he, " if you saw any cows go along this path, give me your help, and withdraw your silence from the theft ; a cow joined together with her bull shall be given you." But then the old man, after his reward was doubled, " They will be," says he, " under these mountains ; and they were under those mountains." 705. The grand- son of Atlas laughed ; and says, " Dost thou, thou treacherous rascal, betray me to myself? Dost thou betray me to myself?" and then he turns his perjured breast into a hard stone, which is now called the touch- stone : and the old infamy of Battus is still in the stone that deserved none. XII. Upon this the god bearing the staff of peace raised himself upon his equal wings ;' and, flying along, looked down upon the Munychian fields, and the land grateful to Minerva, and the woods of the well-planted Lycseus. 7 1 2. That day by chance chaste girls, ac- cording to custom, were carrying into the festal citadel 46 METAMORPHOSES. of Pallas, upon their heads, placed beneath the basket, pure holy things in baskets crowned with flowers. 725. The winged god spies them returning from thence ; and does not now steer his journey directly forward, but bends it into the same circling flight. As that most swift bird, the kite, upon seeing the bowels of a victim, whilst he is afraid, and the ministers stand thick about the sacrifice, turns in a ring, and dares not go far away, and greedily flies round the object of his hopes upon his waving wings : so does the nimble Cyllenian god bend his course over the Actsean castle ; and makes a circle in the same air. 723. As much as Lucifer shines brighter than the other stars ; and as much as the golden moon chines brighter than Lucifer ; so much more excellent than all the other virgins did Herse march along ; and was a grace to the solemnity, and her companions. 727. The son of Jupiter was astonished at her beauty ; and, as he hung in the air, grew violently inflamed ; no otherwise, than when a Balearian sling throws out a lead bullet ; it flies along, and grows hot in its passage ; and finds the fire, which it had not, under the clouds. 73 1 . He alters his course ; and, leaving heaven, goes a different way : nor does he disguise himself ; so much confidence has he in his beauty. Which though it be indeed complete, yet he improves it by his care ; and combs his hair, and places his robe to hang neatly, that the border, and all its gold, might appear : and minds that his long round staff be in his right hand, with which he causes and drives away sleep : and that his wings shine upon his spruce feet. 73H. A private part of the house had three bed-chambers, adorned with ivory and tortoise-shell ; of which thou, Pandrosos, hadst the right, Aglauros the left, and Herse had the middlemost. 741. She that had the left first observed Mercury coming, and ventured to ask the name of the god, and the occasion of his coming. To whom the grandson of Atlas and Pleione replies : " I am he, who carry the commands of my father through the air. Jupiter himself is my father. 746. Nor will I in- vent pretences ; be you only willing to be faithful to your sister, and to be called the aunt of my issue. Herse BOOK II. 47 is the cause of my coming here ; we beg you would favour a lover." Aglauros looks upon him with the same eyes, with which she had lately beheld the hidden secrets of the yellow-haired Minerva ; and demands for her service gold of great weight ; and in the mean time orders him to depart from the palace. 753. The war- like goddess turns upon her the orbs of her stern eyes, and fetched up sighs with so thorough a motion, that she shook at once her breast, and the goat-skin placed upon her strong breast. 756. It comes into her mind, that this false one had laid open her secrets with her pro- fane hand then, when contrary to the orders given she saw the Lemnian child, that was born without a mother ; and would now be agreeable to the god, and agreeable to her sister ; and enriched with taking the gold, which the covetous wretch had demanded. 761. Immediately she repairs to the house of Envy, defiled with black gore. Her house is a cave hid in the bottom of a valley, wanting sun, and not pervious to any wind ; dismal, and full of listless cold ; and which is ever with- out fire, ever full of darkness. 766. When the virago, dreadful in war, was come hither, she stood before the door (for she does not count it lawful to go under the roof of it) and strikes the door-posts with the end of her spear. The door, upon being shaken, flew open ; she sees Envy within, eating viper's flesh, the nourish- ment of her vices ; and as soon as she saw her, she turns away her eyes. 771. But she rises heavily from the ground, and leaves the bodies of her serpents half-eaten ; and moves along with a dull pace. And when she saw the goddess graced with beauty and comely arms, she groaned, and fetched sighs at the finery of the goddess. 776. Paleness sits in her face, and leanness in her whole body ; her look is no where without a squint ; her teeth are black with rust ; her breast is green with gall : her tongue is overspread with poison : laughter is far from her, unless what the troubles she sees occasion. 780. Nor does she enjoy sleep, being kept awake with watchful cares ; but she sees the successes of men with regret, and pines away with seeing them : and she teazes, and is teazed at the same time ; and is her own 48 METAMORPHOSES. torment. Yet, though -Tritonia hated her, she spoke to her briefly in such words as these. 785. "Infect one of the daughters of Cecrops with thy poison ; so there is occasion : Aglauros is she." Saying no more, she made off ; and repulsed the earth with her spear struck against it. She beholding the goddess, as she fled away, with an oblique eye uttered a few murmurs, and grieved at the successes of Minerva : and takes her staff, which, being wreathed, a binding of thorns en- compassed ; and, being covered with dark clouds, wheresoever she goes, she treads down the flourishing fields, and burns up the grass, and crops the tops of the poppies ; and pollutes both people, and cities, and houses with her breath ; and at last she espies the Tri- tonian citadel, flourishing in genius, and riches, and joyful peace. 797. And she scarce holds in her tears, because she sees nothing to weep at. But after she entered the bed-chamber of the daughter of Cecrops, she executes her orders : and touches her breast with her hand stained with a rusty hue ; and fills her midriff with jagged thorns ; and breathes into her a pernicious blast ; and dissipates the black poison through her bones, and spreads it through the middle of her lungs. 803. And, that these causes of mischief may not wander through too wide a space, she places her sister, and the fortunate marriage of her sister, and the god too under a beautiful appearance, before her eyes ; and makes all things great. 806. By which the daughter of Cecrops, being irritated, is gnawed with a secret grief; and groans, anxious by day, and anxious by night ; and wastes away, poor wretch, with a slow consumption, as the ice struck with an uncertain sun : and she consumes by reason of the good fortune of her happy sister, no otherwise than when fire is put under thistles, which do not send forth flames, and are burnt with a gentle heat. 813. She was often minded to die, that she might not see any such thing ; often to tell the matter as a crime, to her rigid father. Finally, she sat down upon the op- posite threshold, to exclude the god when he came. 816. To whom, throwing out blandishments and prayers, and the most gentle words, she said, " Cease ; I shall BOOK II. 49 not remove myself hence, till I have repulsed you." " Let us stand to that agreement," says the nimble Cyl- lenian god. 820. And he opened the carved door with his wand : but those parts which we bend in sitting can- not, by reason of a dull stiffness, be moved by her, upon her endeavouring to rise. She struggles indeed to raise herself with her body upright ; but the joints of her knees are stiff, and a chill runs through her nails ; and her veins are pale, upon losing their blood. 826. And as the disease of an incurable cancer is wont to spread wide, and add the sound parts to the tainted ; so the deadly cold comes by little and little into her breast, and shuts up the vital passages, and her wind-pipe. 830. Neither did she endeavour to speak ; nor, if she had endeavoured it, had she a passage for her voice. The stone had now possession of her neck ; and her face was grown hard, and she sat there a bloodless statue. Nor was the stone white : her mind had stained it. XIII. After the grandson of Atlas had taken this vengeance for saucy words, and a profane mind, he leaves the land denominated from Pallas, and enters heaven upon his rustling wings. 837. His father calls him aside : and not owning the cause of his love, " My son, the trusty minister," says he, " of my commands, banish all delay, and quickly descend with a sudden course ; and make for the country, which country looks up at thy mother on the left side, (the natives call it by name Sidonis) and drive to the shore a herd of the King's, which thou seest feeding afar upon the mountain grass." 844. Thus he spoke; and presently the bullocks, being driven from the mountain, go to the shores as ordered, where the daughter of the great King used to play, attended with Tyrian virgins. 847. Majesty and love do not agree well together, nor continue in the same abode. That father and ruler of the gods, therefore, whose right baud is armed with the three -furrowed fires ; who shakes the Avorld with a nod, leaving the gravity of the sceptre, puts on the shape of a bull ; and, mixing with the bullocks, lows, and stalks about in shape a handsome bull upon the tender grass ; for his colour is that of snow, which neither the soles of hard feet have 50 METAMORPHOSES. trod upon, nor the watery south wind dissolved. His neck arises in wreaths of fat, and dewlaps hang from between his shoulders. 856. His horns are small, in- deed ; but such as you would aver were made with hands, and more transparent than a pure gem. 858. There are no threats in his forehead ; nor are his eyes formidable ; his countenance has peace in it. The daughter of Agenor wonders that he should be so beau- tiful, that he should threaten no combat, 86 1 . But at first she is afraid to touch him, though so gentle. By and by she goes to him, and holds out flowers to his white mouth. The lover rejoices ; and, till his hoped- for pleasure comes, gives kisses to her hands, (scarce, ah ! scarce does he defer the rest). 865. And now he plays with her, and bounces about upon the green grass : now again he lays down his snow-white side upon the yellow sand ; and by degrees taking away her fear, offers one while his breast to be -stroked by her virgin hand ; another while his horns to be tied with new-made gar- lands. The royal lady ventured too to sit down upon the back of the bull, little knowing who it was she pressed upon. 871. Then the god moving by little and little from the land, and the dry shore, puts the assumed traces of his feet first into the waters ; and then goes further, and carries his prize through the plains of the middle of the sea. She is affrighted ; and as she was being carried off, looks back to the shore she had left ; and holds his horn with her right hand : the other was set upon his back : her fine robes are puffed into sails by the wind. BOOK III. AND now the god, laying aside the shape of the pre- tended bull, discovered himself; and was got into the Dictsean country. When the father, ignorant of the matter, orders Cadmus to seek out his daughter ; and declares, moreover, his punishment should be banish- ment, if he did not find her : being pious and wicked in the same action. 6. The son of Agenor, wandering through the whole world (for who could discover the intrigues of Jupiter?) being now an exile, avoids both his country, and his father's resentment ; and in sup- pliant manner consults the oracle of Apollo, and asks him what land he was to dwell in. 10. "A cow," says Phoebus, " shall meet thee in the lonely fields, that has suffered no yoke upon her neck, and free from the crooked plough. Take your way with her for your guide ; and in the grass, where she lies down to rest, see you build a city, and call it the Boeotian city." Scarce had Cadmus got well down from the Castalian- cave, when he espies a young cow without a keeper march slowly along, bearing no mark of servitude upon her neck. 1 7- He follows, and pursues her steps with a slow pace ; and silently adores Phoebus, the adviser of this journey. And now he had passed the shallows of Cephisus, and the fields of Panope ; when the cow stood still, and lifting up her broad forehead, graced with high horns, towards heaven, she filled the air with her low- ings. 22. And so, looking behind upon her companions following her back, she lay down, and placed her side upon the tender grass. Cadmus gives thanks, and fixes his kisses upon this strange land, and salutes the un- known mountains and fields. 26. He was now to offer sacrifice to Jupiter : he orders his servants to go, and fetch water from the running springs, to be used in the 52 METAMORPHOSES. libation. There stood an ancient wood, violated with no axe, and a cave in the middle thick covered with twiga and shoots of trees, making a low arch by a joining of stones, abounding with abundant water. A snake, sacred to Mars, was hid within this cave, finely adorned with golden crests. His eyes sparkle with fire, and all his body swells with poison ; and three tongues wave ; and his teeth stand in a triple row. 35. Which grove, after the men who came from the Tyrian nation arrived at with inauspicious footsteps, and the pitcher let down into the waters made a^ noise, the green serpent put his head out of the long cave, and uttered dreadful hissings. The urns fell from their hands, and the blood forsook their bodies ; and a sudden trembling seizes upon their torpid limbs. 42. He twirls his scaly rings in rolling plaits, and with an immense spring is bent into a bow ; and is elevated by above one half of him into the light air ; he overlooks all the grove ; and is of as large a size, as, if you look upon him entire, is the serpent which separates the two bears. 46. Without delay, he seizes upon the Phoenicians, (whether they were preparing their weapons or flight ; or their fear hindered both) some by his fangs, others with long embraces ; some he kills with his breath, others with the deadly bane of his poison. 50. Now the sun, being at the highest, had made the shadows less : the son of Agenor wonders what cause of delay his companions had ; and searches for his men. His garment was a skin torn from a lion ; his lance, with a bright steel head, was his weapon ; and a dart ; and a brave soul, better than any weapon what- ever. 55. As soon as he entered the wood, and saw the dead bodies, and the victorious enemy, of huge frame, upon them, licking their dismal wounds with his bloody tongue : " My most faithful bodies," says he, " I will either be the avenger of your death or the companion of it." Thus he spoke ; and with his right hand took up a millstone, and threw the vast stone with as vast a force. 6 1 . And though high walls with lofty towers would have been shaken with the shock of it, the ser- pent remained without wound ; and being defended with his scales, like a coat of mail, and the hardness of his BOOK III. 53 black hide, he resisted the mighty stroke with his skin. -V 65. But he did not also conquer the dart by means of the same hardness ; which being fixed in the middle of the bend of his flexible back-bone stood there ; and the whole steel-head of it went down into his intestines. He, enraged with pain, turned his head upon his back, and looked at his wound, and bit the javelin sticking there. 70. And, after he had tossed it about with great violence on all sides, with much ado he tugged it from his back ; yet the steel-head stuck fast in his bones. But then, after this fresh wound was superadded to his wonted fury, his throat swelled with full veins, and a white froth flows round his poisonous jaws : and the earth, scraped with his scales, resounds ; and the black steam which issues from his hellish mouth infects the tainted air. 77. He one while is encompassed with spires making vast rings ; sometimes he is stretched out straiter than a long beam ; now again, with prodigious violence, like a river swelled with rains, he rushes for- ward, and bears down the opposing wood with his breast. 8 1 . The son of Agenor gives way a little, and receives his charge with his lion's skin ; and retards his mouth, just upon him, with his extended spear. He is in a rage, and gives vain wounds to the hard steel, and fixes his teeth upon the point. 85. And now the blood began to flow from his poisonous palate, and dyed the green grass with the sprinkling. But the wound was slight, because he withdrew himself from the stroke, and withdrew his wounded neck ; and prevented the stroke from sinking deep by giving way, and did not suffer it to go far. 90 Till the son of Agenor, urging his spear lodged in his throat, pressed it home, till an oak stood in the serpent's way as he moved backward, and his neck was nailed up with the body. The tree was bent with the weight of the serpent, and groaned to have its body lashed with the extreme part of his tail. 95. Whilst the conqueror considers the vast size of his vanquished enemy, a voice was suddenly heard ; (nor was it easy to know whence ; but heard it was) " Why dost thou, O son of Agenor, look upon the serpent slain by thee ? thou thyself shalt be seen as a serpent." lie, being a F 2 54 METAMORPHOSES. longtime in dreadful fright, lost his colour together with his voice ; and his hair stood on end with cold terror. 101. Behold Pallas, the favourer of the man, descending through the upper air, comes to him : and bids him put the viper's teeth under the earth ploughed up for the growth of a future people. He obeys ; and opening a furrow with a deep sunk plough, he sows in the earth the teeth, as ordered, to be the seed of men. 106. After (it is beyond all belief) the turf began to move ; and first appeared the point of a spear out of the furrows ; by and by the coverings of their heads, nodding with painted cones : soon after shoulders and breasts, and arms loaded with weapons, rise up ; and a crop of men armed with shields springs up. 111. So, when the hangings are drawn up in the joyful theatres, the pictures are wont to rise, and first to shew the countenances : the rest by little and little : and being drawn up by a gentle motion, they appear entire at last, and set their feet upon the bottom of the stage. 115. Cadmus, affrighted with this new enemy, was preparing to take arms ; when one of the people which the earth had produced cries out, " Do not take arms, nor engage yourself in a civil war;" and then he hand to hand smites with his hard sword one of his earth-born brothers, whilst he himself falls by a dart thrown at a distance. 120. He too, who had given him to death, lives no longer than he ; and breathes out the air which he had lately received ; and all the company is mad in like manner : and these suddenly raised bre- thren fall in fight with one another, by mutual wounds. And now the youths, who had but a time of a short life allotted them, beat their bloody mother with their warm breasts. 1 25. Five being left, of which one was Echion, he threw his arms down upon the ground, by the advice of Minerva ; and both desired, and gave, a promise of a brotherly peace. The Sidonian stranger had these his assistants in the work, when he built the city ordered by the oracle of Phrebus. II. Now Thebes stood, and thou Cadmus, mightest seem happy in thy banishment : Mars and Venus were become your father and mother-in-law. To this add issue by so great a wife, so many sons and daughters, BOOK III. 55 and grand-children, dear pledges ; these too grown up to man and woman's estate. 135. But surely the last day of life is always to be waited for by man ; and no one ought to be called happy before his death, and the last scene of funeral. Thy grandson, Cadmus, was the first occasion of sorrow to thee amongst so much prosperity, and horns that belong not to man placed upon his fore- head, and you, O dogs, glutted with your master's blood. 141. But if you inquire well, you will find in him a crime of chance, not any wickedness ; for what mistake ever involved guilt ? There was a mountain stained with the blood of various wild beasts. And now the mid-day had shortened the shadows of things, and the sun was equally distant from each extremity of the heavens : when the Hyanthian youth bespeaks the sharers of his work of hunting, as they strolled through the lonely habitations of wild beasts, with gentle words. 148. " Our nets are wet, comrades, and our spears too with the blood of wild beasts ; and the day has had success enough. When the next Aurora, riding upon crimson wheels, shall bring the light again, we will return to our proposed work. 151. Now Phoebus is at the same distance from both hemispheres, and cleaves the fields with his heat ; give over your present work, and take away your knotty nets." The men execute his orders, and cease their labour. 155. There was a valley thick set with pitch- trees, and the sharp-topped cypress, by name Gargaphie; a place in great request with the active Diana : in the extreme recess of which there is a cave in the grove, formed by no art : nature, by her ingenuity, had coun-; terfeited art ; for she had drawn an arch of pumice-stone, as it was in the rock, and light sand-stones. A fountain runs purling along on the right hand, transparent with very fine water, and having its wide case edged round with a border of grass. 1 63. Here the goddess of the woods, weary with hunting, used to bathe her virgin limbs with the clear water. 165. Into which place after she was entered, she delivered her dart to one of the nymphs her armour-bearer, her quiver too, and her unbent bow. Another nymph put her arms under her garment laid aside. Two take her sandals from her 56 METAMORPHOSES. feet ; but Crocale, the daughter of Ismenus, being more skilful than they, gathers her hair, scattered upon her neck, into a knot ; although she herself wore her hair loose. 1/1. Nephele, and Hyale, and Rhanis, and Psecas, and Phiale, take up water, and pour it out again in large urns. And whilst the Titanian goddess is there washed in her accustomed water, lo, the grandson of Cadmus, having deferred a part of his work, wandering through the unknown grove with uncertain steps, came into MM wood : thus his fate guided him. 177. Who, as soon as he had entered the cave, dewy with the springs, the nymphs, as they were naked, upon seeing a man, smote their breasts, and filled all the wood with sudden shriekings : and being gathered around, covered Diana with their bodies. Yet the goddess is taller than them, and overtops them all by the neck. 183. The colour which used to be in the clouds, dyed from the reflection of the opposite sun, or that of the rnddy morn, was in the countenance of Diana, seen without her raiment. 186. Who, though she was surrounded with the crowd of her attendants, yet she stood sideways, and turned her face back ; and how gladly would she have had her arrows ready ! The waters she had, she took up, and sprinkled the face of the man therewith ; and, bedewing his hair with the revengeful streams, she added these words, declarative of his approaching calamity. 192. "Now thou may'st tell that 1 was seen by thee with my garments laid aside, if thou can'st tell it." And then, threatening him no more, she claps upon his sprinkled head the horns of a long-lived stag ; she gives length to his neck, and sharpens the tops of his ears ; and changes his hands for feet, and his arms for long legs ; and covers his body with a spotted coat of hair. 198. Timorousness was moreover given him. Away flies the Autoueian hero, and wonders he should be so swift in running. 200. But as soon as he saw his face and his horns in the water, he was going to say, Woe's me ! but no words followed. He groaned ; that was all his voice ; and the tears trickled down his face, no longer his natural one : his former understanding only continued. What should he do ? Should he return BOOK III. 57 home, and to the royal palace ? or should he lie hid in the woods ? Fear hinders one, and shame the other. 206. Whilst he is in doubt, the dogs saw him : and first Black-foot, and the good-nosed Tracer gave the sig- nal to the rest, by a full-mouthed cry. Tracer was a Cretan dog, and Black-foot of the Spartan breed. Upon that the rest rush in swifter than the rapid wind ; Glut- ton, Quick-sight, and Ranger, all Arcadian dogs. 211. And able Killbuck, and swift Hunter, with Tempest and Wing, good at his feet, and Catcher, famous for his keen scent, and fierce Woodger, lately wounded by a boar ; and Forester begot by a wolf, and Shepherdess that had attended cattle ; and Ravener, a bitch attended by two whelps of hers ; and Harrier, a Sicyonian dog, having a small compact body. And Runner, and Barker, and Spot, and Tiger, and Strong, and White, with his snowy hair, and Soot with black hair, and the able-bodied Lacon, and Storm good at running, and Swift, and speedy Wolf with her Cyprian brother. And Snap, having his black face striped white down the middle ; and Blackcoat, and Stickle, a rough-bodied bitch ; and Worrier, and White-tooth, bred of a Cretan dog, and a Laconian bitch ; and Babble of a shrill bark : and others, which it is too tedious to recount. 225. This pack, from a desire of their prey, pursue him over rocks and shelves, and craggy mountains ; both where the way is difficult, and where there is no way. He now flies through places through which he had lately often pur- sued. Alas ; he flies from his own servants. He had a mind to cry out, I am Actseon ! recognize your mas- ter. 231. Words are wanting to his inclination: the heavens ring with the cries of the dogs. Black-hair made the first wound upon his back ; Kildam the next ; Mountain-Rover stuck fast upon his shoulder. They came out later than the rest ; but their way was soon dispatched through a short cut over the mountain. 235. Whilst they held their master, the rest of the pack come in, and stick their teeth together in his body. Now room is wanting for more wounds. He groans, and makes a noise, though not of a man, yet such as a stag could not make ; and fills the well-known mountains 58 METAMORPHOSES. with sad complaints ; and as a suppliant upon his bended knees, and like one asking a favour, he turns about his silent countenance to supply the place of arms. 242. But his companions, ignorant of the matter, encourage the ravenous pack with the usual cries, and seek for Actaeon with their eyes ; and call out amain for Actseon, as if he were absent. He turns his head at the name, as they complain that he was not there, and, like a lazy man, did not enjoy the sight of the game presented them. 247. He would be glad to be away indeed ; but he is there ; and he could be glad to see, and not to feel too, the cruel actions of his dogs. They stand around him, and, thrusting their snouts into his body, tear to pieces their master, under the shape of a simulated buck. And the rage of the quiver-bearing Diana is said not to have been satiated, till his life was ended by many wounds. III. Fame is in doubt ; to some the goddess seemed more violent than was reasonable : others applaud her, and pronounce her worthy of her strict virginity : both parties find favourable reasons. Only the wife of Jupiter does not so much declare whether she blames or approves the fact, as she rejoices at the misfortunes of a family descended from Agenor ; and transfers the hatred she had conceived from her Tyrian rival upon her relations. When lo, a fresh occasion of hatred succeeds upon the former ; and she grieves afresh, that Semele was with child from the blood of great Jupiter : then she lets loose her tongue to railing. 262. " What good, forsooth, have I done myself by railing so often ?" said she; she herself must be attacked by me. I will destroy her, if I am rightly called the great Juno ; if it becomes me to wield the sceptre, adorned with jewels, in my right hand : if I am the queen of heaven, and both the sister and the wife of Jupiter : certainly I am his sister. 26f>. But I suppose she is content with a private amour ; and this violation of my bed is but of short duration. She has conceived, that alone was wanting ; and makes her crime public by her pregnant womb : and she will needs be a mother by Jupiter, which but hardly fell to my share alone : such is her confidence iu her beauty. 271. I will take care it shall deceive her j BOOK III. 59 and let me not be the daughter of Saturn, if she do not descend, sunk even by her beloved Jupiter, to the Stygian waters. After these things said, she rises from her throne, and, being wrapt up in a yellow cloud, she goes to the door of Semele ; nor did she cast off the cloud, before she counterfeited herself an old woman, and planted grey hairs upon her temples, and furrowed her skin with wrinkles, and moved her crooked limbs with trembling pace : and made her voice too that of an old woman's ; and became Beroe herself, the Epidaurian nurse of Semele. 279. Wherefore, when upon engaging in discourse with her, after long talking, they came to the name of Jupiter, she sighs and says, " I wish it be Jupiter ; yet I fear all things. Many have entered chaste bed-chambers under the name of gods. Nor yet is it sufficient, that he be Jupiter : let him give some pledge of love, if indeed he be the true one : beg of him to give you his embraces as great, and such as he is received by the noble Juno ; and let him assume his insignia of distinction beforehand." 287. With such like words as these, Juno tutored the unconscious grand- daughter of Cadmus. She requests of Jupiter a favour, without naming it. To whom the god says, "Choose; you shall meet with no denial. 290. And, that you may believe it the more, let the majesty of the Stygian river be my witness ; that he is the dread, and the god of the gods." Semele, rejoicing at what was her misfortune, and being too persuasive, and destined now to perish by the complaisance of her lover, said, " Present yourself to me just such, as the daughter of Saturn uses to embrace you, when entering upon the league of Venus." 295. The god was going to stop the mouth of her, whilst speaking ; but the hasty words were now got out into the air. He groaned ; for neither can she not have wished, nor he not have sworn. Wherefore he mounts the high sky very sorrowful, and with a nod drew along the clouds that attended him : to which he added showers of rain, and lightning mixed with winds, and thunder, and the unavoidable bolt. 302. Yet, as far as he is able, he endeavours to lessen his strength ; nor is he now armed with that fire, with which he had 60 METAMORPHOSES. hurled down the hundred-handed Typhceus ; there was too much violence in that. 305. There is another lighter thunder, to which the right hands of the Cyclops have given less cruelty and flame, and less rage : the gods above call them the secondary weapons. Those he takes, and enters the Agenorean house. Her mortal body could not bear this setherial tumult ; and she was burnt up with the presence of her lover. 310. The infant, as yet imperfect, is taken out of the womb of his mother ; and the tender child (if it be fit to believe it) is sewn up in his father's thigh, and completes there the time he should have spent in his mother's womb. His aunt Ino nurses him privately in his first cradle ; after that, the Nyseian nymphs hid him, being delivered to them, in their caves ; and gave him nourishment of milk. IV. And whilst these things are transacted in the world by the laws of fate, and the cradle of Bacchus, twice born, is secured ; they tell you, that Jupiter M(ell drenched with nectar, laid aside all weighty concerns, and passed some merry jests with Juno, having nothing to do, and said, " Your pleasure is certainly greater than that which falls to the males." 322. She denies it. It was agreed to inquire what the opinion of the experienced Tiresias was. Both pleasures were well known to him ; for he had attacked two bodies of large serpents, as they were copulating in a green wood, with a stroke of his staff; and from a man (O strange!) becoming a woman, he spent seven autumns in that state. 327. In the eighth, he again saw the same serpents, and said, " If the power of a stroke given you be so great, as to change the condition- of the giver to the contrary, I will now strike you too." Accordingly striking the same snakes, his former sex returned, and his original figure came again. 332. He therefore, being chosen judge of this merry contest, confirms what Jupiter had said. The daughter of Saturn is reported to have resented it more heavily than was fit, and not in a manner proportionate to the matter; and condemned the eyes of the judge to eternal night. 336'. But the almighty Father (for it is not allowed to any god to make void the acts of another god), for his eyes that were BOOK III. 61 taken from him, gave him the knowledge of things to come ; and so eased his punishment by that honour. V. He, much celebrated by fame through the Aonian cities, gave faultless answers to the people consulting him The flashing-eyed Liriope made the first essays of his truth, and infallible predictions ; whom formerly Cephisus encircled within his winding river, and then offered violence to her, when confined within his own waters. The most beautiful nymph from her full womb brought forth a boy, who even then might have besn beloved ; and calls him Narcissus. 346. Concerning whom being consulted, whether he should ever see the long time of a mature old age ; the fortune-telling prophet says, " If he does not know himself." This answer of the augur seemed vain a long time ; but the issue, the event, and the manner of his death, and the novelty of his madness, made it good. 351. For the son of Cephisus had added one to four times five years ; and might appear a boy, and a young man too. Many youths, and many maidens courted him ; but there was so hard-hearted a pride in his tender beauty, no youths, no girls, ever touched him. 356. The noisy nymph, who has neither learnt to hold her tongue after another speaking, nor speak first herself, the resounding Echo, espies him driving the affrighted deer into his nets. Echo was yet a body, not a voice only ; and yet the prattling maid had no other use of her mouth than she now has, to be able to repeat the last words out of many. 362. Juno had done this to her ; because, when she might often have caught the nymphs lying in the mountain under her Jupiter, she designedly used to detain the goddess with some long-winded discourse, until the nymphs ran away. 365. After the daughter of Saturn perceived this, " But small exercise of this tongue," says she, " with which I have been deluded, shall serve thee, and a very short use of thy voice ;" and she confirms her threats by the execution. Ever still she, in the end of any one's speaking, doubles the voice, and returns the words she hears. 370. Therefore, when she saw Narcissus wandering through the lonely country, and was in love with him, she follows his steps G 62 METAMORPHOSES. privately ; and the more she follows him, with the nearer flame she burns ; no otherwise than when the lively sulphur, smeared round the tops of torches, catches the flame applied to it. 375. O how often was she desirous to accost him in smooth words, and employ upon him soft supplications ! but nature resists, and suffers her not to begin ; but what she does suffer, that she is ready for, to wait his voice, to which she may return her words. By chance the youth, being separated from the trusty company of his attendants, said, " Is anybody here?" and Echo answered, " Here." 381. He is amazed ; and, after he had directed his eyes into all parts, he calls out with a loud voice, " Come." She calls him that called her. He looks back ; and again nobody coming, he says, " Why do you avoid me ?" and he received as many words as he spoke. .385. He persists : and being deceived with the imitation of a repeating voice, he says, " Let us come together hither;" and Echo, that would answer more willingly to no other saying, replied, " Let us come together :" and she favours her own words ; and, bouncing out of the wood, she went to throw her arms about his neck she so long had hoped for. 390. He flies: and, as he fled, put by her hands from embracing him ; and says, " Let me die, before thou should 'st have the enjoyment of me." She answered nothing but, " May'st thou have the enjoyment of me !" Being thus despised, she lurks in the woods, and covers her shame-faced countenance with green leaves; and from that time lives in solitary caves. 395. But yet her love sticks close to her, and grows from the vexation of a refusal : and watchful cares wear away her miserable body; and leanness draws her skin together ; and all the sap of her body evaporates into the air : her voice alone, and her bones are left. The voice continues ; but they say that her bones received the form of a stone. Since then she lies concealed in the woods : aud is seen in no mountain ; but is heard in all : it is sound alone, that is alive in her. VI. Thus had he deceived her, thus other nymphs that sprung from the waters or the mountains ; thus companies of men before. Upon which, some one, who BOOK III. 63 had been despised by him, lifting up his hand towards heaven, said, " So let him love, so let him not enjoy what he loves :" Rhamnusia assented to his reasonable prayers. There was a clear silver spring with sparkling water, which neither shepherds, nor goats fed upon the mountains, had meddled with, or any other cattle ; which no bird, nor wild beast had disturbed, nor bough fallen from a tree. There was grass about it, which the neighbouring water fed ; and a wood that would suffer the place to grow warm with no sun. 413. Here the boy, weary both with the exercise of hunting, and the heat, laid down ; being fond of the appearance of the place, and the spring. And whilst he desires to quench his thirst, another thirst grew upon him. 416. And whilst he drinks, being charmed with the picture of his form reflected, he falls in love with hope, without a body: he thinks that to be a body which is but a shadow. And he is amazed at himself, and remains unmoved with the same countenance, like a statue made of Parian marble. 420. Lying on the ground, he gazes upon his eyes like two stars, and fingers worthy of Bacchus, and hair worthy of Apollo ; and his youthful cheeks, and ivory neck, and the comeliness of his mouth, and redness mixed with a snowy white ; and admires all things, for which he himself is to be admired. 425. He ignorantly covets himself; and he that approves, is himself approved ; and whilst he pursues, he is pursued, and at once inflames and burns. How oft did he give vain kisses to the deceitful spring ! How often did he thrust his arms, catching at the neck he saw, into the middle of the waters! Nor does he catch himself in them. 430. He knows not what he sees ; but what he sees, that he burns for ; and the same mistake that deceives his eyes, provokes them. O credulous youth, why dost thou in vain catch at the flying image ? What thou pursuest, is nowhere ; what thou lovest, turn but away, and thou wilt lose it. That, which thou seest, is but the shadow of a reflected image. 435. It has nothing of its own : it comes and stays with thee ; it will depart with thee, if thou can'st but depart. No regard to food, no regard to rest, can 64 METAMORPHOSES. draw him from thence. But lying along upon the shaded grass, he beholds his deceitful form with un- satiable eyes ; and perishes by his own eyes. And being raised a little from the ground, holding out his arms to the woods that stood around him : " O ye woods," says he, " did ever any one love more cruelly ? (for you know, and have been a convenient cover for many lovers.) Do you remember any one that ever thus pined away, in so long a time, though so many ages of your life be now past? 446. It pleases me, and I see it ; but what I see, and what pleases me, yet I cannot light upon : so strange a mistake possesses a poor lover. And to grieve me the more, neither does a huge sea separate us, nor a long way, nor mountains, nor a city with closed portals : we are kept asunder by a little water only. 450. He himself desires to be embraced : for as oft as I reach a kiss to the liquid waters, so often does he make towards me with his face turned to mine. You would think he might be touched. It is a very small thing that hinders lovers meeting. Whosoever thou art, come up hither. Why, dear youth, dost thou deceive me ? Or whither dost thou retire, when pursued? 455. Certainly, neither my form or age is such, as you should shun ; and even the nymphs have been in love with me. Thou promisest me I know not what hopes with that friendly look ; and when I hold out my arms to thee, thou frankly holdest out thine : when I laugh, thou laughest at me. I have often too observed thy tears, when I was weeping. Thou likewise returnest my signs by nodding ; and, as I sus- pect by the motion of thy beautiful mouth, thou returnest words that come not to my ears. I am he, I perceive ; nor does my image deceive me. I am burnt with the love of myself; I raise the flames and bear them. 465. What shall I do ? Shall I be entreated, or shall I entreat ? what then shall I ask ? What I desire, is with me ; plenty has made me poor. I wish I could depart from my body ! This is a new wish in a lover. I could wish that what I love was away. And now grief takes away my strength ; nor is any long time of my life left me ; and I am cut off in the beginning of BOOK III. 65 my days. Nor is death grievous to me, now that I am to get rid of my sorrows by death. 472. I wish that this youth, who is beloved by me, were longer-lived. Now we two loving creatures shall die together in the ending of one life." Thus he said, and returned insane to the same face ; and disturbed the water with his tears ; and his form was rendered obscure by the moving of the spring. Which \vhen he saw to move off, he cried out, " Whither dost thou fly ? Stay, I pray ; and do not, O cruel creature, forsake me your lover. Let me see what it is not possible to touch, and add nourish- ment to my miserable madness." 480. And whilst he grieves, he tore his garment from the upper border, and struck his naked breasts with his palms, white as mar- ble. His breast, when struck, received a slight redness ; no otherwise than apples are wont to do, which are in part white, and in part red ; or as a grape in the parti- coloured clusters is wont, being not yet ripe, to assume a purple colour. 486. Which as soon as he beheld in the water, when cleared again he could bear the sight no longer ; but, as the yellow wax melts with a slight fire, or the morning-dews with the warm sun ; so he, being wasted with love, dissolves away ; and gradually is consumed with a hidden fire. 491. And his com- plexion is no longer white mixed with red ; nor does his vigour and strength, and what lately pleased so much when seen, nor his body remain, which formerly Echo had been in love with. Who yet, as soon as she saw these things, although angry, and mindful of his slight, was grieved ; and as oft as the poor youth said, " Alas !" she, with rebounding voice, repeated, "Alas!" And, when he smote his arms with his hands, she returned the same noise of beating The last words of him, looking into the water as usual, were these ; " Alas ! my boy beloved in vain !" and the place returned just as many words : after he said, " Farewell," Echo too says, "Farewell." 502. He laid down his wearied head upon the green grass ; when the night of death closed his eyes, admiring the beanty of their owner. Then too, after he was received in the infernal habita- tions, he beheld himself in the Stygian water. His G 2 66 METAMORPHOSES. sisters, the Naiades, lamented him ; and laid their hair cut off, upon their brother. The Drvades lamented him : Echo makes a noise, jointly with them, lamenting him. 508. And now they were preparing a funeral- pile, and shattered torches, and a bier ; but his body was nowhere to be Jound. Instead of his body, they find a yellow flower, with white leaves encompassing it in the middle. VII. This thing, when known, brought deserved fame to the prophet, through the cities of Achaia ; and the name of the soothsayer was great. Yet Pentheus, the descendant of Echion, a despiser of the gods above, alone of all despises him ; and laughs at the presaging words of the old man ; and upbraids him with his darkness, and the misfortune of having lost his sight. 516. He shaking his temples, white with hoary hair, says : " How happy would'st thou be, if thou likewise wast deprived of this light, and could' st not see the holy rites of Bacchus ! For the day will come (which, I guess, is not far off) when the new god Bacchus, the son of Semele, will come hither ; to whom, unless thou vouchsafest the honour of a temple, thou shalt be scat- tered, torn to pieces, in a thousand places, and shalt bespatter with thy blood the woods, as also thy mother, and thy mother's sisters. 524. This will happen ; for thou wilt not vouchsafe the god the honour ; and then thou wilt complain that I saw too much under this darkness." The son of Echion drives him away, as he said these things. 527. A confirmation follows what he said ; and the answer of the soothsayer is executed. Bacchus comes, and the fields ring with festival cries. The whole multitude runs out ; and mothers, and new- married women mixed with their husbands, and the commonalty, and the nobles, all go to the celebration of these, till then unknown, rites. 531. "What mad- ness," says Peatheus, " has confounded your minds, O ye warlike race, the descendants of the snake ? Can brass, knocked against brass, work so much upon you ? and the pipe with the crooked horn ? and magic frauds ? And shall women's voices, and madness caused by wine, and filthy tribes, and hollow drums conquer those, BOOK III. 67 whom neither the warrior's sword, nor the trumpet could affright, nor troops with weapons prepared for fight? 538. Shall I wonder at you, old men? who, sailing from Tyre through the long seas, fixed your banished tutelar gods in this habitation, but now suffer them to be taken without war. Or you of more vigo- rous age, and nearer to my own, O youths ? whom it became to hold in your hands, arms, not thyrsuses ; and to be covered with helmets, not green leaves ? 543. Be mindful, I beseech you, of what stock you are de- scended ; and assume the courage of that serpent, who, though but one, destroyed many. He died in defence of his spring, and the water ; do but you conquer for your own fame. 547. He gave the valiant to death ; do you conquer cowards, and retrieve your country's honour. If the fates shall forbid Thebes to stand long, I wish engines of war, and brave men, might demolish our walls ; and the sword and fire might rattle about us ? We should then be miserable without our fault ; and our condition would be to be complained of, but not to be concealed ; and our tears would be without shame. 553. But now Thebes will be taken by an unarmed boy ; whom neither wars delight, nor weapons, nor the use of horses ; but hair wet with myrrh, and soft crowns, and purple and gold interwoven with flowered garments. 557. Whom truly I presently (do you but stand off) shall force to confess that his father is falsely assumed, and his holy rites fictitious. Has Acrisius courage enough to despise the vain god, and shut the gates of Argos against him, upon his coming thither ; and shall this stranger affright Pentheus, with all Thebes? 562. Go quickly, (this order he gives to his servants) Go and bring hither the leader bound ; let dull delay be far from my commands." His grandfather chides him with severe words ; Athamas chides him ; and the rest of the company of his friends chide him, and in vain endeavour to restrain him. 566. He is made more violent by their admonition ; and his mad- ness is irritated, and increases by being curbed ; and the restraints themselves did him harm. Thus have I seen a torrent run gently, and with moderate noise, 68 METAMORPHOSES. where nothing obstructed it in its course : but, where- soever beams or stones lay in its way, it ran frothing, and raging, and more violent from the obstruction. 572. Lo ! the servants return all bloody ; and denied to their master, who asked where Bacchus was, that they had seen Bacchus. But they said, "This fellow we have taken, his attendant and minister in his holy rites ;" and they deliver him, with his hands tied behind his back, who had formerly from the Tyrrhenian nation attended on the holy rites of the god. VIII. Pentheus looks at him with eyes that anger had made terrible: and though with much difficulty he defers the time of punishment, yet he says : " O wretch that art about to perish, and to set an example to others by thy death, tell me thy name, and the name of thy parents, and thy country, and why thou frequentest these holy rites of an unheard-of fashion." 5*2. He, void of fear, said : " Acoetes is my name ; my country is Mseonia ; my parents were of the low and vulgar ; my father did not leave me fields for the laborious bul- locks to plough : or wool-bearing flocks, nor any herds. 586. He was himself but poor, and he used with a line, hooks, and a rod, to catch the leaping fish. His trade was all his estate. When he delivered his trade' to me, * Take,' said he, ' all the riches which I have, thou successor and heir of my employment ;' and so dying, he left me nothing but the waters. This one thing I can call my father's property. 592. By and by, that I might not always keep upon the same rocks, I learnt to turn the helm of a ship with my right hand steer- ing ; and I observed with my eyes the rainy con- stellation of the Onelian goat, and Taygete, and the Hyades, and the Bear, and the quarters of the winds, and harbours fit for ships. 597. By chance, as I was sailing for Delos, I arrive upon the coast of the Chian land, and come up with the shore by our propitious oars ; and I give a light jump, and am lodged upon the moist sand. GOO. When the night was over, and the morning began to grow red, I rise, and order my men to take in fresh water ; and I shew them the way which leads to the waters. I consider what BOOK III. 69 the wind promises from a high hill ; and I call my com- panions, and I return to the vessel. 605. Lo ! we are here, says the principal of my comrades, Opheltes : and as he thinks, having gotten a prize in a desert country, he leads along the shore, a boy with all the beauty of a virgin. He, heavy with wine and sleep, seems to totter; and to follow with much ado. I view his dress, his face, and his pace ; and saw nothing there that could be thought mortal. 611.1 both perceived it, and said to my companions, I am in doubt what Deity is in that body : but a Deity there is in that body. Whosoever thou art, O favour us and assist our labours ; and grant these my men a pardon. Cease praying for us, says Dictys ; than whom there was not another more nimble at climbing to the top of the yards, and slipping down again by catching hold of a rope. Libys approves this ; the yellow-haired Melanthus the keeper of the prow approves this Alchimedon approves this ; and Epo- peus, the cheerer of their spirits, who by his voice gave rest and due motion to the oars ; and all the rest too : so blind is their desire of booty. 621. However," said I, " I will not suffer this ship to be injured by the ad- mission of this sacred weight : here I have the greatest share of right : and I oppose them at the entrance of the vessel. Lycabas, the boldest of all the crew, is enraged ; who, driven from a city of Tuscany, suffered banish- ment, us a punishment for a horrid murder. 626. He lacerates my throat with his juvenile fist whilst I oppose them : and had thrown me, knocked overboard, into the sea, if I had not stuck fast by a rope, though senseless. The impious crew approve of the act. Then at last Bacchus (for Bacchus it was), as if his sleep had been broke by the clamour, and his sense returned into his mind after his wine : says, ' What are you doing ? what noise is this ? Tell me, sailors, by what means I came hither ? Whither do you prepare to carry me ?' 'Lay aside your fear,' said Proteus, 'and tell us what harbour you would be at ; and you shall be set upon the land you desire.' 636. 'Steer your course,' says Bacchus, ' to Naxos : that is my home : that will be a hospitable land to you.' The rogues swear by the sea 70 METAMORPHOSES. and by all the gods, that it shall be so ; and bid me hoist sails to the painted ship. 640. Naxos was on the right hand : and as I was accordingly setting sail for the right, Opheltes says to me, ' What are you doing, you mad man ?' ' What fury possesses thee, Acoetes ?' says every one for himself, ' make to the left.' The greatest part signify their meaning by nodding ; part whisper in my ear, what they would have me do. I was amazed ; and said, ' Let some other take the helm ;' and I withdrew myself from the practice of their wickedness and my art. 646. I am railed at by them all ; and the whole crew murmurs against me. Of which Ethalion says, 'All our security, I warrant you, rests in you alone !' and he himself comes up and does my work; and leaving Naxos goes a different way. 650. Then the god playing upon them, as if he had but just now at last perceived their treachery, looks into the sea from the crooked ship ; and like one weeping, says, ' Sailors, you did not promise me these shores ; this is not the land desired by me. By what act have I deserved this punishment? What great glory is it to you, if you, who are numerous men, deceive me but a single boy.' 656. I had now been weeping some time ; the wicked crew laugh at my tears, and urge the seas with hasty oars. Now I swear to you by himself (for there is not a god more powerful than he) that I relate things to you as true, as they are beyond all belief of being true. 660. The ship stood still in the sea, no otherwise than if a dry dock held it. They, wondering at it, persist in the plying of their oars, and lower their sails, and endeavour to get off by this twofold help. Ivies hinder their oars, and by a winding plait creep about them, and bind up the sails with heavy clusters of ivy-berries. 666. He himself, having his forehead bound about with clusters of grapes, shakes a lance covered with vine-leaves ; about whom tigers, and the vain images of lynxes, and the dreadful bodies of spotted panthers lie. 670. The men jumped over-board (whether madness caused this or fear) ; and first Medon begins to grow black with fins, his body being flattened, and to be turned up by a bending of the back-bone. To him Lycabas said, ' Into what monstrous kind of BOOK III. 71 creature art thou turned ?' and as he spoke, the opening of his own mouth grew wide, and his nose crooked, and his hardened skin assumed scales. 676. But Libys, whilst he endeavours to bear before him the resisting oars, saw his hands run up into a short space, and that now they were not hands, but might be called fins. Another, desirous to put up his arms to the twisted ropes, had no arms ; and being become crooked with his body, thus cropt, he leapt down into The waters ; and the tip-end of his tail was formed like a sickle, just as the horns of the half-moon are bent. They leap about on all sides, and besprinkle with the dashing of the water ; they rise again too out of the water, and return again under water ; and play in manner of a company of dancers ; and toss about their wanton bodies ; and blow up the sea received within their wide nostrils. 687. I was the only one left of twenty lately (for so many that ship carried). The god encourages me sorely affrighted, and cold, whilst my body trembled, and indeed scarce in my right mind ; saying, ' Shake off thy fear, and steer for Chios.' Arriving in that island I attend upon the reli- gious rites of Bacchus, at the inflamed altars." VIII. "We have lent our ears to a long tale," says Pentheus, " that our anger might spend its strength by delay. Servants, drag this fellow away with all speed, and dispatch his body, racked with direful torments, to a hellish death." 696. Immediately the Tyrrhenian Accetes, being hurried off, is shut up in a strong abode ; and, whilst the cruel instruments of the death ordered for him, and iron tools, and fires are made ready ; the report is that the prison doors flew open of themselves, and that the chains of themselves fell from his arms, though nobody loosed them. 701. The son of Echion persists ; and now does not bid others go, but goes him- self, where Cithron, appointed for the celebration of the religious ceremonies, rung again with singing, and the loud voices of Bacchus's votaries. As the mettlesome horse chafes, when the warlike trumpeter gives the alarm with resounding brass, and conceives a longing for the fight ; so the sky, struck with long continued bowlings, moved Pentheus ; and his rage flashed fierce again upon 72 METAMORPHOSES. hearing the clangor. 708. There is about the middle of the mountain, woods enclosing the skirts of it, a plain clear of trees, and visible throughout on all sides. Here first his mother sees him beholding the holy exercises with profane eyes ; she first was hurried on in a furious pace ; she first offered violence to her Pentheus, by cast- ing her thyrsus at him ; and cried out, " O my two sisters, come hither : that boa/, who wanders about, the largest in our fields, that boar must I strike." All the whole company rush furiously upon him alone : all the females gather together, and all pursue him sorely frighted now, now speaking less violent words, now condemning himself, and now confessing that he had sinned. Yet being wounded, he said, " O aunt Autonoe, give me help ; let the ghost of Actseon work upon your mind." 721. She knows not who Actseon was ; and snatched off his right hand as he supplicated ; the other was torn off by the violence of Ino. The hapless wretch has now no arms to hold out to his mother: but shewing his mangled body, now that his limbs were off, says, " Behold, mother." Agave upon seeing them, howled ; and tossed her neck about, and shook her locks through the air; and griping his head, pulled off with her bloody fingers, she cries out, " So ho, my companions, this victory is ray work." The wind does not sooner tear off from a high tree the leaves nipped by the autumn cold, and now scarcely adhering to the boughs, than the limbs of the man were torn asunder by their violent hands. The Ismenian ladies, warned by this example, frequent the new worship, and give their offerings of frankincense, and attend the sacred altars. BOOK IV. BUT Alcithoe, the daughter of Minyas, does not think the holy ceremonies of the god ought to be received ; but, rash creature, still denies Bacchus to be the off- spring of Jupiter : and has her sisters partners in her impiety. The priest ordered both maids and mistresses, free from their work, to celebrate the festival, to have their breasts covered with a doe-skin, and to loose the fillets of their hair ; to take garlands upon their hair, and green thyrsi in their hands : and had foretold them, that the resentment of the affronted deity would be severe. 9. The mothers and brides obey ; lay by their webs and ww^-baskets, and tasks unfinished ; and offer frankincense, and call him Bacchus, and Bromius, and Lyaeus, and Fire-born, and Born-agaiu, and the only one that had two mothers. 13. Nyseus too is added to them, and the unshorn Thyoneus, and with Lenseus the planter of the genial grape, and Nyctelius, and father Eleleus, and lacchus, and Evan, and a great many other names, which thou Bacchus, hast through the nations of Greece. For thy youth is never spent. Thou art an eternal boy : thou art seen the most beautiful in high heaven ; thou hast a virgin's head, when thou standest without thy horns. 20. The East was conquered by thee, as far as where swarthy India is enclosed by the remote river Ganges. Thou, O venerable god, killedst Pentheus, and the axe-bearing Lycurgus, sacrilegious men ; and threw the bodies of the Tyrrhenian sailors into the sea. Thou guidest the necks of the two lynxes joined in your chariot, finely adorned with painted bridles. The Bacchae, and the Satyrs follow you ; and the drunken old Silenus, who supports his reeling limbs with a staff, and keeps his seat, not very fast, to the H 74 METAMORPHOSES. crooked-backed ass. Wheresoever thou goest, the shouts of youths, and together with them women' scries, and drums beat with hands, and hollow cymbals ring, and the box-wood with a long bore. 31. The Ismenian ladies pray you would come amongst them, well affected and merciful to them ; and they attend upon your reli- gious worship as ordered. Only the daughters of Minyas within, disturbing the festival with unseasonable work, either card wool, or turn the threads thereof with their thumbs, or remain close at their web, and keep their maids to their work. 36. Of which one, drawing out her thread with her smooth thumb, says, " Whilst the rest idle, and frequent an imaginary worship, let us whom Pallas, a better deity, keeps employed, ease the useful work of our hands with various discourse ; and let us throw out before the company, for the entertainment of our ears now not otherwise employed, something, each in her turn, which may not suffer the time to appear long." 42. They approve of what she said, and her sis- ters bid her tell her story first. She considers what of many tales she should tell, (for she knew many,) and she is in a doubt, whether she should tell of thee, O Baby- lonian Dercetis, whom the Palestines believe to frequent lakes with thy form altered, scales covering thy limbs. 47. Or rather, how her daughter, taking wings, spent her last years in high towers. Or how a Naiad by magic strains, and two powerful herbs, changed the bodies of some young men into dumb fishes, till she suf- fered the same herself. Or how the tree, which bore white fruit formerly, should bear now black from a taint of blood. This pleases best : this, I say, because it is not a common story. She began therefore in these strains, whilst the wool followed her thread. II. " Pyramus and Thisbe, one the most handsome of all the youths, the other preferred before all the young girls, which the east possessed, had their houses contiguous to one another, where Semiramis is said to have enclosed the stately city Babylon with walls made of baked clay. Their neighbourhood occasioned an acquaintance, and the first advances of affection. With time their love grew : and they would have united in the BOOK IV. 75 tie of marriage ; but their fathers forbade that, what they could not forbid ; they were both inflamed with minds equally captivated. 63. No one is conscious of their love : they speak by nods and signs ; and the more the fire is smothered, the more the concealed flame burns. 65. There was a wall common to both houses, cleft by a small chink, which it had formerly contracted, when it was built. This defect, observed by none for many ages, you lovers first espied (what does not love per- ceive?) and you made it a passage for your voice ; and love-language, in a very low accent, used to pass securely through the same. 71. Oftentimes, after Thisbe had stood on one side, and Pyramus- on the other, and the breath of their mouths had been caught by turns, they said, ' Thou envious wall, why dost thou stand in the way of lovers ? What great matter would it be, if thou shouldst suffer us to unite with our whole bodies ! or, if that be too much, shouldst be open enough for our giving of kisses ! 76. Nor are we ungrateful. We confess we are obliged to thee, that a passage is allowed our words to our loving ears.' After they had in vain said such things as these on their several sides, about night they bid farewell ; and each gave kisses to their own side, which did not reach the other. 81. The following morn had removed the fires of the night, and the sun had dried the dewy grass with his rays ; when they met together again at the usual place. Then com- plaining much, first with a low voice, they determine in the silent night to try to deceive their keepers, and to get out of doors ; and when they shall have got each out of the house, to quit the buildings of the town : and lest they should miss of one another, in wandering through the wide plain, to meet at the tomb of Ninus, and con- ceal themselves under the shade of a tree. There was there a tall mulberry-tree, full of snow-white fruit, close by a cold spring. 9 1 . This agreement pleases them ; and the light, seeming to depart slowly, is buried in the waters, and night arises from the same waters. The cunning Thisbe, turning the hinge of the door, gets out in the dark, and deceives her domestics ; and, having covered herself with a veil, came to the tomb, and sat 76 METAMORPHOSES. down under the appointed tree. 96. Love made her bold. Lo ! a lioness, having her frothing jaws besmeared with the fresh slaughter of oxen, comes to quench her thirst in the water of a neighbouring spring ; which the Babylonian Thisbe saw at a distance by the rays of the moon, and fled into a dark cave with timorous foot, and, whilst she flies, leaves her veil that fell from her back. 102. As soon as the cruel lioness had quenched her thirst with copious water, while she returns into the woods, she tore the fine garment, found by chance with- out herself, with her bloody mouth. 105. Pyramus, going out later, saw the plain footsteps of the savage in the deep dust, and grew pale in his whole countenance. But as soon as he found her veil too dyed in blood, he says, ' One night will ruin two lovers, of whom she was most worthy of long life : my soul is guilty : I have destroyed thee, poor creature, I who bade thee come by night into places full of terror, and came not hither first. O ye lions, whatever dwell under this rock, tear my body to pieces, and consume my wicked flesh with your cruel fangs.' 1 15. But it is the part of a coward to wish for death. He takes up Thisbe's veil, and bears it with him to the shade of the tree agreed upon ; and after he had bestowed some tears upon the well known garment, and given it kisses : ' Receive now,' said he, ' a draught of my blood too ;' and with that, he thrusts the sword, with which he was girt, into his bowels. 120. And, without delay, as he was a dying, drew it out of the warm wound ; and laid upon his back on the ground. The blood springs out on high, no otherwise, than when a pipe is slit by the lead's being decayed, and throws out the water at a small hissing hole, and breaks the air with its gushing strokes. 125. The fruit of the tree, by the sprinkling of the blood, is turned into a black hue ; and the root, wet with the gore, stains the hanging mul- berries with a purple colour. Lo ! she, her fear being not yet laid aside, returns, lest she should deceive her lover : and seeks for the youth with her eyes and with her love, and longs to tell him what mighty dangers she had escaped. 131. And as soon as she observed the place, and the appearance upon the tree altered (the BOOK IV. 77 colour of the fruit makes her uncertain) she is in doubt, whether this was it. Whilst she doubts, she sees trem- bling his limbs beat the bloody soil, and drew back her foot ; and having her face whiter than box-wood, qua- vered like the sea, which shakes, when its surface is swept with a slight breeze. 137- But after, upon stay- ing a little, she knew her love, she smites her arms, unworthy of that usage, with a noisy beating ; and tear- ing her hair, and embracing the body of her lover, she filled his wounds with tears, and added tearful tokens to his blood ; and fixing her kisses upon his cold counte- nance, she cried out, ' What sad mischance has taken thee from me? Pyramus, answer: my dearest, thy Thisbe calls thee. Hear ; and lift up thy fallen coun- tenance.' 145. At the name of Thisbe, Pyramus raised his eyes heavy with death ; and, after he had seen her, closed them again. Who after she observed her robe, and saw the ivory sheath without the sword, ' Thine own hand, says she, and love has destroyed' thee, O hap- less man. I have too a hand stout enough for this one purpose; and love likewise: this latter shall give me strength to deal a wound. I will follow thee, now thou art dead ; and shall be called the most miserable cause and companion of thy death ; and thou who, alas ! could' st be torn from me by death alone, shalt not be able, even by death, to be torn from me. Yet, O ye most miserable parents of mine and his, be entreated in these words of us both, not to envy us the happiness of being buried in the same tomb, whom constant love, and our last hour has joined together. 158. But thou, O tree, which now coverest the miserable body of one with thy boughs, but by and by wilt cover those of two, retain a token of this slaughter, and ever bear fruit black and suitable to mourning, a monument of the blood of both.' 162. This she said ; and having placed the point of the weapon under the bottom of her breast, she fell upon the sword, which as yet was warm with his blood. How- ever, her prayer moved the gods, and moved their parents. For there is in the fruit, black, when it is thorou ghly ripe ; and what was left of them after their funeral piles, rests in one urn." H 2 78 METAMORPHOSES. III. She ceased ; and there was lut a short time betwixt, when Leuconoe began to speak, whilst her sisters held their tongue. ' ' Love captivated this Sun too, who orders all things by his constellated light. Let us relate the amours of the Sun. 171. This god is thought first to have observed the adultery of Venus with Mars. This god sees all things first. He was concerned at the fact : and discovered the stolen use of his bed, and the place of the intrigue, to her husband born of Juno. Then both his sense, and the work which his artful right hand held fell from him. 1 76. Immediately he files out some slender brass chains, and nets, and gins, that might deceive the eyes. The finest threads would not exceed that work, nor a spider's web that hangs on the top of a beam. 180. He likewise makes them so, that they would follow slight touches, and any small movement ; and fixes them drawn nicely round the bed. As soon as the wife and her gallant came into the same bed, being both caught by the art of the husband, and bonds prepared by a new contrivance, they cling fast together in the midst of their embraces. 185. The Lemnian god, immediately opened his ivory folding doors, and let in the gods. They lay shamefully coupled together : yet some of the gods, not melancholy, wished to become scandalous in the same manner. The gods laughed ; and for a long time this was the most noted story in all heaven. 190. The Cythereian goddess, exacts satisfac- tion, in memory of this discovery ; and in her turn disturbs him with the like passion, who had disturbed her in her secret passion. What now, thou son of Hyperion, does thy beauty and complexion, and radiant light avail thee ? since thou who burnest all countries with thy fires, art burnt thyself with a new fire : and thou, who oughtest to look at all things, gazest at Leucothoe ; and fixest those eyes, which thou owest to the world, upon one young damsel. 197. One while thou risest more early than usual in the eastern part of heaven ; another while thou fallest later into the waters ; and in taking time to gaze at her, thou lengthenest out the winter hours. 200. Sometimes thou art eclipsed, and the flaw of thy mind passes into thy light : and BOOK IV. 79 being darkened, thou terrifiest the minds of men. Nor art thou pale, because the body of the moon, nigher the earth, stands in thy way ; it is thy love which occasions this colour. Thou lovest her alone : nor does Clymene and Rhodes, nor the most beautiful mother of the JEsean Circe engage thee : or Clytie, who, though despised, sought thy embraces ; and at that very time thou had'st a grievous wound. 208. Leucothoe occasioned the for- getting of many mistresses, whom Eurynome, the most beautiful of all the odoriferous nation, brought forth. 210. But after the daughter grew up, as much as the mother excelled all others, so much did the daughter exceed the mother. Her father Orchamus ruled the Achaemenian cities ; and he is reckoned the seventh in descent from old Belus. The pasture of the sun's horses are under the Hesperian quarter of heaven. They have ambrosia instead of grass, that nourishes their members, wearied with their daily service, and recruits them for their labour 217- And whilst these quadru- peds, eat their celestial food there, and night takes her turn, the god enters the beloved bed-chamber, changed into the form of her mother Eurynome : and sees Leuco- thoe amidst twice six maids by a lamp, drawing the smooth threads with her twirling spindle. 222. Where- fore after she had, as a mother, given a few kisses to her dear daughter, I have, says she, some secret business : maids withdraw, and do not take from a mother the freedom of talking in private. 225. They obeyed ; and the god, being left in the bed-chamber without any witness, said, I am he who measures the long year, who sees all things, and by whom the earth sees all things : the eye of the world. Believe me, thou pleasest me. She is affrighted ; and, through fear, both her distaff and spindle fell from her relaxed fingers. 230. Her fear became an ornament to her ; and he, without staying any longer, returned into his true shape, and his usual splendour. But the young maiden, though affrighted with the unexpected sight, yet charmed with the beauty of the god, dropping all complaint, suffered his force upon her. Clytie envied her (for the love of the Sun for her had not been moderate) and, pushed on 80 METAMORPHOSES. with the resentment of a rival, publishes the gallantry ; and after she had spread it by fame, discovers it to her father. 337. He, fierce and unmerciful, cruelly buries her alive deep in the ground, begging and holding up her hands to the Sun, and saying, ' He offered violence to me against my will ;' but he clapt upon her a heap of heavy sand. The son of Hyperion scatters this with his rays, and gives thee a way up, that thou may'st put out thy buried face. But thou, Nymph, could' st not now lift up thy head, killed with the^weight of the earth, and lay at length a bloodless body. 245. The governor of the winged horses is said to have seen nothing more afflicting than that, since the fire, or thunder, that Phaeton was" killed with. 247. He indeed endeavours to recover her cold limbs to an enlivening heat, by the strength of his rays. But because fate opposes such great endeavours, he sprinkles her body and the place with odoriferous nectar ; and having complained much, he said, However, thou shalt reach the sky. Imme- diately the body, being well imbued with the heavenly nectar, dissolved away, and drenched the ground with its moist perfume ; and a shoot of frankincense, taking root, by degrees rose up through the clods and burst the hillock with its topmost shoot. IV. " But the author of the light no more approaches Clytie, although love might excuse her sorrow, and her sorrow excuse her information ; and made an end .of his amorous commerce with her. From that time she pined away, having made a mad use of her passion, impatient of the nymphs ; and sat upon the bare ground, in the open air, night and day, with dripping hair uncombed. 262. And for nine days together, taking neither water nor meat, she supported herself during the fast, with pure dew, and her tears : nor did she raise herself from the ground. She only looked upon the face of the god, as he went along : and turned her countenance towards him. 266. They say, that her limbs fastened to the ground, and a wan paleness turned part of her colour into bloodless herbs. There is a redness in part ; and a flower, very like a violet, covers her face. And though she be held fast by a root, yet is she turned towards BOOK IV. 81 her Sun, and though transformed, preserves her love still." V. Thus she spoke ; and the wondrous fact had charmed their ears : one part denies that it was possible to he done ; part say, that true gods can do all things ; but Bacchus is not amongst them. Alcithoe is called upon, after her sisters were silent ; who, running through the threads of her upright web with her shuttle, said, " I say nothing of the well-known amours of the Idsean shepherd, Daphnis, whom the resentment of a nymph, his concubine, turned into a stone. Such mighty pain burns lovers. Nor shall I relate how formerly, the law of nature being altered with him, Scython was of doubtful sex, one while a man, and another a woman. 281. I likewise pass thee by, O Celmus, formerly most faithful to Jupiter when young, now an adamant ; and the Curetes, who sprung from a large shower of rain : and Crocos turned with Smilax into little flowers : and I will entertain your minds with sweet novelty. 285. Learn then how Salmacis became infamous, and why it ener- vates with its soft waters, and effeminates the limbs touched by it. The cause lies hid ; but the power of the spring is very well known. The Naiades nursed a boy, born to Mercury of the Cythereian goddess, in the Idsean caves ; whose face was that, in which both father arid mother might be discerned : he likewise took his name from them. As soon as he had completed thrice five years, he forsook his country mountains ; and, leaving the place of his nursing, Ida, loved to wander about in unknown places, and to see unknown rivers : his curiosity lessening the fatigue. 296. He likewise goes to the Lycian cities, and the Carians, neighbours to Lycia. He sees here a pool of water bright to the very bottom ground. There are not any fenny reeds, nor barren sedges, nor rushes with sharp points there. The water is clear ; yet the edges of the pool are enclosed with grassy turf, and the grass ever green, A nymph dwells there ; but neither suited for hunting, nor who used to bend the bow, nor who used to contend in racing; and she alone of all the Naiades was not known to the swift Diana. 305. The report is, that her sisters often- 82 METAMORPHOSES. times said to her, l Salmacis, either take a dart or a painted quiver, and vary your leisure by hardy hunting.' She neither takes a dart nor painted quiver; nor does she vary her leisure by hardy hunting : but one while washes her beautiful limbs in her own spring ; often separates her hair with a box comb ; and consults the waters, which she looks into, to see what becomes her : and another while, having her body clad with a trans- parent garment, she lies upon either the soft leaves, or the soft grass. 315. She oftentimes gathered flowers; and then too by chance she was gathering them, when she saw the boy, and wished to possess him as soon as she saw him : but yet she did not go to him, though she was in haste to approach him, before she put herself in order, and looked over her robes, and settled her countenance, and deserved to be considered beautiful. 320. Then thus she began to speak : ' O boy, most worthy to be believed to be a god ! whether thou art a god, thou may'st be Cupid ; or if thou be a mortal, happy are they that begot thee : thy brother is happy : and if thou hast any sister, she truly is happy, and happy the nurse who gave thee her breasts. But she is far, far more happy than them all, if you have any wife ; or if you will deem any worthy of marriage. 327. Now whether you have any such spouse, let my pleasure be stolen ; or, if you have none, let me be so ; and let us enter the same bed-chamber.' After these things said, the Nais held her tongue. A blush marked the coun- tenance of the boy : he knows not what love is ; but his blushing became him. 331. Such colour is in apples hanging upon a tree exposed to the sun, or in painted ivory, or in the moon, red under white, when the auxili- ary brazen vessels ring in vain. Upon the nymph's de- siring, without ceasing, at least such kisses as he might give a sister, and now casting her arms upon his ivory neck ; ' Will you not cease,' says he, ' or shall I fly, and leave this place to you?' 337. Salmacis was affrighted: and said, ' I deliver up this place free to you, O stran- ger ;' and she pretends to move off with a retiring pace : but then looking back, and being hid in a wood of shrubs, she lay concealed, and put down her bending BOOK IV. 83 knees upon the ground. 340. But he, as being but a boy, and, as unobserved, goes hither and thither upon the lonely green ; and dips the soles of his feet first, and then up to the ancle, in the waters playing to the shore. And without delay, being taken with the temper of the pleasing waters, he strips the soft garment from off his tender body. 346. But then Salmacis was astonished, and inflamed with Icve of his naked beauty : the eyes too of the nymph burn, no otherwise than the sun, when shining most bright with a clear disk, is reflected from the opposite image of a glass. 350. And scarce bears any delay ; scarce now does she defer her joy. Now she desires to embrace him ; and now, distracted with love, she hardly contains herself. He, clapping his body with his hollow palms, leaps nimbly into the waters ; and, throwing out his arms alternately, shines in the clear waters, just as if any one should cover an ivory image, or white lilies, with clear crystal. 356. The Nais cries out, ( I have conquered ; he is mine :' and, casting oif all her robes, springs into the middle of the waters ; and seizes him resisting her, and enjoys his struggling kisses : and puts down his hands, and touches his unwilling breast : and one while wraps herself about him on this side, another while on that. 361. Finally she entangles him struggling hard against her, and de- sirous to get from her, like a serpent, which the regal bird takes up, and carries away aloft. The serpent, as she hangs, winds round his head and feet, and entangles his expanded wings with her tail. 365. As the ivy winds itself about the long bodies of trees ; and as the Polypus gripes his enemy under the seas, by letting down his claws on all sides. The descendant of Atlas persists ; and denies the nymph her hoped-for joy. She presses him hard ; and contending with her whole body as she stuck to him, she said, ' Though thou struggle, thou wicked rogue, yet thou shalt never escape. So command, O ye gods, and let no time separate him from me, or me from him.' This prayer had its gods to hear it, for the bodies of both, mingled together, are united ; and one shape is put upon them ; just as if any one should draw different boughs under one and the 84 METAMORPHOSES. same bark, and see them join in growing, and spring up together. Thus, after their bodies united iu a strict embrace, they are no more tico bodies ; but yet a twofold form ; so that it could be called neither woman nor boy : it seems neither, and yet both. 380. Wherefore, when Hermaphroditus sees that the clear waters, into which he had descended a man, had made him half a male, and that his members were softened in them ; holding up his hands, he says, ' But now not with the voice of a man ; O father and mother, grant this favour to your son, who has the name of you both. Whosoever comes a man, into this spring, let him go out thence half a man, and suddenly grow effeminate in the waters he touches.' 387. Both parents, being moved, con- firmed the request of their two-form'd son, and infected the spring with medicinal power to render the sex ambiguous." VI. There was now an end of their stories ; and still the daughters of Minyas go on with their work, and despise the god, and profane the festival : when on a sudden drums, not appearing, make a great din with their rumbling sounds ; and the flute too, with the crooked horn, and tinkling brass make music, and myrrh and saffron smell ; and a thing happened beyond all belief, their webs began to grow green, and cloth hanging in the loom to put out leaves in the form of ivy. Part turns into vines ; and what were lately threads are changed into vine-shoots ; and vine-branches grow out of the warp. The scarlet lends its splendour to the painted grapes. 399. And now the day was ended ; and the time came on, which you could neither call darkness, nor light; but the confines of the dubious darkness with the light. The house suddenly seems to shake, and oily lamps to burn : and the house shines with red fires ; and the false appearance of savage wild beasts howl. 405. Presently the sisters hide themselves in the smoking house ; and in different parts avoid the fire and the light. And whilst they run into the dark, a membrane is stretched over their small limbs, and thin wings enclose their arms. Nor does the darkness suffer them to know by what means they lost their former BOOK IV. 85 shape. 410. Feathers did not raise them; and yet they supported themselves upon pellucid wings : and endeavouring to speak, they utter a small voice in pro- portion to their body ; and make low complaints, with a twittering noise ; and frequent houses, not woods ; and, hating the light, fly in the night : and derive their name from the late evening star. VII. But then the divinity of Bacchus was famous all over Thebes; and his aunt, Ino, every where tells of the mighty power of the new god ; and she alone, of so many sisters, was free from sorrow, but what her sisters occasioned. 420. Juno beholds her, having her soul elevated with her sons, and the marriage of Athamas, and her divine nursling. She could not brook it, and said to herself, Could that son of a courtezan metamor- phose the Mseonian sailors, and sink them in the sea, and give the bowels of the son to be mangled by his mother, and cover the three daughters of Minyas with new wings ? 426. Can Juno do nothing, but lament her troubles unrevenged ? and is that enough for me ? Is this alone my power ? He teaches me what I shall do. It is lawful to be taught even by an enemy. And what madness can do, he shews sufficiently, and more than so, by the slaughter of Pentheus. 430. Why should not Ino be instigated with fury, and run through examples of a kind similar to her sisters ? There is a shelving way, shaded with the dismal yew, which leads to the infernal abodes through a profound silence. The dull river Styx throws out mists : and the spirits newly come, go down that way, and the images of men, after they have had burial. 436. Paleness and winter have possession of those loathsome places far and wide ; and the newly arrived ghosts know not where the way is, which leads to the Stygian city, where the dismal palace of the black Pluto is. The wide city has a thousand passages to it, and gates open on all sides. 440. And as the sea receives rivers from the whole earth, so does that place receive all the souls : nor is it too little for any multitude of people, nor does it ever feel a crowd to com e mto it- The ghosts stroll about bloodless, without and bones: and part frequent the forum, part the I 86 METAMORPHOSES. palace of the infernal prince ; part practise trades, in imitation of their former life : their punishment confines another part. 447. Juno, the daughter of Saturn, endures to go thither, leaving the heavenly habitation, (so much did she yield to her hatred and passion.) Into which, as soon as she was entered, and the threshold, pressed by her sacred body, shook ; Cerberus put out his three mouths, and uttered three barks at once. She calls the sisters begotten of night, terrible and implac- able goddesses. They sat before the door of the prison, shut close with adamant, and combed their black snakes in their hair. Whom as soon as the goddesses knew, amidst the shades of darkness, they rose up. The place of their abode is called The Accursed. 457. Tityus gave there his bowels to be torn to pieces, and was stretched along nine acres of ground. No water is catched by thee, Tantalus ; and the tree that hangs over thee, flies off. Thou, Sisyphus, art either fetching, or thrusting thy stone up, destined to fall again. Ixion is rolled about, and both follows and flies from himself. 462. And the daughters of Belus, who ventured to attempt the de- struction of their cousins, are continually taking up again the waters which they lose. All which after the daughter of Saturn had beheld with a stern look, and above all Ixion, and then beholding Sisyphus after him, she says : " Why does he alone of all the brothers suffer perpetual punishment, whilst a stately palace contains in it the proud Athamas, who always with his wife despised me." And she declares to them the occasion of her hatred, and coming there, and what she wanted. What she desired was, that the palace of Cadmus should not stand ; and that the fell sisters should draw Atha- mas into some crime. 4/2. She mixes commands, promises, and prayers, together ; and solicits the god- desses. Juno having said these things, Tisiphone, as she was disturbed, shook her hoary hair, and threw back the projecting snakes, from her face ; and thus she says : " There is no occasion for any long discourse : suppose the things to be done, whatsoever you com- mand : forsake this unamiable kingdom, and get you back to the air of the better heaven." 479. Juno re- BOOK IV. 87 turns joyful ; whom, preparing to enter heaven, Iris, the daughter of Thaumas, purified by sprinkling water. 481. And without delay, the restless Tisiphone takes a torch wet with blood, and puts on a coat red with fluid gore ; and is girt with a snake twisted about her ; and goes forth from her mansion. Mourning attends her, and fright, and terror, and madness with a trembling countenance. She stood at the door of Athamas ; the jEolian door-posts are said to have shaken ; and paleness dyed the maple door ; and the sun fled the place. The wife was affrighted at these strange things ; Athamas was terrified : and they were both preparing to vacate the house. 490. The unlucky Fury stood in their way, and blocked up the passage ; and stretching out her arms, twisted about with the folds of vipers, she shook her hair. The snakes being moved thereby, made a noise ; and part of them lying upon her shoulders, and part sliding about her temples, throw out hisses, and vomit filthy gore, and dart out their tongues. 495. Upon that, she tears away two snakes out of the middle of her hair ; and seizing threw them with her pestiferous hand. And they creep along the bosom of Athamas and Ino, and inspire dreadful sentiments ; but make no wounds in their members : it is the mind which feels their terrible strokes. 500. She had brought along with her two monstrous drugs of liquid poison, the froth of the mouth of Cerberus, and the venom of Echidna, and wandering errors, and the forgetfulness of a thoughtless mind, and villany, and tears, and rage, and -the love of murder, all beaten together ; which being mixed with fresh blood, she had boiled in a brazen kettle, stirred about with a green hemlock stalk. 50G. And, whilst they are affrighted, she tosses the furious poison into the breasts of them both ; and disturbed their hearts within. Then throwing her torch about several times in the same ring, she follows the fires thereof, swiftly agitated, with fires. 510. Thus pre- vailing, and executing her commission, she returns to the empty kingdom of mighty Dis, and tingirds the snake she had taken on her. Immediately the son of JSolus cries out distracted, in the middle of his court,' 88 METAMOEPHOSES. " So oh ! my companions, spread wide your nets in these woods : here just now was seen a lioness by me, with two cubs :" and instantly he follows, in madness, the footsteps of his wife, as of a wild beast ; and snatches from the bosorn of his mother, Learchus laughing, and holding out his little arms ; and whirls him round like a sling two or three times in the air; and outrageously dashes in pieces the infant's bones against the hard stones. Then at last the mother being roused (whether grief occasioned it, or the power of the infused poison), howls and runs away distracted, with her hair spread abroad ; and car- rying thee, Melicerta, a little boy, in her naked arms, shrieks out, " Evce, Bacchus." At the name of Bac- chus Juno laughed, and said : " May thy nursling do tbee this service." 525. There is a rock hangs over the sea ; the lowest part is worn hollow by the waves, and defends the covered waters from the rain : the upper part is hard stone, and stretches out a front over the wide sea. This Ino gets upon (madness had given her strength), and being restrained by no fear, she casts herself, and her burden too, upon the sea ; the water, struck with her fall, was white with froth. 531. But Venus, pitying the sad misfortunes of her innocent grand-daughter, thus coaxed her uncle. " O thou God of the waters, Neptune, to whom a power next to the empire of heaven fell, I request great things indeed ; but do thou pity my relations, whom you see tossed about upon the vast Ionian sea ; and add them to thy gods. 536. I have some interest in the sea ; if indeed I was formerly froth formed in the middle of the main ; and a Greek name adheres to me from thence." Nep- tune yields to her entreating, and took from them what was mortal ; and gave them a venerable majesty ; and at once altered their names, and their shape : and called the god Palsemon, with his mother Leucothoe. VIII. Her Sidonian attendants following the prints of her feet, as far as they could, saw the last upon the edge of the rock ; and thinking no doubt was to be held of her death, with their palms smiting their breasts, they lamented the house of Cadmus, with their hair torn together with their garments. 547. And raised an BOOK IV. 89 odium against the goddess as not just, and too cruel against her rival. Juno could not bear their reproaches ; and said, " I will make YOU the greatest monuments of my severity." 550. The execution followed of what was said. For she who had been the most affectionate to her lady, says : " I will follow the queen into the sea ;" and going to give a jump, she could not be moved any way ; and stuck fast to the rock ; and an- other, whilst she endeavours to smite her breast with beating, as usual in sorrow, perceives that her arms, thus exerted, were grown stiff. 556. Another, as by chance she had stretched out her hands over the waters of the sea, becoming a stone, she holds out her hands over the same waters. You might have seen the fingers of another suddenly hardened in her hair, as she tore her locks seized upon the top of her head. 560. And every one stuck fast in that posture, in which she was caught. Part of them were transformed into birds, which now too, called Ismenides, in those waters, sweep the sea with the tip of their wings. IX. The son of Agenor knows not that his daughter and little grandson were new deities of the sea. Forced by sorrow, and a series of calamities, and the strange prodigies which he had seen in great number, the founder flies from his own city, as though the fortune of the place, and not his own, lay heavy on him ; and, moving about in distant wanderings, arrived upon the coast of Illyricum with his exiled wife. And now, whilst they, laden with misfortunes and years, reflect upon the first sad accidents of their family, and run over again in their discourse their calamities ; Cadmus says: "Was that serpent a holy one, pierced by my spear ; then, when coming from Sidon, I scattered the viper's teeth, as new seed in the ground ? Which if the providence of the gods avenges with such unceasing resentment, I pray that I may be stretched out, a* a serpent, into a long train." 5/6. So he said ; and, as a serpent, is stretched out into a long train; and perceives scales grow upon his hardened skin, and his black body to be speckled with green spots ; and falls flat upon his breast; and his legs, being mixed together, are 90 METAMORPHOSES. drawn out small, with a long round point. 581. His arms now remain : he holds out the arms which still remain : and, with tears running down his face yet human, said : " Come hither, wife ; come hither, most miserable creature ; and, whilst anything is left of me, touch me, and take my hand, whilst it is a hand ; and whilst a snake's form does not occupy me entirely." 586. He indeed desires to say more ; but on a sudden his tongue was divided into two parts ; nor are words in his power, offering to speak ; and as oft as he goes about to utter any complaints, he hisses : this voice alone nature leaves him. 590. His wife, smiting her naked breast with her hand, cries out : " Cadmus, stay and deliver thyself, unhappy creature, from this strange monster : Cadmus ; what means this ? Where are your feet ? Where are your shoulders and hands, and your colour and face? and, whilst I am speaking, where is your whole frame ? Why do ye not, O celestial gods, change me into the same sort of snake ?" 595. Thus she spoke : he licked the face of his wife, and crept upon her dear bosom, as if he knew her ; and gave her embraces; and wound himself about her frequented neck. Whosoever is near (sowjeattendantswerewiththem) is terrified : but upon them shine the smooth necks of crested serpents ; and all on a sudden they are two ; and creep along with a joint rolling, till they came into the secret parts of an adjacent grove. Now too they do not avoid men, nor do they hurt them by wounds ; and the gentle serpents remember what they were before. X. But yet their' grandson, who subdued India, worshipped ; and whom Achaia celebrated in temples erected to his honour, gave them both a mighty consola- tion under this alteration of their shape. 607. Only the son of Abas, Acrisius descended of the same stock, remains to drive him from the walls of his Argolic city, and bear arms against the god ; and he alone does not think him to be the offspring of Jupiter. For indeed neither did he think Perseus to be the son of Jupiter, whom Danae had conceived by a shower of gold. 612. However, soon after Acrisius was sorry, as well that he had abused the god, as that he had not BOOK IV. 91 owned his grandson (so great is the immediate power of truth.) The one was now placed in heaven; and the other, bringing the memorable spoil of the viperous monster, cut the tender air with hissing wings. And, whilst the conqueror hung over the Lybian sands, bloody drops of the Gorgon's head fell down: which being received in gigantic frame, the ground enlivened into various snakes. From whence that country is filled and infested with snakes. XI. Being carried thence by jarring winds through an immense space, now hither, now thither, he is borne like a watery cloud : and looks down from the high sky upon the earth, far down below : and flies over the whole world. 625. Three times he saw the cold Bear- stars, three times the arms of the Crab. He was oftentimes carried away to the west, often to the east. And now the day declining, fearing to trust himself to the night, he stopped in the western world, in the kingdom of Atlas ; and desires a little rest, till Lucifer should call out the fires of the Aurora, and Aurora the diurnal chariot. 631. Here was Atlas the son of Japetus, excelling all mortals in gigantic frame. The furthest part of the earth, and the sea which holds its waters under the panting horses of the Sun, and receives the wearied chariot, was under this king. 635. A thousand flocks of his, and as many herds wandered over the grass ; and no neighbourhood disturbed his land. Leaves of trees, shining with radiant gold, covered sprigs of gold, and apples of gold. " Friend," says Perseus to him, '' whether the glory of a great descent affects you, Jupiter is the original of my descent; or, if you are an admirer of exploits, you will admire mine. I beg of you entertainment and rest." 642. He was mindful of an old oracle (the Parnassian Themis had given this oracle), " Atlas, a time will come when thy tree shall be stripped of its gold, and a son of Jupiter shall have the honour of the prize." 646. Atlas, fearing this, had enclosed his orchard with solid walls, and consigned it to a huge dragon to keep ; and kept all foreigners from his territories : and says to him, " Get thee gone, far from hence, lest the glory of the 92 METAMORPHOSES. exploits which thou falsely pretendest to, and Jupiter be far from protecting thee." 651. And he adds violence to his threats ; and endeavours to drive him out, upon his demurring, and mixing bold words with smooth. Being inferior in strength (for who could be a match for the strength of Atlas ?) " But because," says he, " my favour is of small account with thee, take this present :" and he, turning his face backward, drew out from his left side the hideous face of Medusa. 657. Atlas, as great as he was, became a mountain ; now his beard and hair turned into woods: his shoulders and hands are the tops of it ; and what was a head before, is a summit on the top of the mountain. 660. His bones become stones ; then he grew high on all parts, to an immense reach (so ye gods determined) and the whole heaven, with so many stars in it, rested upon him. XII. The son of Hippotas had shut up the winds in their eternal prison ; and the morning-star, the brightest in the sky, that puts men in mind of their work and toil, was risen ; he binds his feet on each side with his resumed wings, and is girt with his crooked sword ; and cleaves the liquid air with his agitated wings : and having left innumerable nations around and below, he espies the nations of the ^Ethiopians, and the lands of Cepheus. 670. There the unjust Ammon had ordered the innocent Andromeda to suffer punishment for her mother's tongue. Whom as soon as the descendant of Abas saw, chained by her arms to the hard rocks ; but that the light air tossed her hair about, and her eyes ran with warm tears ; he would have thought her a work of marble. 675. Ignorant who she was, he catches the flame of love, and is amazed ; and, being charmed with the appearance of her beauty thus seen, he well nigh forgot to shake his wings in the air. As soon as he stood, he said, "O lady, not deserving of those chains, but those by which fond lovers are joined together, tell me, at my request, the name of your country, and your own ; 68 1 . and why you bear those chains." She at first is silent : and as being a virgin, dares not speak to a man : and would have concealed her modest countc- BOOK IV. 93 nance with her hands, if she had not been bound. What she could do, she did : she filled her eyes with tears bursting out. 685. Upon his often urging her, lest she should seem unwilling to confess her fault, she tells him both the name of her country, and her own, and how great the confidence of her mother's beauty had been. And all her story being not yet told, the water roared, and the approaching beast hovers over the vast sea, and covers the watery plain far and wide under his breast. 691. The virgin cries out: her mournful father, and also her distracted mother, is by : both miserable, but she more justly so : nor do they bring her any help with them, but weeping and wailing, suitable to the time, and cleave close to her bound body. 695. Then thus spoke the stranger : "A long time of mourning may be left for you ; but there is but a short space for giving assistance. If I should desire her, I, Perseus, son of Jupiter, and her, whom, when shut up in prison, Jupiter impregnated with gold : I, Perseus, the conqueror of the snake-haired Gorgon, and who ventured to move through the air upon flapping wings ; I should surely be preferred before all as your son-in- law. 701. I attempt to add merit likewise to such mighty advantages (let but the deities favour me). I bargain only that she may be mine, when saved by my valour." Her parents accept the condition (for who would doubt it ? ) and entreat him to undertake it ; and promise him moreover the kingdom as a fortune. 706. Lo ! like as a ship with a beak fixed in its prow, swiftly moving, furrows the waters forced forwards by means of the sweating arms of youths: so the monster, removing the waters by the impulse of his breast, was as far from the rocks, as is the middle space of the air, which a Balearian sling can pass with the whirled lead. 711. When suddenly the youthful Perseus, repulsing the earth with his feet, went off aloft into the clouds. As the shadow of the man was seen on the top of the sea, the beast vents its fury upon the shadow when observed. And as the bird of Jupiter, after he has espied a snake in the open field, turning up his livid back to the sun, seizes him behind, and, lest he should turn upon him his 94 METAMORPHOSES. savage mouth, fixes his greedy claws in his scaly neck : thus the descendant of Inachus, coming headlong down with a speedy flight through the parted air, got upon the back of the beast, and sheathed his sword up to the 'crooked guard, in the right shoulder of him raging. 721. Being hurt by so grievous a wound, one while he lifts himself up aloft in the air, another while sinks beneath the water ; another while turns about like a wild boar, whom a pack of dogs roaring around him terrifies. He avoids the beast's greedy bite with his swift wings ; and wounds with his crooked sword ; now his back covered with hollow shells, now the ribs of his sides, now the place where his tail being smallest, ends in fish. 728. The monster vomits out of his mouth waters mixed with red blood : his wings were wet, and heavy with the spray, and Perseus, not daring to trust himself any longer upon his drinking wings, espied a rock, which stands with its top out of the waters, ivhen still ; but is covered with the sea when agitated. 733. Resting upon that, and seizing the tip-top of the rock with his left hand, three or four times he run his sword through his guts, struck at again and again. 735. A shout, with clapping of hands, filled the shores, and the celestial homes of the gods. Cassiope, and the father Cepheus rejoice, and salute him as their son-in-law,' and confess him to be their family's succour and deliverer. The virgin being loosed from her chains, walks along, both the reward and cause of his achievement. He washes his conquering hands in water taken from the deep ; and, lest the hard sand should injure the snake- bearing head, he softens the ground with leaves, and spreads thereon some twigs that grew under the sea ; and lays upon them the face of Medusa, the daughter of Phorcys. The fresh twig, being yet alive, catched the violence of the monster in its thirsty pith, and hardened with the touch of it ; and felt a new stiffness in its sprigs and leaves. 747. But the nymphs of the sea attempt the wonderful fact in more twigs, and rejoice to see the same thing happen, and renew here and there seeds of them scattered in the water. 750. Now too the same nature remained in the corals, that BOOK IV. 95 they receive a hardness from the touch of the air ; and what was a twig in the sea, becomes stone when above the sea. XIII. He erects to three gods as many altars of turf; one on the left hand to Mercury, another on the right to thee, " O warlike lady j" the altar of Jupiter is in the middle. A cow is killed to Minerva; a calf to the wing-footed god, and a bull to thee, "Thou greatest of the gods." 757. Immediately he seizes upon Andromeda, the reward of so great an action ; without any fortune. Hymenseus and Cupid shake torches before them, and the fires upon the altars are filled with plenty of perfumes. 760. And garlands hang upon the houses ; and flageolets, and harps, and flutes, and songs, the happy tokens of a joyful mind, resound again. Gilded galleries appear to view, with the folding doors wide open : and the nobles of king Cepheus engage in feasts furnished out with splendid provision. After they had done the feast, and relaxed their minds by the benefit of generous wine, the grandson of Abas inquires into the customs, and way of living, of the people of those parts. 767. Immediately Lyncides, tells him, upon his inquiring, the manners and ways of life of the men there. Which as soon as he had told him, he said, " Now, most gallant Perseus, tell us, I beseech you, with how great bravery, and by what arts you took off the head haired with snakes." 772. The great grandson of Abas tells him, That there was a place lying under the cold Atlas, secured by the bulwark of a solid mole ; in the entrance of which the two sisters, the daughters of Phorcys dwelt ; who shared the use of a single eye. 776. That he by subtle craft slily received this, by putting his hand in the way, whilst it is delivered : and then over dreadful rocks far remote, and out of all way, and covered with woods growing on craggy sides, he arrived at the habitations of the Gorgons ; and saw everywhere along the fields and the roads, statues of men and wild beasts, turned into stone from the sight of Medusa. 782. Yet that he by the reflection from the brass of his buckler, which he bore in his left hand, beheld the visage of the marvellous 96 METAMORPHOSES. Medusa ; and, whilst a sound sleep kept her snakes and herself fast, he severed her head from her neck : and that Pegasus who flies upon his wings, and his brother, sprung from the blood of Tier their mother. 787- He added too the dangers of a long flight, which were not false : what seas, what lands, he saw under him from on high ; and what stars he had touched in the tossing of his wings. 790. Yet he held his tongue before it was expected : whereupon one of the number of the nobles rejoins, asking him, why but one of the sisters had snakes mixed alternately with her hair. 792. The stranger says, " Since you question of things worthy to be related, hear the cause of what you ask. She was the most lovely in form, and the source of envious hope among her suitors, nor in her whole frame was any part more beautiful than her hair. I knew one, who said he had beheld her. The ruler of the sea is said to have violated her in the temple of Minerva. The daughter of Jove turned aside, and covered her chaste countenance with the ^Egis.' Nor was this crime without its punish- ment, for she changed the Gorgon's hair into filthy snakes. Now too, to fright her astonished enemies she bears upon .the front of her breast the snakes which she made." BOOK V. AND whilst the hero, the son of Danae, relates these things in the midst of the company of Cephenian nobles, the royal palace is filled with the clamour of a multitude : nor is the shout such as celebrates a marriage-feast ; but what gives notice of cruel arms. 5. And you might compare the feast, turned into sudden confusion, to the sea ; which, when quiet, the fell mad- ness of the winds disturbs by raising of the waters. The foremost amongst them, Phineus, the rash author of the war, shaking an ashen spear with a brazen point, says, " Lo ! lo ! I am come, the avenger of my wife thus taken from me : nor shall thy wings, nor Jupiter turned into false gold, deliver thee from me." 12. Upon his endea- vouring to throw his spear, Cepheus cries out, " What are you doing ? Brother, what feeling hurries you thus raging upon this villany ? Is this requital made to such great services ? Do you repay the saving of my daughter's life with this dowry? 16. Whom not Perseus hath deprived you of, but, if you reflect, the incensed majesty of the Nereids, 'twas horned Ammon, 'twas the monster of the sea, which came to be glutted with my bowels, took from you. She was snatched from you at that time, when she was to have perished : unless you cruelly insist upon this very thing, that she should perish ; and unless you will be eased by my sorrow. 22. What, is it not enough, that she was bound, whilst you looked on ; and that you her uncle and her spouse gave her no help ? will you moreover regret that she was saved by any ? and will you take^rom him his reward ? 25. Which, if it appears great to you, you should have rescued from the rock where it was fixed. Now suifer him that did rescue it, by whom our old age is not childless, to have what he stipulated for, both by his merits and express 98 METAMORPHOSES. contract; and know that he was not preferred before you, but certain death." 30. He said nothing in answer, but beholding both him and Perseus with alternate looks, knows not whether he should attack this or the other ; and staying a while, he threw his spear, dis- charged with all the might that anger gave, at Perseus, but in vain. As it stood fixed in the bed, then at last Perseus jumpt from off the bedding, and, being enraged, would have pierced his enemy's breast by throwing the weapon back, had not Phineus gone behind an altar : and (O abominable !) the altar protected a villain. 38. However, the spear, being not thrown in vain, stuck in the forehead of Rhcetus ; who, after he was fallen, and the spear was pulled out of his skull, kicks hard, and bespatters the tables, that stood near, with his blood. 41. But then the company bursts out into ungoverned rage, and hurl their weapons ; and some there are who say that Cepheus, with his son-in-law, ought to die. But Cepheus had departed from the door of the house, calling to witness both right and faith, and the gods of hospitality, that this disturbance was agitated though he forbade it. 46. The warlike Pallas comes, and protects her brother with her aegis ; and gives him courage. There was an Indian, one Atys, whom Limnate, the daughter of the river Ganges, is believed to have brought forth under the glassy waters, excelling in beauty ; which he improved by a rich dress, in his prime, as yet but twice eight years old ; clad in a Tyrian cloak, which a bordering of gold surrounded : a golden bracelet adorned his neck, and a crooked hair pin fastened his hair wet with myrrh. 54. He indeed had been taught to strike things, though at a great distance, by the casting of a dart ; yet he was still more skilful in directing the bow. 56. Perseus struck him then too, in the act of bending the flexible horns of a bow with his hand, with a faggot, which smoked as it lay upon the altar, and dashed his face to pieces within his broken skull. When the Assyrian Lycabas, very closely attached to him and his companion, and no concealer of his real passion, saw him rolling his battered face in his blood ; after he had bemoaned Atys breathing cut his life under a cruel wound, he seizes up BOOK V. 99 the bow the other had bent, and said, " Thy contest is now with me ; thou shalt not long rejoice at the death of the boy, by which act thou gettest more of hatred, than praise." 66. He had not yet said all these words, when the piercing weapon sprung from the string ; and though it was avoided, yet it hung in his plaited garment. The grandson of Acrisius turns upon him his faulchion, proved already by the slaughter of Medusa, and thrust it into his breast. 73. But he now a dying, with his eyes swimming in black night looked about for Atys, and laid himself on him ; and carried to the shades the comfort of a united death. 74. And now Phorbas the Suenite, the son of Methion, and the Lybian Amphi- medon, desirous to join battle, slipped, and fell down in the blood, with which the earth, all places round being wet, was warm. The sword met them as they rose, being driven within the ribs of one, and into the throat of Phorbas. But Perseus does not attack Erithus the son of Actor (whose weapon was a large battle-axe) with his sword opposed to him ; but takes up with both his hands a ponderous bowl, embossed with figures in high relief, and of a huge mass in weight ; and hurls it against the man. He vomits red blood, and, falling upon his back, beats the ground with his dying head. 85. After that, he lays upon the ground Polydsemon, sprung from the blood of Semiramis, and the Caucasian Abaris, and Lycetus, the son of Sperchius, and Helices with his hair unshorn, and Phlegias, and Clytus : and tramples upon heaps of dying men piled up. Nor durst Phineus engage hand to hand with the enemy ; but whirls his dart, which a miss of his mark brought upon Idas, who to no purpose had been unconcerned in the war, and followed neither side. 92. He, beholding the cruel Phineus with stern eyes, says, " Since I am drawn in to one side, take the enemy which thou hast made thyself, Phineus ; and make amends for my wound with this wound." And he was just throwing back the weapon drawn out of his body ; when sinking down, he fell upon his limbs now void of blood. 97. Here too Odites, the first of all the Cephenians next the king, falls by the sword of Clymenus : Hypseus struck down Protenor ; 100 METAMORPHOSES. Lyncides Hypseus. There was too amongst them the aged Emathion, an observer of equity, and a fearer of the gods ; who, because his years prevent his fighting, engages in words ; and rails, and curses their wicked arms. 103. Cromis with his sword cut off his head as he embraced the altars with his trembling palms, which immediately fell upon the altar ; and there he uttered cursing words with his expiring tongue, and breathed out his soul into the middle of the fire. 107. Upon this twin brothers, Broteas and Ammon, invincible at gauntlets, (if swords could be conquered by gauntlets) fell by the hand of Phineus : and Ampycus, the priest of Ceres, having his temples covered with a white riband. 111. Thou too, Japetides, not to be employed for these services ; but one who exercised the harp, a work of peace, accompanying thy voice ; had'st been ordered to attend the entertainment and feast with singing. Whom standing at a distance, and holding his plectrum not fit for war, Pettalus bantering, said, " Go, sing the rest to the Stygian ghosts ; " and fixes the point of the sword in his left temples. 117. Down he falls, and with his dying fingers touches once again the strings of his lyre : and in his fall plays a miserable dirge. The fierce Lycormas does not suffer him to fall without revenge ; and tearing away a strong bolt from the right door-cheek, dashed it on the bones of the middle of his neck ; and then down he fell upon the ground, like a slain bullock. 123. The Cinyphian Pelates was attempting to fetch down the oaken bolt of the left door-cheek ; but as he attempted it, his right hand was fastened thereto by the spear of the Marmaridan Corythus, and adhered to the wood. 126. Abas stabbed him in the side, as he stuck ; yet he did not fall ; but dying, he hung from the door- cheek, with his hand supporting him. Melaneus too, who followed the camp of Perseus, is slain ; and Dorylas very rich in Nasamoniack land ; Dorylas rich in land : than whom not another besides possessed fields to a great extent, or received from thence so many heaps of corn. 132. A spear thrown at him stood in the side of his groin (that is a mortal part) whom after the author of the wound, the Bactrian Halcyoneus, saw gurgling BOOK V. 101 out his soul, and rolling his eyes ; "Take," says he, "this that thou now pressest, of so many fields of land ;" and wleft his bloodless body. 137. The great grandson of Abas, as his avenger, whirls at him the spear pulled out of the warm wound ; which being received in the middle of his nose, ran through his neck, and sticks out on both sides. 140. And, whilst fortune assists his hand, he killed Clytius and Clanis, born of one mother, with different wounds. For an ashen spear, brandished with a strong arm, was driven through both the thighs of Clytius ; Clanis bit a dart in his mouth. Celadon, the Mendesian, fell too: Astreus fell, born of a Palestine mother, but of an uncertain father. 146. And JEthion, sagacious at foreseeing things long after to come, was now deceived by a false bird ; and Thoactes the king's armour-bearer, and Agyrtes infamous for killing his father. Yet more work remains to what was already finished : for they have all a design to destroy one. Troops in confederacy fight on all hands, for a cause that violated merit and faith. For one side, the father-in-law pious in vain, and the young wife, with her mother, are favourable ; and fill the palace with their cries : but the din of arms, and the groans of men falling in fight, prevail. 155. And Bellona, at the same time, besmears the polluted household-gods with much blood ; and agitates renewed fights. Phineus, and a thousand that followed Phineus, surround one. Weapons fly thicker than winter's hail, by both his sides, by his eyes, and his ears. 160. He leans his shoulders against the stones of a great pillar ; and thus having his back secure, and being turned to the troops in front, he withstands them pressing hard upon him. On the left side came on the Chaonian Molpeus ; on the right, the Nabathsean Ethemon. As a tiger spurred on with hunger, upon hearing the lowings of two herds in different valleys, knows not which way he should sally, and yet burns* to sally out both ways : so Perseus being in doubt whether he should move to the right or left, repulsed Molpeus by a wound in his leg, which he ran through, and was then content with flight. For Ethemon does not give him time to pursue him ; but fiercely rages ; and being K 2 102 METAMORPHOSES. desirous to give him a wound in his tall neck, broke his sword, wielded with incautious strength, upon the ex- treme part of a pillar he struck upon : the blade shivered, and was fixed, part, in the owner's throat. Yet that stroke did not afford a cause effectual enough for death. Perseus stabs him with his Cyllenian faul- chion trembling, and holding out his cowardly arms in vain. 177. But when he saw his prowess sink under the number of his enemies, " I will seek assistance from an enemy," said Perseus, " since you yourselves force me to it. Turn away your faces, if any friend be here ;" and then exposed to view his Gorgon'-s face. 181. " Seek some- body else," says Thescelus, " whom thy miracles may move ;" and as he was preparing to throw his fatal dart with his hand, he stuck fast a statue of marble in that posture. Ampyx being next him, with his sword makes at the breast of Lyncidas full of courageous spirit ; and in attacking him, his right hand grew stiff, and was neither moved backward, nor forward. 1 87 . But Nileus, who had falsely pretended that he was begot by the seven-streamed Nile, and had inlaid in his shield too his seven channels, partly in silver and partly in gold ; " Behold," says he, " Perseus, the original of my descent ; thou shalt carry a mighty consolation for thy death to the silent shades, that thou didst fall by so great a man." The last part of his saying was suppressed in the middle of its utterance ; and you would think that his open mouth would speak ; but that is not passable for words. 195. Eryx chides these warriors, and says, "You are benumbed by the fault of your miud, and not by any power of the Gorgon ; rush on with me ; and beat down upon the ground a young fellow that deals in magic arms." He was going to rush forward ; but the earth held his feet, and he is silent and unmoved, and remained an armed image. 200. Yet these underwent their punishment, according to their desert. But there was one soldier of Perseus, Aconteus, for whom whilst he fights, upon seeing the Gorgon, he became stiff with stone rising upon him. Whom Astyages, thinking to be yet alive, strikes with his long sword : the sword rung with a shrill tinkling. Whilst Astyages is amazed, BOOK V. 103 he took on him the same nature; and the look of one still wondering continues in his marble face. 207. It is a tedi- ous business to relate the names of all the men, slain from the midst of the vulgar. Two hundred bodies survived the fight ; two hundred bodies grew stiff upon seeing the Gorgon. 210. Now at last Phineus repents of this unjust war. But what can he do ? He sees statues different in posture ; and he knows them to be his friends ; and calling each man by his name, begs their help ; and scarcely believing, he touches the bodies next him ; they were all marble. He turns away ; and thus suppliant, and stretching out his hands owning his fault, and his arms obliquely, says, " Perseus, thou conquerest : remove the cruel monster; and take away the petrifying countenance of thy Mednsa, whoever she be. I beseech you take it away. 218. Hatred, and the desire of a kingdom, did not drive us to war : we took up arms for a wife. Thy cause was the better in point of merit ; mine in that of time. I am sorry 1 did not yield. Grant me nothing, O most gallant man, besides this life : let all the rest be thine." 223. Upon his saying such words, and not daring to look at him whom he entreated by words ; he says, " What I can give thee, most cowardly Phineus, and what is a great favour for a coward, lay aside thy fear, I will give thee : thou shalt be hurt by no weapon. Nay, moreover, I will give thee a monument to continue for ever ; and thou shalt always be seen in the house of my father-in-law, that my wife may comfort herself with the image of her -spouse." 230. Thus he said; and transferred the daughter of Phorcys to that side, to which Phineus had turned himself with a trembling face. The neck of him, as he then too endeavoured to turn his eyes, grew stiff ; and the moisture of his eyes hardened in stone : but yet his face continued timorous, and his look that of a sup- pliant in the marble, and his hands hung down, and his gesture was lowly. II. The great grandson of Abas, being thus victorious, enters .the walls of his native city, with his wife ; and, as the defender and avenger of his innocent mother, he attacks Prcetus : for Prcetus, having banished 104 METAMORPHOSES. his brother by force of arms, had taken possession of the citadel of Acrisius ; yet did he not prevail against the grim eyes of the snake-bearing monster, by the help of his arms, nor by the citadel which he had villanously seized. III. Yet, Polydectes, governor of little Seriphus, neither the gallantry of the youth tried through so many achievements, nor his hardships had softened thee ; but hard-hearted, thou exertest an inexorable hatred ; nor is there any end in thy unreasonable wrath. Thou de- tractest too from his praise : and allegest that this killing of Medusa was only fictitious. "We will give thee a proof of the truth," says Perseus : " have a care of your eyes all else " and then he made the king's face to be bloodless flint, by exposing the face of Medusa. IV. Thus far the Tritonian goddess (Pallas) had joined herself as a companion to her gold-begotten brother. After that, wrapt in a hollow cloud, she forsakes Seriphus, Cythnus and Gyarus being left on her right ; and where the way seemed shortest over the sea, seeks for Thebes, and Helicon frequented by virgins, which mountain after she had gained, she made a stand, and thus addressed the learned sisters. 256. " The fame of a new spring has come to our ears, which the hard hoof of the Medusaean winged horse caused to spring. That is the cause of my coming. I desired to see the wondrous portent : I saw him spring from his mother's blood." 260. Uranie replies, "What- soever is the cause, goddess, of your -visiting these habitations, you are very acceptable to our minds. However, the report is true ; and Pegasus is the original cause of this spring." Then she conducts Pallas to the sacred waters. Who for a long time wondering at the waters made by the strokes of a horse's foot, she looks about upon the groves of ancient woods, and the caves, and the grass distinguished by innumerable flowers. 267. And calls the Mnemonian ladies, happy, as well from their way of life, as the place of their abode. 268. Whom one of the sisters thus bespoke : " O Tritonia, who would' st have come in to make a part of our company, had not your prowess carried you off to BOOK V. 105 greater works ; you say true, and deservedly approve both our profession and our residence ; and we reckon our condition agreeable, provided we may but be safe. But (so much to wickedness is nothing unlawful), all things affright our virgin minds ; and the dreaded Pyreneus is ever before our faces ; and I have not yet recovered myself with my whole mind. 276. That wild man had seized the Daulian and Phocsean country with Thracian soldiers, and held the kingdoms thereof unjustly. We were going to the temples upon mount Parnassus. He saw us going : and worshipping our divinity with a deceitful worship, he said, ' O Mnemoni- des (for he knew us) stop ; and hesitate not, I beseech you, to avoid the bad weather, and the rain (/or rain there was) in my house : the gods above have oftentimes entered humble cottages.' We, moved by his invi- tation, and the time together, comply with the man, and entered the fore-room of his house. 285. The rain was now over, and the south-wind being mastered by the north, the black clouds fled from the cleared heaven. We had a mind to go. Pyreneus shuts his house, and prepares for violence, which we avoided by taking wings. He stood aloft on the top of his house, like one that would follow us ; and said, ' Where there is a way for you, there will be the same for me too.' And, like a madman, throws himself down from the very highest summit of a tower ; and falls upon his face ; and breaking the bones of his countenance, he, dying, beats the ground stained with his wicked blood." V. Thus spoke the Muse. When wings made a noise in the air, and a voice of some beings saluting them came from the high boughs. The daughter of Jupiter looks up, and asks, "Whence tongues that spoke so plain, made that noise ;" and thinks that some human creature spoke. They were birds: and nine of them in number, being magpies that imitate all things, perched upon the boughs, complaining of their fate. 300. Thus the goddess, Uranie, began to reply to the wondering god- dess, Minerva : " Lately too those, being vanquished in a dispute with us, increased the host of the birds. Rich 106 METAMORPHOSES. Pierus begot them in the Pellaean lands : the Paeonian Evippe was their mother. She nine times invoked the powerful Lucina, being nine times in labour. 305. This crowd of foolish sisters was proud of their number ; and came hither through so many cities of yEmonia, and through so many cities of Achaia ; and begin the fight in such words as these. ' Cease deceiving the ignorant vulgar with an empty sweetness. If you have any confidence in your skill contend with us, ye Thespian goddesses. We shall neither be outdone by voice, nor art ; and we are just as many as you. Either withdraw, if vanquished, from the Medusaean spring, and the Hyanthian Aganippe ; or we will retire from the Emathian fields, as far as the snowy Paeonians ; let the nymphs decide the dispute.' 315. It was indeed scandalous to contend ; but it seemed more scandalous to yield. The chosen nymphs swear by the rivers ; and sate upon seats made out of the natural rock. Then without casting lots, she, who offered to engage us, first sings the wars of the gods above ; and places the giants in false honour ; and extenuates the actions of the mighty gods. 321. And how Typhoeus, sent out from the lower quarter of the earth, caused flight among the heavenly gods; and that they all exposed their backs in flight, until the land of Egypt, and the Nile divided into seven mouths, received them, tired. 325. She says too, that the earth-born Typhoeus came hither ; and that the gods above concealed themselves under false shapes. And Jupiter, said she, becomes the leader of a flock of sheep : from whence the Lybian Ammon is now figured with crooked horns. The Delian god, lay concealed in a crow, the son of Semele in a he-goat, the sister of Apollo in a cat, the daughter of Saturn in a snow-white cow, Venus in a fish, the Cyllenian god under the wings of an Ibis.' Thus far she had joined her noisy mouth to the harp. We Aonides, the Muses, are called upon. But perhaps you have not leisure, nor have any unoccupied time, to give ear to our songs." 335. "Doubt not," says Pallas, " and relate your song in order to me :" and then she sat in the refreshing shade of the grove. The Muse BOOK V. 107 tells her story thus. " We assigned the management of the dispute to one of our body. Calliope rises up ; and having her long hair gathered up with ivy, she tries beforehand the thrilling strings with her thumb ; and subjoins this song to the beating of the strings. VI. ' Ceres first turned up the clods with the crooked plough ; she first gave corn and mild food to the earth ; she first gave laws. All things are the gift of Ceres. She is to be sung by me. I wish only I could utter verses worthy of the goddess ! for certainly the goddess is worthy of verse. 346. The vast island Tinacris, was thrown upon the giant's limbs ; and keeps down under prodigious masses, Typhoeus, who dared to aspire to the celestial habitation. He endeavours indeed, and often strives hard, to get up again ; but his right hand is laid under the Italian Pelorum ; the left under thee, Pachynus ; . She herself seemed to look at the lands which she had left, and to cry out to her companions, and to fear the touch of the swelling wave, and to draw back her timorous feet. And she made Asterie to be seized by an eagle struggling with her ; she made Leda to lie under the wings of a swan. She added, how Jupiter, concealed under the form of a satyr, impregnated the beautiful Nycteis with two children ; how he became Amphytrion when he seized thee, O Tyrinthian dame. 113. How being turned into gold, he deluded Danae : and becoming fire, the daughter of Asopus : as a shepherd deceived Mnemo- syne, and as a speckled serpent Deois. She placed thee too, Neptune, changed into a grim bull, with the ^Eolian lady. 116. Thou, appearing in the form of Enipeus, begettedst the Aloidse, and in shape of a ram deludedst the daughter of Bisaltes ; and the most gentle mother of corn, with her yellow hair, felt thy influence as a horse ; and the mother of the winged horse, haired with snakes, thought tliee a bird ; Melantho felt thee when a dolphin. 121. She gave to all these their proper appearance, and the real appearance of their localities. There is Phoebus under the form of a rustic, and how he one while wore the wings of a hawk, another while the skin of a lion ; how, as a shepherd, he deceived Isse the daughter of Macareus. How Bacchus deceived Erigone with a pre- tended bunch of grapes. How Saturn begot the clouble- formed Chiron in shape of a horse. The outer part of the web being enclosed with a fine bordering has flowers interwoven with the folding ivy. IV. Pallas could not find fault with that work, envy could not. The yellow-haired heroine grieved at her success, and burst the web flowered with the crimes of the celestial gods. 132. And as she held her shuttle made of box from mount Citorum she struck the fore- head of the Idmouian Arachne three or four times. The unhappy creature could not brook it ; and, being full of BOOK VI. 121 spirit, she tied up her throat in a halter. 135. Pallas, pitying her, eased her as she hung, and said thus : l< Live truly, yet hang, thou wicked one, and let the same law of punishment be appointed for all thy race, and for thy latest posterity, that thou mayst not be secure for the time to come :" after this, at departing, she sprinkles her with the juice of an Hecateian herb. 140. And immediately her hair, when touched with this sad drug, fell off, and with them too her nose and ears; and her head, little in her whole body, becomes very little. Her small fingers stick in her sides for legs ; the belly has all the rest of her ; out of which though she gives a thread, and becoming a spider works at her web as formerly. V. All Lydia raves with the story, and a rumour of the fact runs through the towns of Phrygia, and fills the whole world with discourse. Niobe, before her marriage, had known her then when being a maid, she inhabited Maeonia and Sipylus. But yet she was not warned by the punishment of her countrywoman Arachne, to yield to the heavenly gods, and to use more humble words. 152. Many things gave her spirit. But neither the arts of her husband, nor the extraction of them both, and the power of a great kingdom, pleased her so much (though all those things pleased her) as her issue ; and Niobe might have been called the happiest of mothers, if she had not seemed so to herself. 157. For Manto, the daughter of Tiresias, foreknowing what was to come, excited by a divine impulse, had prophesied through the middle of the streets, saying, " Go, ye Theban ladies, in crowds and give pious frankincense with prayers to Latona, and the two children of Latona, and bind your hair with laurel. Latona commands it by my mouth." 162. Obedience is paid, and all the Theban ladies dress their temples with leaves of laurel, as commanded ; and give frankincense and supplicating words to the sacred fires. 165. Lo, Niobe comes, attended with a crowd of followers, worthy of admiration, with gold interwoven in her Phrygian robes, and beautiful as far as passion would suffer her ; and tossing her hair, hanging down on both shoulders, with her graceful head, she stood still, and, as M 122 JIETAMOEPHOSES. she loftily cast her proud eyes around, she says, " What madness is it to prefer celestial gods, which you have only heard, to those you have seen ? or why is Latona worshipped at the altars, and my divinity is as yet with- out frankincense ? Tantalus was my father, who alone was allowed to approach the tables of the gods above. The sister of the Pleiades is my mother ; the great Atlas, who supports the setherial axis upon his neck, is my grandfather. 176. Jupiter is my other grandfather; I boast of him too for my father-in-law. The Phrygian nations revere me ; the palace of Cadmus is subject to me, as its mistress ; and the walls that were built by the strings of my husband's lyre, with the people within them, are governed by me, and my spouse. 180. Into whatsoever part of the house I turn my eyes, vast wealth is seen. To this is added a face worthy of a goddess. To that subjoin seven daughters, and as many sons, and by and by sons-in-law, and daughters-in-law. Now ask what cause my pride has to support it ; and presume to prefer Latona the Titaness, sprung from Creus, I know not who ; to whom the great earth once denied a small corner to bring forth in. Your goddess was neither re- ceived by heaven, nor earth, nor water : she was banished the world, till Delos, pitying the wanderer, said, ' Thou strollest about a stranger upon land, and I in the waters ;' and gave an unstable place of rest. 191. She was made a mother by bearing two children. This is but the seventh part of my issue. I am happy ! for who can deny this ? And I shall continue happy, who can doubt that too ? Abundance of children has made me secure. 195. I am greater than one whom fortune can hurt : and suppose that she should take many things from me, she will yet leave me much more. My happy circum- stances have already got above fear. Suppose some part of this crowd of my children may be taken away, yet I shall not be stript, as to be reduced to the number of two, lohich is Latona's. By this number how far distant is she from those who are childless ? Go from the altars, haste from the sacrifices, and take the laurel from your hair." 202. They lay them aside, and leave the sacrifices unperformed ; and what they may, BOOK VI. 123 do adore the goddess with a low voice. The goddess was indignant : and on the top of mount Cynthus spoke with her two children, in such words : " Lo ! I your mother, proud of bearing you two, and who shall give place to none of the goddesses, except Juno, am called in question whither I be a goddess : and for all ages to come am driven from altars intended for my worship, un- less you, my children, succour me. 210. Nor is this my only grief: the daughter of Tantalus has added abusive language to her dreadful act ; and was so bold as to deem you inferior to her own children, and (what I wish may fall upon herself) called me childless : and guilty as she is, has shewn a tongue like her father's." 214. La- tona was going to add entreaties to this relation ; when Phoebus says, " Cease yonr complaints, (all delay of punishment is too long.)" Phoebe said the same ; and, by a speedy descent through the air, they arrived, covered with clouds, at the city of Cadmus. There was nigh the walls a plain field, and widely extended, trampled with horses continually ; where crowds of chariots, and hard hoofs, had broken down the turf beneath. 221. There part of the seven sons of Amphion mount upon stout horses, and sit upon their backs red with the Tyrian dye ; and draw reins heavy with gold. Of whom Ismenus, who had formerly been the first burthen of his mother, whilst he turns the course of his horse into one certain ring, and checks his foaming jaws ; cries out, " Woe's me !" and, transfixed in the middle of his breast, bears therein a weapon ; and the bridle being dropped from his dying hand, by degrees he sinks down sideways over his horse's right shoulder. 230. The next to him, Sipylus, hearing the rattle of a quiver in the air, gave his horse the reins : as when the pilot, sen- sible of a shower approaching, upon sight of a cloud, flies and lets down his hanging sails on ah 1 hands, lest any little air should escape him. He gave the reins to his horse. 234. But an unavoidable weapon overtakes him while giving him the reins; and an arrow stuck quavering in the top of his neck, and the steel point stood bare out of his throat. He, as he was bowing forward, is tumbled over his horse's neck stretched out, 124 METAMORPHOSES. and his mane ; and besmears the earth with his warm blood. 239. The unhappy Phsedimus, and Tantalus the heir of his grandfather's name, having put an end to their wonted exercise of riding, were gone to the juvenile work of neat wrestling ; and now they had clapped breast to breast, struggling in a close embrace, when an arrow, springing from the stretched \>QV; -string, pierced them both through, as they were joined together. 245. They groaned together, and together laid their bodies, bending with pain, upon the ground : together as they lay, rolled their eyes for the last time ; and together breathed out their lives. Alphenor sees this; and, beating his torn breast, flies to them, to raise up their cold limbs in his embraces ; and falls in the affectionate office. 250. For the Delian god pierces the inner part of his midriff with a fatal shaft, which, as soon as it was drawn out, part of his lungs was pulled out too upon the barbs thereof, and his blood was poured out with his life into the air. 254. But a single wound only does not gash the unshorn Damasichthon : he was struck where the leg begins, and where the sinewy ham makes a soft joint : and, whilst he attempts to draw out the deadly weapon with his hand, another arrow was shot through his throat up to the feathers. 259. The blood drove it out, and, darting itself forth, springs up on high ; and, piercing the air, spouts to a great distance. The last of them, Ilioneus, in praying, had lift up his arms destined to avail him nothing, and said, " ye gods, all in common, (being ignorant that they were not all to be addressed) spare me" 264. The bow-bearing god was moved, when now his arrow was not to be recalled. Yet he died with the least wound, his heart not being deeply wounded with the arrow. The report of this calamity, and the grief of the people, and the tears of her friends, made the mother acquainted with so sudden a destruc- tion, wondering that the gods could do this, and being incensed that the celestials should dare to do it, and that they had so much privilege. 2/1. For the father, Amphion, thrusting his sword through his breast, and so dying, had ended his grief together with his life. Alas ! how much did this Niobe differ from that Niobe, BOOK VI, 126 who lately had driven the people from the altars of La- tona, and with a lofty head had directed her steps through the middle of the city, envied by her own people, but now to be pitied even by an enemy ! 277. She falls upon the cold bodies, and dispenses, but in no order, her last kisses amongst all her sons : from whom lifting up her livid arms to heaven, she says : " Glut thyself, O cruel Latoua, with my sorrow : glut thyself, and satiate thy mind with my mourning :" she said too, " Satiate thy cruel heart by seven funerals. I am carried to my grave : rejoice and triumph thou, my victorious enemy : but why victorious ? More is left me, miser- able as I am, than thou hast, happy as thou art. I excel thee too, after so many deaths." 286. She ceased to speak ; when the string twanged from a bent bow, which affrighted all, except Niobe alone. She becomes dauntless by her misfortunes. The sisters stood before the beds of their brothers, with their hair dishevelled, in black clothes. 290. One of which drawing out the clinging arrow from her bowels, fainted away, ready to die, with her face laid upon a brother. Another, endeavouring to comfort her miserable mother, suddenly was silent, and was doubled together with an invisible wound, (and closed not her mouth till after her breath departed.) Another, flying in vain, falls ; another dies upon her sister ; another lies hid; you might see another trembling. And six being put to death, and having re- ceived different wounds, the last was left ; which the mother covering all her body over, with her whole gar- ment, cried out, " Leave me one, and the youngest : I beg but the youngest of many, and one :" and whilst she begs, she for whom she begged was slain. 302. She sat down, now childless among her dead sons and daughters, and husband ; and grew rigid by the force of her distress. The air moves no hair of hers. In her countenance is a colour without blood ; her eyes stand unmoved upon her sad cheeks : there is nothing of life in her image. 306. Her tongue itself too congeals within her mouth, with her hard palate ; and her veins cease to be able to have pulsation. Nor can her neck be bent, nor her arms give any motion, nor her feet go. The stone is M 2 126 METAMORPHOSES. now too within her bowels : yet she weeps ; and, wrapt in the whirl of a mighty wind, she was hurried away into her own country. There being fixed upon the top of a mountain she dissolves, and the marble still drops tears. VI. But then all, both women and men, dread the manifest anger of the goddess ; and all more zealously honour with worship the great majesty of the twin-bear- ing goddess : and as it happens, upon this late fact, they tell over again old deeds. One of which says, ' Some husbandmen of old too, in the land of fruitful Lycia, despised the goddess, but not without punish- ment." 319. The thing indeed is but obscure, by reason of the ignoble birth of the men concerned therein; but yet it is wonderful. I saw upon the spot the pool, and the lake noted for the prodigy. For my father being now advanced in age, and incapable of travel, had ordered me to drive from thence some choice oxen ; and he had given me, at my going> a guide of that nation. 324. With whom whilst I traverse the pastures there, behold an old altar, black with the ashes of sacrifices, stood in the middle of a lake, surrounded with trembling reeds. My guide stood still, and said in a fearful whis- per, Favour me : and I said with the like whisper, Favour me. Yet I was asking, whether it was an altar of the Naiades, or Faun, or some native god of the country : when the stranger returned me these words. 331. "O youth, there is no deity of the mountains upon this altar. She calls this her's, whom the royal Juno for- merly banished from the world ; whom with much ado the wandering Delos received upon her entreaty, then when the light island floated. 335. There Latona lean- ing against a palm-tree, with the tree of Pallas, brought forth twins, much against the will of their step-mother. The new-delivered goddess is said to have fled Juno from hence too, and to have carried in her bosom the two deities, her children. 339. And now the goddess, vreary with her long toil, being parched with the heat of the season, contracted a thirst in the country of Lycia, famed for the Chimsera, when the violent sun scorched the fields ; and the hungry children had ex- BOOK VI. 127 hausted the suckling breasts, when by chance she saw a lake of good water in the bottom of a valley. Some countrymen were there gathering bushy twigs, with rushes, and sedges natural to fens. 346. The Titaness came to it, and pressed the ground with her bent knee, to take up the cold water to drink. The company of rustics forbid her. 348. The goddess thus bespake them that forbade her: "Why do you deny me water? the use of water is common. Nature has neither made the sun, nor air, nor the liquid water any one's property. I come to favours open to all ; which yet I humbly beg you would grant me. I was not going to wash my limbs and wearied members here, but only to quench my thirst. The mouth as I speak is devoid of moisture, and my jaws are dry, and scarce is there a passage for my voice within. A draught of water will be nectar to me ; and I shall own I received life together with it. You will give me life in the water. Let those too move you, who hold out their little arms in my bosom :" and by chance the children held out their arms. 360. Whom could not these gentle words of the goddess have moved? Yet they persist in hindering her thus entreating them ; and moreover add threats, if she does not retire to a dis- tance ; and reproachful language too. Nor was this enough : they likewise disturbed the very lake with their feet and hands ; and raised from the bottom of the water the soft mud, by an ill-natured jumping hither and thither. 366. Her resentment removed her sense of thirst : for now the daughter of Cceus does not sup- plicate the unworthy wretches, nor does she any longer endure to utter words below the majesty of a goddess : and lifting up her palms towards the stars, she said : " May you live for ever in that lake !" 3/0. The wish of the goddess succeeds. It delights them to go under the waters ; and one while to sink their members en- tirely in the hollow pool ; another while to put up their heads, another while to swim on the top of the water ; oftentimes to sit on the bank of the lake, and often to jump back again into the cold lake : and now too they exercise their filthy tongues in wrangling : and banishing 128 METAMORPHOSES. all shame, though they be under the water, they at- tempt to give foul language under the water. 377. Their voice too is now hoarse, and their blown-up necks swell ; and their brangling dilates their wide jaws. Their backs touch their heads ; their necks seem inter- cepted. Their backbone is green ; their belly, the greatest part of their body is white : and these new frogs leap in the muddy water. VII. Thus after I know not who had related the de- struction of these men of the Lycian nation, another remembers the Satyr ; whom being vanquished in play- ing upon the Tritouian reed, the son of Latona mortified with punishment. 385. " Why do you pull me from myself?" says he. "Ah! I repent: ah," cried he, "the pipe is not a matter so much worth." His skin was pulled down over his upper limbs, as he was crying out ; nor was he any thing but one entire wound. The blood runs down on all sides ; and his nerves being uncovered appear : and his trembling veins beat, with- out any skin upon them. 390. You might have num- bered his palpitating bowels, and the transparent fibres in his breast. The rural Fauns, those gods of the woods, and his brother Satyrs, and Olympus too then famous, and the nymphs wept for him ; and whosoever upon those mountains fed the wool-bearing flocks, and the horned herds. 396. The fruitful earth was wet ; and being wet, received the falling tears, and drank them up within her lower veins. Which, when she had turned into water, she threw out into the open air. The clearest river of Phrygia, making from thence for the rapid sea within its dech'ning banks, has the name of Marsya. VIII. From these narrations the common people re- turn immediately to the present transactions ; and mourn for Amphion dead with his issue. The mother is held in odium. Yet one, Pelops, is said to have wept for her too : and, after he had drawn his clothes from his shoulders to his breast, shewed the ivory on his left shoulder. This shoulder was, at the time of his being born, of the same colour with his right, and of fleshy substance, They say, that the gods soon after BOOK VI. 129 joined his limbs cut asunder by his father's hands : and the others of them being found, that part, which is in the middle betwixt the throat and the top of the arm, was wanting : and ivory was placed there instead of the part that did not appear : and so Pelops was made en- tire by that action. IX. The neighbouring nobles meet together ; and the cities that were near entreated their kings to go to the consolation of Pelops, Argos, and Sparte, and the Pe- lopeian Mycenae, and Calydon not yet odious to the stern Diana, and fierce Orchomenos, and Corinth famous for its brass, and fruitful Messene, and Patrse, and low-lying Cleonse, and the Neleian Pylos, and Trcezen not yet belonging to Pittheus, and the other cities which are enclosed by the Isthmus betwixt two seas, and those that, being situated without, are seen from the Isthmus betwixt two seas. 421. Who could believe it ? you alone, Athens, forbore to appear. A. war prevented that civility ; and barbarous troops, brought thither by sea, alarmed the Mopsopian walls. 424. The Thracian Tereus had routed these by his auxiliary arms, and had now got a famous name by conquering. Whom, as being strong in riches and men, and, as it happened, deriving his original from the great Mars, Pandion united to himself by the marriage of Procne. Juno, the president of marriage, does not appear at the wedding ; Hymeneeus does not attend, none of the graces appear at that marriaae-bed. 430. The furies held torches snatched from a funeral. The furies strewed the couch ; and the profane owl brooded upon the house-top, and rested upon the summit of the bed-chamber. Under this bird of omen, were Procne and Tereus joined together : with this evil bird, were they made parents. 434. Thrace indeed congratulated them ; and they gave thanks to the gods : and ordered the day, upon which the daughter of Pandion was given to the famous prince, and that upon which Itys was born, to be called Festival ; so much is their true in- terest concealed from men. Now Titan, the sun, had drawn the time of the repeated year through five autumns ; when Procne, blandishing upon her husband, said : " If I have any favour with you, either send me 130 METAMORPHOSES. to see my sister, or let my sister come hither. You shall promise your father-in-law, that she shall return in a short time. You will act like a great god to me, if you let me see my sister." 444. Reorders ships to be drawn down into the sea ; and with sails and rowers enters the Cecropian harbour ; and lands upon the Pyrsean shore. As soon as an opportunity was given him of speaking to his father-in-law, and right hand was joined with right, their communication begins with an unlucky omen. 449. He had begun to relate the occa- sion of his coming, and the orders of his wife, and to promise a speedy return for the lady, if sent. Lo ! Philomela comes, richly adorned in noble apparel ; but richer in her beauty : such as we use to hear the Naiades and Dryades proceed in the middle of woods ; if you should but give them the like dress and orna- ments. 455. Tereus was inflamed, upon seeing the young lady, as fiercely as if any one should put fire under the ears of corn, when gray, or should burn leaves, or hay laid up in stacks. Her face indeed is worthy of his passion. But both his inbred lust pushes him on ; and the people in those parts, are very in- clinable to passion. He has a strong inclination to corrupt the care of her attendants, and the honesty of her nurse ; and likewise to solicit herself by large pre- sents, and to spend his whole kingdom upon her ; or violently to seize, and to secure her, when seized, by a cruel war. 465. And there is nothing, which, being seized by an unbridled passion, he would not venture upon for her ; nor does his breast contain the enclosed flames. And now he ill bears with any delays ; and returns with a forward mouth to the messages of Procne ; and acts his own wishes under them. Love made him eloquent : and, as oft as he solicited beyond what was fit, he pretended Procne had desired so. 471. He added tears, too, as if she had ordered them like- wise. O ye gods above, how much of dark night have mortal breasts within them ? Tereus, by the very at- tempting of his villany, is thought to be affectionate ; and receives praise from his crime. 475. What shall I say, that Philomela desires the same ? and fawningly holding her father's shoulders with her arms, she begs BOOK VI. 131 by her own safety, and against it too, that she may go to see her sister. Tereus views her ; and in viewing her, handles her in his lewd imagination, before the time comes for his doing it in reality ; and seeing her kisses and her arms cast about her father s neck, he receives all these things as incentives, and fuel, and food to his furious passion ; and, as oft as she embraces her father, he could wish to have been her father: for indeed he would not have been less wicked. The father is overcome by the prayers of both his daughters ; she rejoices, and gives her father thanks, and, unhappy creature, thinks that had succeeded well for both, which will be tragical to both. 486. Now but little, work was left for Phoebus; and his horses beat with their feet the course of the setting sky : royal cheer is set upon the table, and wine served up in gold plate. After this, their bodies are given up to gentle sleep. 490. But the Odrysian king, although he was withdrawn, is all in confusion about her : and representing to himself her shape, and motion, and hands, imagines what he has not yet seen, to be what he wishes ; and he feeds his own fires, his passion pre- venting sleep. It was now day-light ; and Pandion grasping the right hand of his son-in-law on his de- parture, recommends to his care his companion, with gushing tears ; " I commit this girl to thee, my dear son- in-law, because an affectionate occasion has obliged me to it, [and they both desired it, and thou too, Tereus, desiredst if], and I earnestly entreat thee by thy honour, and that breast of thine allied to us, and by the gods above, protect her by a fatherly love ; and send me back, as soon as may be, that sweet comfort of my anxious old age, (all delay will appear long to me ;) and do thou, Philomela, if thou hast any affection, return to me as soon as may be, (it is enough that thy sister is far away.)" 504. Thus he gave order ; and at the same time gave kisses to his daughter ; and affectionate tears fell amidst his instructions to her. And he demanded the right hands of both, as a pledge of their faith ; and joined them, when given him, betwixt themselves : and bid them with mindful mouths salute for him his absent 132 METAMORPHOSES. daughter and grandson. 509. Scarcely could he utter the last farewell with a mouth full of sobs : and he dreaded the presages of his own mind. But as soon as Philomela was put on board the painted ship, and the sea was agitated by the oars, and the land repulsed ; he cries out, " I have gained my point ; the object of my longing goes along with me." 515. And the barbarian rejoices excessively ; and with difficulty of mind defers his joy ; and turns not his eyes away from her. No otherwise than when the ravenous bird of Jupiter has with his crooked talons laid a hare in his high nest: there is no escaping from the captive : the ravager looks upon his prey. 519. And now the voyage was at an end, and they got out of the wearied ships upon their own shore ; when the king drags the daughter of Pandion into a stately house concealed in an old wood ; and there shuts her up pale and trembling, and fearing all things, and now asking with tears, where her sister was : and, confessing his villanous intention, by force masters her a virgin, and alone ; whilst she often called upon her father in vain, and oftentimes her sister, but the great gods above all. 527. She trembles like a frighted lamb, which, being wounded, and dashed out of the mouth of a hoary wolf, does not yet seem to herself secure : and as a pigeon, whilst its feathers are wet with its own blood, quavers still, and fears the talons in which she had stuck. 53 1 . By and by after her sense returned, tearing her dishevelled hair, like one mourning, and beating her arms with lamentations, and stretching out her hands, she says; "O barbarous icretch, for thy dreadful actions ; O cruel monster, could neither the charge of my father, with his affectionate tears, move thee ; nor a regard for my sister, nor my virginity, nor the laws of marriage ? Thou hast confounded all. I am become a rival to my sister ; thou a husband to us both ; this punishment is not due to me. Why dost thou not take away this life of mine ? (that no villany may remain unexecuted by thee, perfidious wretch.) And I wish thou had'st done so, before thy guilty embrace : I should have had my shade void of all crime. Yet if the gods above see these things, if the majesty of BOOK VI. 133 the gods be any thing, if all things are not gone to ruin with myself, some time or other thou shaft make me satisfaction. 544. I myself, casting off all shame, will declare thy actions. If opportunity he given me, I will go ainongst the people : and if I be kept shut up in the woods, I will fill the woods, and move the conscious rocks. Let heaven, and if there be any god in it, hear these things." 549. After the passion of the cruel tyrant was roused with these words, and his fear was no less than that ; pushed on by both causes, he draws the sword, with which he was girt, out of the sheath, and seizing her by the hair, and turning her arms behind her back, he compels her to endure chains. Philomela prepared her throat for the sword, and had conceived hopes of her death upon seeing the sword. 555. He cut away, with his cruel sword, her tongue seized with pincers, whilst she was raving with indignation, and constantly calling upon her father, and struggling to speak. The last part, the root of her tongue, moves, quick ; but itself lies on the ground, and mutters still, trembling upon the black earth : and as a tail of a muti- lated snake skips about, it beats ; and dying, seeks the feet of its mistress. Nay, after this wicked act too (though I should scarce dare to believe it; he is said to have often had recourse to her mangled body to gratify his lust. He has the hardiness to return to Procne after these facts ; who, when she saw her husband, inquires after her sister ; but he fetches feigned groans, and tells an invented story of her death. 566. And his tears procured him credit. Procne strips from off her shoulders her robes shining with gold, and is clad in black clothes ; and erects an empty sepulchre, and brings her offerings to her fictitious shade ; and mourns the death of her sister, not to be thus mourned for. 5/1. The god had run through twice the six signs of the zodiac in a complete year. What could Philomela do ? A guard prevents her flight ; the walls of the house are hard, being built of solid stone : her dumb mouth wants a discoverer of the fact. But there is in. sorrow a deal of sense, and acuteness comes upon men in misery. 576. She slily fixes up warp iu a web of the N 134 METAMORPHOSES. barbarian fashion ; and interwove red marks in white threads, a discovery of villany ; and delivered the work, when finished, to one, and by her gesture begs of him, that he would carry it to his lady. He carried it, as desired, to Procne ; nor does he know what he delivered in it. 581. The wife of the savage tyrant unfolds the web, and reads the miserable ditty of her sister ; and (it is strange she could be so) is silent. Her sorrow stopped her mouth ; and words sufficiently outrageous were wanting to her tongue seeking for them. 585. Nor is she at leisure to weep ; but rushes forward, confounding both right and wrong ; and is wholly taken up in the contrivance of revenge. It was the time when the Sithonian wives used to celebrate the sacred triennial solemnity of Bacchus : night is conscious to their holy rites. In the night Rhodope rings with the tinklings of shrill brass. In the night the queen went out of her house, and is accoutred according to the rites of Bacchus ; and receives frantic arms. 592. Her head is covered with a vine ; a deer's skin hangs down her left side : a smooth pike rests upon her shoulder. 594. Then Procne rushing terrible through the woods, with a company of her ladies attending her, and hurried by the fury of her resentment, she pretends it thy frenzy, O Bacchus. She comes at length to the lonely house, and howls amain, and cries Evoe ; and breaks open the gates and seizes her sister ; and puts upon her, being seized, the peculiar badges of Bacchus, and conceals her coun- tenance under sprigs of ivy ; and dragging her along astonished, leads her into her house. As soon as Philomela perceived she had got into the guilty house,x the hapless being was affrighted ; and her face was pale all over. Procne having got a place of secrecy for it, takes away the tokens of religion ; and uncovers the blushing face of her poor sister ; and falls to embracing her. 605. But she cannot endure to lift up her eyes upon her, seeming to herself her sister's rival : and her look being fixed upon the ground, her hand was instead of voice to her desirous to swear, and call the gods to witness that that shame had been put upon her by vio- lence. Procne herself is in a flame, and contains not BOOK VI. 135 f her anger ; and reprehending her sister's weeping, ' We must not act," says she, "in this case with tears, but the sword ; nay with any thing, if you have any thing, that can outdo the sword. I have, sister, prepared myself for all manner of daring. 614. I will either, after I have set fire to the royal palace with torches, throw the villain Tereus into the middle of the flames ; or I will cut away with the sword his tongue, or his eyes, or the members which took your honour from you, or I will drive his guilty soul out by a thousand wounds. It is great, whatsoever I am about ; but what it is, I am in doubt as yet." 619. Whilst Procne utters these words, Itys came to his mother. What she could do, she was now put in mind by him : and beholding him with fierce eyes, " Ah !" said she, " how like art thou to thy father!" So she said, and, speaking no more, she resolves upon a horrid act : and burns with silent rage. 624. Yet when her son came to her, and gave his mother a salutation, and drew her neck to him with his little arms, and added kisses mixed with childish coax- ings ; the mother was really shocked, and her anger stood diminished ; and her eyes, in spite of her, were wet with tears forced from her. But as soon as she perceived a mother's love shrink through an excessive natural tenderness for her son, she turned from him again to the face of her sister ; and looking at them both by turns, she says, " Why does the one employ upon me endearing language, whilst the other is silent with her tongue cut out ? Why does she not call her sister, which he calls mother? Consider to what a husband thou art married, thou daughter of Pandion. 635. Thou degeneratest. Duty to such a husband as Tereus is wickedness." And without delay she dragged Itys along, like as a tiger of the Ganges does the suck- ling fawn of a doe, through the shady woods. And after they were got into a retired part of the lofty house, Procne strikes with the sword poor Itys, where his breast joins upon his side, holding up his hands, and now seeing his fate, and now calling, Ho ! mother, and catching at her neck. 642. Nor does she turn away her face. Even one wound was enough for him for his ]36 METAMORPHOSES. dispatch. Philomela opens his throat with the sword ; and they tear in pieces his members yet alive, and re- . taining something of existence. Part of these limbs boil in hollow kettles ; part hisses upon spits : the parlour runs down with gore. 647- The wife sets the ignorant Tereus at this table; and falsely pretending to" offer a sacrifice of her country fashion, which it would be lawful for but one man to approach, she ordered away his attendants and servants. Tereus, sitting aloft upon a throne of his forefathers, eats, and throws his own bowels into his belly ; and such is the ignorance of his mind : " Call Itys hither," said he. 653. Procne cannot dissemble her cruel joy ; and being now desirous to he the discoverer of her murdering him ; *' You have within what you call for," says she. He looks about and seeks where he should be. Upon his seeking, and calling again, Philomela leaped out, as she was, with her hair all besmeared with the furious murder, and threw the bloody head of Itys in his father's face: nor did she wish at any time more to be able to speak, and testify her joy by such words a* he deserved. 66 1 . The Thracian pushes away the table with a huge cry ; and calls the viperean sisters from the Stygian valley : and one while desires, if he could, by opening his breast, to throw up the direful repast, and the half-eaten bowels from thence, another while he weeps and calls himself the wretched tomb of his own son ; and now he follows the daughters of Pandion with his drawn sword. You would have thought that the bodies of the Cecropides, hung upon wings : they did indeed hang upon wings : one of which makes for the woods ; the other takes to the houses. 669. Nor as yet have the marks of the murder withdrawn from her breast ; and her feathers are stained with blood. He, made swift by his resent- ment, and the desire of revenge, is turned into a bird, upon whose head stand crests : a long bill projects for a long spear. The name of the bird is the Lapwing ; its face appears armed. This affliction dispatched Pandion to the Tartarean shades before his day, and the late times of a long old age. X. Erechtheus takes the command of the place, and BOOK VI. 137. the government of affairs ; it is doubtful whether he was more powerful by his justice or mighty arms. He had indeed begot four sons, and as many of the female sex ; but the beauty of two of them was alike. Of which Cephalus, the grandson of .